PixlBit

I'm hoping you guys have a Melbourne Game Party of 2016 like the Boston Tea Party, but with you all hijacking a bunch of copies of imported GTA (ironically) Blu Rays and throwing them into a body of water.

That would be beautiful.

  Sorry man!  I don't know why Australia hates games so much.  

Our government is in a "burn anything not Australian" phase at the moment. They hate foreigners, things young people enjoy, and things that aren't sports.

So 2010s Australia is 1980s America? Well I hope you all have the coke, synth guitars, deregulation of advertising and sugary cereals to make up for it.

Yeah, but we also had great video games back in 1980s America, even with all the Japan-bashing that went on back then.

True. Guess I wasn't around for the Japan-bashing. Shoddy workmanship akin to China was a joke about Japan that bled into some of the 90s from my memory, but ... I reeeaaally don't think that's necessarily true now, if it ever was.

In the 80s, Japan was honestly more hated in some circles than Russia was. It wasn't workmanship so much as the fact that their automotive and electronics industries were eating the US alive in the 1980s, and the fact that Japanese companies were buying up a lot of American companies and real estate. In 1995, due to a stock market spike, the Japanese economy was briefly worth more on paper than the entire US economy was. The market correction that followed pretty much put an end to the "Japan is taking over the world" meme. If you've ever seen movies from the 80s set in the future, notably Back to the Future II, you'll notice they all have America's economy pretty much owned by Japan in its entirety.

And Nintendo got a lot of this hate because it was the most familiar face of Japan in American homes. The American video game industry was on life support at that time. Atari and Activision were going bankrupt, and even EA wasn't doing all that well.

Ok, now I remember a blog on 1up by YaMissed2 about how his family was reluctant to buy a Nintendo because his dad had worked for GM in Detroit in the 80s and they had to move after Japan took over that industry. 

I was born in '90, so I wasn't paying attention to all that, and my older brother, born in '84, had an NES and SNES so I guess my parents weren't so upset about it. My current car is a '91 Honda Accord ... my last car was a '90 Honda Accord. 

I used to see stuff about the trade gap with Japan all the time, and I saw a lot of American companies end up under Japanese ownership. Columbia Pictures went from Coca-Cola to Sony Pictures (which still owns it), and economics magazines depicting the Statue of Liberty dressed in kimonos and carrying paper fans instead of the torch and tablets. In my family, my mother was all "buy American", and she still is. She's never driven a non-American car. By contrast, my dad has driven nothing but Japanese vehicles since 1989 or so.  My father was in the Navy from 1957-1971 and loved being stationed in Japan, and he worked for the Postal Service thereafter. My mother worked at a Motorola plant in Arizona for a couple of years.

The thing is, we did have the "burn anything not American" mentality coming from the government in the 1980s, but very few people walked the walk. People kept buying Sony TVs over Zeniths and Toyotas over Fords and Chevys, while politicians beat the populist "buy American" drum while insisting on a deregulated trade market that worked in favor of Asia and Mexico at the expense of American workers. Wal-Mart used to post "Made in the USA" signs, but that pretty much went away after Sam Walton died.

And in video gaming? Trust me, there was nobody out there that believed that the Atari 7800 and the Atari Lynx were viable alternatives to Nintendo. Atari even touted "Made in the USA" as an advertising campaign for the Jaguar. :)

Yeah, that's all stuff I knew about, especially the 80s Reagan politics, but didn't live through it. 

Wait?So $90 per game is the usual price before taxes? Good god! No wonder you binged on that Steam sale last year. Pirate away! 

I won't be able to, because pirate sites are being blocked in this country too haha. 

Well fuck!

Now how did I know from the title that it was you who wrote it?

I know a guy who moved to Australia many years ago. He tells me things. If what he says is true...get the fuck out of there, man. The nuts are running the nuthouse.

Maybe because my name is next to it :p

 Luckily the dimwitted cunt who was ruining everything got kicked out of parliament (not voted out, his own party forced his resignation because he was doing that poorly), but the effects of him being Prime Minister are still being felt.

I vote move, I'd move for sure. That is soo ridiculous with pricing and taxes.  

If only it were that easy. If I could move, I'd move to Europe or something. Maybe Sweden. But that would cost a lot of money, and while I'm decently well off, I'm not well off enough to up and move to another country unfortunately. Maybe in the next 5 years if I'm lucky.

That sucks ass! I'm with Nicole, Move!

I'd love to. I'd be in Sweden tomorrow if I could afford it.

There's a new woman on IGN's Podcast Unlocked podcast this week and she's recently from Australia. She mentioned free healthcare, but I guess that's small consolation for all the taxes put on stuff. 

Nope. We're losing that sometime in the next 2 years. We're also getting massive cuts to student support, our system of paying for our degree when we get a job that pays over $55000 a year is going as well. So yeah, it's looking like most things that made this country great are going down the toilet, so now might be a good time to leave.

Someone really needs to point out this is what would happen to U.S. if Trump or Cruz wins ...

You don't have free health care, do you? I know Obama tried it and everyone said he was a communist for it. And from what I've heard your student support is near non-existent.

The Affordable Care Act is in effect, but it doesn't work quite like other countries' health care systems. It's not really public option or single payer. It's ... complicated. America of late is divided on political issues, so who's calling him a communist or a hero kinda depends on what region of the nation you're in. Tons of demographic splits too. 

As for health care for students, I was able to see the free clinic on campus as part of my tuition payment (I wouldn't call health care systems "free"). As an adjunct professor, they offered me a bunch of health care options to waive or accept, like dental, medical, childcare, etc. I waived them all, since they would not even credit as my insurance until April, and there's a chance I leave in May when the semester ends. 

I don't know what kind of system Australia has, but keep in mind some states in the U.S. denied ACA ("Obamacare") funding, including my state of TX, which I think might be why I'm able to waive without paying a penalty tax. I don't know what provisions other states have taken, but I'm hoping my income level would not be required to pay into ACA. It would have meant barely having money for groceries in my case.

Damn shame you can't move.  I know I wouldn't pay $90 for a game.  I rarely pay $60 for most of the games I buy.

Hot damn $90? I wouldn't blame you if you did turn to piracy. That is just insane!

Heard this from Australian/English youtuber Idiotech Gaming back when was recent guest on the Co-optional Podcast, and he pretty much summarized the situation as "if you're a gamer, don't come to Australia, it's terrible". Damn, seems Australia surpassed Germany as worst place to be a gamer, since as much as they are censorship happy, they can afford games with the Euro. Really sucks man.

To rob salt in the wound further, Steam finally integrated Colombian pesos as a currency option last December. Even a mostly piracy country like mine gets the opportunity for that instead of Australia.