Ban for violent games?

[m0ds]

There's too much to RPG's rather than "cock gun, aim, shoot". Something that can be mimicked IRL preeetty easily

[lo_res_man]

I would say kleptomania can be replicated easily, but we don't do that, do we?
[edit] course, maybe why rpg'ers don't go on there own brand of rampages is that rpgs ARE their RL.

[Erenan]

I blame the grammatical errors in this thread.

Also, I blame Pluto.

[skyfire2]

I don't blame them for blaming the incident on violent video games. If I was facing a life sentence or death I'd find the easiest thing to blame too.

[ManicMatt]

Skyfire, this is about officials/laywers/governments blaming videogames, not the murderers, in this case.

[Ghost]

What nags me is that it's always mis-done by the same sources. I'm from germany too, and heck, we have some of the hardest censors ever. We can have as many nipples in a game as we like, but one drop of blood and it's all over. The event was terrible, sad, a real tragedy. And suddenly we learn what a terrible power the media has.

There were two big events that changed a lot here, both were "school rampants", as our faithful Bild Zeitung (rainbow press, big style) nicknamed them. Both times it was blamed on "killer games". And while nobody cared for stuff like Counterstrike so far, suddenly it was THE killer game. The media fell over to show how cruel and sick this game was, silently reasoning that all games are like CS.
In fact they must've hired some experienced players and pay them well, for most pics shown in the Bild were pics of mods that allowed shooting grannies. I've played my fair share of clean CS matches. Never saw a granny there. It was even claimed that the game allowed you to mug people in the street.

And the broad mass will always fall for such reports because they don't know the games and it's a relief to have someone decide that some strange hobby of some strange outsiders is to be blamed. It's not your fault, parents. It's that evil GAMES that made your kid go mad.

After that first school shootout, we ended up with games that had no USK (age recommendation) being suddenly rated "18 years". This included, and still includes, Mario Land. In my home city, several Internet Cafes had to close their doors. For about two months my mum came over to my place to see if I maybe had a gun (kidding here...)

Now another sad guy wants to shout out his anger, tapes some rather dramatic video of himself saying what a *** his life is and that's the fault of the universe that he's gone over the rim, and we have it all again. And again, the papers are rattling their chains and light their torches. Witch hunt again.

I am 31 years old and have played video games from when I was old enough to grab an Atari joystick. For more than 18 years I have shot alien bastards, killed Strogg and Hellspawns, caused some heavy damage on several warfields. I have seen the rise of the first person shooter genre. I've actually been there when you couldn't find a game's shop where someone played Doom in the back room. I'm prime killer material.
But: I've also build cities, made some dozen Sims lead happy lifes, rescued a wagon of princesses, solved many an adventure with nothing sharper than an insult to the sword masters or a slice of cheesecake, and I've created several generation of Creatures. I've been a pretty contructive, protective, creative player.
All this, however, means nothing to the broad mass. They're happy to have a scapegoat. Once it was rock'n'roll music, now it's "killer! games!".

And it makes me sick that no-one ever seems to think a bit for himself.

[Ishmael]

It's just plain silly. Yeah, blame the games. The kids will go around buying laser guns or battlewalkers and squish each others to pieces with them. Sure. Games are really too easy to blame, but with a bit of reason those accusations can be - to some extent - overcome easily. Like for some people games are a way of unloading agression. So, where in this scheme do they gather more and more of it to the point where they get a gun and go actually shoot real people? I don't see it.

And there's no left mouse button on a gun, neither can it be remapped to one. Atleast not on the current ballistic weapons, I don't know about the stuff Bush's guys have locked up over at the 51...

[skyfire2]

Skyfire, this is about officials/laywers/governments blaming videogames, not the murderers, in this case.

I was refering to the lawyer/client relationship of the matter.

[Fabiano]

My thought about violence in games is "You can kill in the pc so you dont have the need to get a gun and kill someone" but people are so amazing that they do both. Here in brazil they banned "mad dog mcgree" because you use a gun to shoot "real" people. I think that is stupid, but as I said before, people can be amazing sometimes...in both sides.

Lo_res_man: Who said we dont do?  8)

[nihilyst]

A big problem here in Germany is censorship. All those "killer-games" don't really involve "killing" or the causes of violence. If you shoot people, they don't bleed, they don't die. In the german version of HL, the (human) guards and scientists took a seat when shot, and they began to cry, in other games they just vanish, when they are shot. No wonder, reality can easily be misunderstood.

[Afflict]

There was a poll, on the intra net at work today. It asked, whether or not banning sweets and other junk food at schools would stop child obesity...

The sad part was 38 % of people thought yes it would.

At the end of the day its the parents giving children money to buy what they want, and lets face it most working parents (both working) get home and often enough buy take aways or microwave dinner or something.

It seems to me everybody wants to blame everything else these days for everything else.
Your Child is
Obese - Blame the school tuck shop
Killer - Blame the computer games
@ Manic Matt - Kleptomaniac - blame adventure games!

[Meowster]

I think the issue here isn't so much should violent games be banned. Video games are a form of artistic expression, right, in the same way as movies. There are plenty of violent movies. Some violent movies are crap... like End of Days. Some violent movies are good, like Kill Bill. Same goes for games.

What SHOULD happen is that it should be harder for kids to get their hands on material that's not suitable for them. In the UK, most places I know don't sell these types of games to minors. You wouldn't sell an 18 rated movie to a kid, so don't sell them an 18 rated game. And that way it's up to the parents to decide whether their child is mature enough or not to play an 18 rated game, or watch an 18 rated movie.

There was an incident about a year ago, where a Hitler fanatic shot up a bunch of jews in a synangogue. He'd read all the anti-jew literature he could get his hands on and screamed "HEIL HITLER!" while shooting people, and yet video games got the blame. Video games, and not books. Books full of information on Hitler which he had studied painstakingly prior to his attack. His attack and motives were linked directly to literature, but that did not get the blame!

That is because you cannot blame books for people killing other people, and that is common sense.

I was at a panel with Peter Molyneux a couple months ago and (I think it was Molyneux anyway, actually maybe it was an EA guy...) made an excellent comment. He asked us to imagine if books had only been invented within the past ten years, but video games had been around for a century. Imagine what people would say:

"Children waste away while sitting in corners of their room, straining their eyes to see the tiny print, lost in the world of the book. It is a solitary and anti-social practise, not like playing video games, where the child is participating actively and often with friends or online. Children feel trapped as they cannot change the course of the book, they cannot prevent bad things from happening, they must accept what the book tells them has happened. Not like video games, where the child is free to be the hero, to save the day, to choose his or her own course of action."

That kind of thing... I believe he was quoting from elsewhere and if anybody else could find that actual quote I would be much appreciative...

Video Games have still to mature greatly. You still can't have sex in a video game, right, without causing an uproar. Even tastefully done, like in Fahrenheit (I've not actually played Fahrenheit, I'm sorry, but I heard it was tastefully done, do correct me if I'm wrong...).  That scene was removed from the US version, right?

It's ridiculous. Games have the potential to be a really powerful form of artistic expression. In fact, a lot of games already are. But they're still being held back by this ridiculous notion that games are just for kids.

[scotch]

I agree it'd be great if somehow people who were underage couldn't get their hands on stuff they shouldn't, it'd reduce some of the criticism, encourage investment in more subtle games, and still allow for artistic expression, however... I can't think how that could realistically happen. For all the restrictions, not many teenagers have much trouble finding horror movies and porn, even alcohol and drugs are pretty easy to get. I think the guy that prompted the last round of complaints was over 18 anyway.

People see games as different to books and movies, not only because they aren't familiar with them, or because books and movies are more artistically mature forms, but also because there are significant differences that they can read issues into. Games aren't a stream of information from the text to us, we're part of a feedback loop. The rewards and punishments stemming from our actions seem to be mentally conditioning us to perform certain tasks, something a book can't do, and something that seems potentially dangerous to some.

Hopefully games will evolve towards respectability before they get cracked down on. So far it seems ok, politicians have been bringing this issue up since the 80s and nothing significant has been done, so we probably have plenty of time.

The sex issue is the funniest thing. Fahrenheit's sex scene was... not distasteful, but it's hilarious (move the controller up and down to commence humping) and pretty much superfluous (it's the optional reward for completing a guitar minigame...). It's unfortunate that it needed to be cut out for America, but the fact that that is up there with the best usage of sex in games is kind of sad.

[Ali]

So far it seems ok, politicians have been bringing this issue up since the 80s and nothing significant has been done, so we probably have plenty of time.

I think that's the nature of scapegoating. If we ban video games and juvenile violence continues... what then? Blame rock and roll?

Anyway, everyone knows it's immigrants who are inculcating violent tendencies into our youth.

[Ishmael]

Been said many many times before by many many people, but be said once again. Sure the kids can play games where they see more blood than the EU regulations allow, but if there's even a bit of a hint towards anything sexual, it's a disaster. What if the kids got influences from such material? They might even REPRODUCE!

I'd concider a few extra abortions a fair trade for a few hundred lives...

[LimpingFish]

Another recently witnessed scene...

Place: GAME, Dawson St., Dublin

Players: SALES ASSISTANT, MOTHER, SON.

(Fade in...)

(MOTHER is buying a PS2 for SON. SON appears to between 10-12 years old.)

SALES ASSISTANT: "Okay, PS2's come with a free game of your choice. Have you picked one?"

(SON places "SCARFACE" on the counter.)

SALES ASSISTANT (to MOTHER): "You know that's rated 18?"

(MOTHER shrugs)

SALES ASSISTANT: "It's very violent, and it contains swearing, nudity, and..."

(MOTHER looks at SON, who also shrugs)

SON: "It's no more violent then other games I have."

MOTHER (to SALES ASSISTANT): "He has other ones like it."

(SALES ASSISTANT shrugs. Transaction is completed.)

(Fade to black...)

Parents are to blame. Punish the parents. Any crime commited by a child under 16? Retribution should be visited upon the parents.

Broken home? Don't care.
"We can't control him/her?" Don't care.

Draconian? You bet your ass!

[m0ds]

[Buckethead]

That's just silly. No one is going to do like pac man because it doesn't look any good. I think kids will get violent from realistic games earlier.

[Barbarian]

Lots of good points brought up in this thread.

"Society" has generally looked for an "easy to blame" source for any bad things that happen.Ã,  Either it's been Rock'n'roll music, Movies, T.V., Books, and now Video-Games.
"My little Johnny is good as gold and would never do anything bad! He must have went crazy because he was brainwashed by playing that aweful Doom video game!"

What I think it really comes down too is when someone "goes crazy", i don't think it can really be blamed on any of those things, rather the person very much likely has a "screw loose" to begin with and there's probably a much deeper cause to the problem than simply jumping on the band-wagon and pointing a finger to blame music / books / games / TV / The Phase of the Moon, etc...

When I was young (ooohhh, so long agoÃ,  ), kids used to love watching the ultra-violent Bugs-Bunny / Daffy Duck / Elmer Fudd / Tweety & Slyvester / Road Runner, etc... type of cartoons, with depictations of usually some character being blown-up, shot, anvils and pianos dropped on heads, being pushed off high cliffs, stabbed with swords & knives, set on fire, etc.. etc.. you get the idea.Ã,  Ã, But rarely would you see kids who watched these cartoons try and repeat and do in real-life any of those types of violent actions. Or if they did, then chances are there's a much deeper behavioral / disciplin / mental problem going on inside the kid's head rather than simply blaming it on "He watched a Bugs Bunny cartoon! That's why he did it!".Ã,  Of course even then sometimes "society" would try to blame the problem on the "cartoons", when of course we know it's foolish and unrealistic to blame a violent action someone does in real life on because they seen a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

It's just the same thing over and over, and unfortunately we'll always have the Jack Thompsons of society screaming and ranting and raving to blame the ill's of society's problems on something other than the real cause and root of the problems. But hey, "The squeeky wheel gets all the grease." right?Ã,  Ã, 

[Janik]

Should we ban violent video games? No. But we should remember that kids are pretty dumb and easily influenced, and some things are simply not appropriate for them. In the end, as has been pointed out before, only the parents can enforce that.

Also, isn't the underlying problem that we live in a culture of violence? I mean people make violent movies/games/whatever because people buy them...