Germany, apparently, knows something we don’t. They are trying to ban not just violent video games, but developers of said games as well. Studios will either have to close and move to another country or stop developing “violent” (I’m not sure what the official German Definition is but I believe is somewhere along the lines of any physical violence to human or humanoid creatures) games including FPS’s. There’s a few devs located in Germany that I like, Crytek being one of them. Hopefully a move for some of the smaller studios is a possibility.
This latest bill comes out of the latest teen shooting in Germany. Some 17 year old shot some people or something, I haven’t been able to find details on the incident. Of course this is just the type of incident to get people all riled up and looking for a scape goat.
Of course the kid probably also listened to Rammstein and Project Pitchfork, but the music isn’t getting the blame (although 20 years ago it would have). He also probably enjoyed watching the latest vin diesel movie or perhaps the latest Rambo flick (which rocked btw), but his movie selection isn’t getting the blame. He did, however, play FPS games, and they ARE getting the blame. Typical. History repeating itself: first it was dancing, then books, then music, then movies, now video games. Same old ignorant bs: “Oh my god won’t you think of the children!?!?!”. the age old cry of the stupid and reactionary.
And this is where I must conclude that Germany knows something we don’t. they must have hundreds of scientific papers showing a direct link between FPS games and teen shootings, right? It’s the only thing I can think of. I mean, the are millions of people playing these types of games every day and the incredibly vast majority of them don’t go around shooting random people. That fact could not have possibly escaped them, could it have?
When will people stop allowing their government to think for them? To force their biased, ignorant, illogical and often times plain old stupid believes on the people?
Sounds good to me. I wish the programmers for those programs where you commit crimes and run over people would be made responsible for copy-cat real life crimes. That would put the brakes on in a hurry.
It’s not that different from banning bullfights and cockfights and dogfights. Making violence an entertainment degrades all of us.
And let’s not stop there. We can also hold authors responsible for copycat crimes from their books. Like if I choose to go out and kill the entire first born of Egypt, we know who is responsible for that one.
Odd that we ban bullfights and cockfights and dogfights and not people fights. It’s almost like the laws exist to protect animals who don’t consent to take part in the activity, rather than to protect your sensitive eyes from the violence…
So will movie producers be held accountable for violent acts similar in nature to those portrayed in their movies? Authors blamed for violence similar to that portrayed in their books?
Let me ask you this, I’m curious: Why are you comfortable allowing the Government to tell you what you can or cannot see? I’ll be damned if I let anyone but myself makes that decision. You don’t get to tell me and I don’t get to tell you what kind of literature, art, or entertainment is kosher. You, as (I expect) a fully functional adult get to decide that for yourself and your kids.
I mean, I might even give you the benefit of the doubt if you at least provided me with some scientific basis for believing that violent media and specifically video games lead directly to the type of violence that was the catalyst for this piece of garbage legislation. But there is NONE. We have no way to test for that sort of thing, there is no significant statistical data that shows possible correlation. Nothing. Nada. there is only ignorant scape goating the kind I would expect from 3rd world religious nut jobs, not from a modern, secular government.
You are aware, of course, that as videogames have grown into a multibillion dollar industry and gotten more realistic and violent, real-world crime rates have plummeted.
Either playing violent games has a minimal effect on people’s real-world behavior or violent games actually *reduce *the incidence of violent crime. Personally the former seems more likely, but the data could go either way.
I, for one, wish they would do it in Canada. I don’t really think they are responsible for any real world violence (with the exception for a few people that are already looking for an excuse, I suppose) but I hate them. I find them mind numbingly boring and not a week goes by where one of my idiot friends recommends me some new first person shooter that I’ve told them time and time again that I hate.
If the games weren’t available in canada, my idiot friends wouldn’t bother me about them.
Really they’re pretty cool they’re just convinced I’ll love them ‘if I just gave them a chance’. I have a stack of Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and Halo games that I never play as proof that I HAVE given them a chance.
You realize that Canada is a huge producer of video games of all kinds (but relatively few FPSs) right? Do you really want a huge part of your economy to pick up stakes and move to the US?
From the second linked article:
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The German government is currently contemplating an outright ban on violent action games - or ones that involve violent acts against human or human-like characters.*
That covers a lot more than just first person shooters. Pretty much any MMORG, contact sports titles–football, boxing, wrestling, MMA-- all war games, anything in the fantasy/sci fi/comics genre, cops & robbers games, many games based on Shakespeare’s plays (don’t know that there are any, but still).
Here’s the Spiegel article for people who have passable German. This is even dumber than I thought from the English articles, they actually linked the shooting with a kid who played 2 hours of Farcry 2. The conclusion Uwe Schünemann made seems to be along the lines of “a lot of people who have killed people have been seen at one point in time standing next to or playing a violent game, I’m going to ignore that these are popular and assume cause and effect.” My German isn’t great, but the second half of the article seems to also say that they’re looking at banning things like paintball and tightening some recently-enacted firearms restrictions.
Are you guys kidding? Tihs is great! I think I should get on the line and see if my city can’t craft a package deal to lure a developer or two. Tihs could be quite a good deal for some people.
And while they might prefer to stay closer to home, it’s arguably harder to move around Europe than to the States. Even with the EU it’s not that easy to immigrate, and the areas the game companies might want to move to are not really the ones where they might want to live, y’know?
Aren’t Germans big gamers too? They love their RPG’s specially, but they have a big video game convention there and they love board games. Why isn’t that gaming base writing letters to the knuckle dragging law makers?
