Totalbiscuit's totally made up censorship narrative!

Seems fitting that my first post using twitlonger is a swipe at everyone's favourite youtube provocateur. Y'know the one, claims he's not a journalist yet is somehow an expert on what constitutes journalistic ethics. Like freelancers having to disclose relationships with small time indie developers not, I dunno, to use an example like say producing videos sponsored by publishers.



John Bain, a man in his thirties who refers to himself as 'Totalbiscuit', tweeted earlier today:

"When you see games media sites celebrating the censorship of a videogame, you know they've forgotten what it means to be proconsumer." (sic) https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/540474406594969602



Of course, not being a journalist himself, he doesn't have to bother with giving names or details. He follows up with:

"Thankfully, said sites are few and far between, but do take note of them."

https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/540474789669130242



Still no list has been produced. There's a few replies agreeing with him but no one is able to actually produce any firm examples. An hour ago, Bain clarifies the situation a little:

"Since some people are claiming I slammed Kotaku for defending Target AUs decision. Kotaku AU defended it, main Kotaku site condemned it."

https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/540528999320289281



Interesting. First games media sites are celebrating it and now they're merely defending it. A quick scan of the Kotaku AU article in question is a measured response to the removal of Grand Theft Auto 5 from Target's Australian stores. http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/12/targets-grand-theft-auto-v-ban-leaves-us-with-no-one-to-blame/

The TL;DR version is that the author doesn't agree with the decision but also respects that Target are responding to a petition with 41,000 signatures. And before we get in a panic, it's no an example of Government mandated censorship. To put it into context, the R18+ rating for videogames is just over 3 years old. Previous to 2011, games in Australia could only be rated MA15+ (there's a bit more info about it over on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_gaming_in_Australia#Censorship_issues and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games_in_Australia )

So adult videogames like GTA are still a relatively new prospect in Australia, as TB himself suggests, the problem could well be Target themselves advertising GTAV in the toy section. https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/540474368506470400

So really the issue here is one of the free market responding to consumer complaints. Target isn't a specialist shop, so one chain deciding to remove what's already a hugely popular title that doesn't fit in with their family friendly image makes sense. Yes, it's a tad hypocritical when they sell other adult orientated media products but that's ultimately their choice.



But back to the point, John Bain never misses a chance to swipe at the mainstream games press for lack of ethics, lazy journalism and not caring about their readership. But as you can see from the tweets quoted above, he's backtracked from sites "celebrating" the ban (which makes no sense with GTAV having blanket coverage from games sites both before and after its launch) to Kotaku AU defending it. A world of difference.



There's been no full explanation or backtracking from Bain yet but it's ok because as he says 1000s of times, despite having a large media platform and demanding standards of others he doesn't follow himself, he's not a journalist.

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