As a North American citizen, video game censorship hasn't really affected the games that I played since Mortal Kombat on the SNES, famous for not including blood. Since that whole debacle, the ESRB was formed and pretty much anything other than porno games are fine to sell here.
Other parts of the world aren't as lucky. China is more prone to ban games that touch down on political issues. In 2002, Greece temporarily banned all video game playing in public. The one country I wanted to speak on in regards to censorship is Australia.
According to their current rules, all games must be rated MA15 or lower. MA15 means that a game is suitable for those ages 15 and up. But what if you wanted to play the equivalent to an M-rated game in Australia. Tough luck. If a game isn't suitable for a 15 year-old, stores can't legally sell it. If you import the game and show it to a minor, you can get hit with criminal charges.
The Australian's rating system has always bothered me, because it's built on an old fallacy that video games are only for kids. You could argue that this hasn't been the case since the inception of the medium, but I would say that video games have begun to skew older since the mid 90s. There is a reason why games like Grand Theft Auto and Modern Warfare sell like crazy. There's also a reason why the average age of a video game player in Australia in 30 years-old, who are greatly affected by outdated laws.
Thankfully for Australia, they've finally come around to at least opening up the discussion of whether or not to allow the sale of mature games in the country. A great resource for finding out the latest news, updates and how you can help is right here.
Even as a gamer on the other side of the world, I can empathize with Australian gamers and I hope they're able to update their laws. I never had it as bad as they do, but I feel for the struggle they face. While I can buy and play games like Manhunt any time I want, I still encounter people all the time who think that video games are only for kids because they just don't know any better. Video games as a medium is still in its infancy and still trying to carve its own niche in this world, but it has long since proven that anyone, regardless of age can enjoy video games. The act of Australia changing its laws would be a great step towards universal acceptance of the medium.