Lunatic germany, On to banning videogames. Options

[Shock]

Since the topic in the political (cage) area of FS didn't really take off, here it is again, might you have not yet heard. Following the proposal to ban Paintball shootouts, some german sycophants have brought it into their mind that they are the harbringers of peace and they will stop the occurence of insane nuts appearing on schools to shoot other people, by banning violent videogames.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/0...violent-games/1

Old news, new discussion.

[blowthebullet]

Ban guns like the netherlands, and i would like to see that kind of rules on EU level so that it's not easy to get a gun in europa if you are going to try. Paintball is just a sport like pistols work with water (they should ban that kind of pistols to if they ban paintball guns).

It's just EPIC FAIL of the goverment in germany. Look at the story of the fathers child, you are not taking your son to a shooting range if he has every week a appointment with a psychological doctor .

So just ban guns on EU level and let go off my entertaiment like game and paintball.

[MARS]

As I already said on FS, this ain't gonna happen. They've tried it before and since there's merely ONE party in the entire parliament which is generally hostile towards video games, it won't work this time either. Secondly, this was entirely predictable; we have a federal election coming up this year and this is just another short-sighted, narrow-minded attempt to get some more votes from 'concerned parents' and old people who naturally dislike everything that is new to them. Getting such a law through before the election is pretty much impossible as the parliament is merely a few weeks away from summer break as well. Also, the dreary hate-debate against games that came after EVERY such incident so far has been comparably weak this time around. The idea of a total ban on violent games has already been criticised by the culture council since the restrictions on violent games have already been tightened last year which is why technically no such game should be available to youngsters. Therefore, the council concludes that a ban would NOT further protect those who aren't supposed to be playing this games in the first place. Instead, it actually threatens the fundamental rights of adults; freedom of speech, freedom of arts etc. To top it all off, this whole 'let's ban games'-idea by the ministers is merely a suggestion to the parliament. It is in no way binding and such a law would still take the regular way through various institutions including the constitutional court which WILL realise that this kind of censorship is a crystal-clear violation of the constitution.

The one thing that still pisses me off about this subject is that they keep using this awful term 'Killerspiele' (=killer games). That's such a one-sided, scaremongering bullshit-term, it could have been taken right from a freaking Nazi-dictionary. Remember what they used to call jazz music or controversial art? The word 'Killerspiel' can be said in one sentence with 'Negermusik' and 'entartete Kunst'. History repeats itself.

[Crazykenny]

Like I said on F-S, its bullshit. What will they ban next? GI-Joe? The Telletubies?

[blowthebullet]

It's just politics, trying to be populair because the most people think that a game causes so much damage to german society.

[Stinger]

Banning violent video games is counter-productive. The British Government tried to ban Grand Theft Auto and only ended up making it more popular in the process - it was the best form of advertising that Rockstar could have asked for, what with the game making news headlines.

Sadly the people who enact these laws are really out of touch with the lives and hobbies of the people they claim to represent. If I were you, Rayburn, I'd import everything to get around the censorship...

[Crazykenny]

Banning violent video games is counter-productive. The British Government tried to ban Grand Theft Auto and only ended up making it more popular in the process - it was the best form of advertising that Rockstar could have asked for, what with the game making news headlines.

Sadly the people who enact these laws are really out of touch with the lives and hobbies of the people they claim to represent. If I were you, Rayburn, I'd import everything to get around the censorship...

Before they ban importing games or other violent related items aswell...

[MARS]

``If I were you, Rayburn, I'd import everything to get around the censorship...´´

Until now, the whole ban and censorship thing hasn't affected me that much. I'm not all that interested in mindless gorefests like Gears of War or God of War anyway, in fact, the only censored 18+ titles out of the twelve I possess are the Call of Duty games and I'm not really counting the no-swastikas-malarkey in the WW2 games as an annoyance. CoD4 was a little censored as well (no deco-corpses, no Arcade Mode and Zakhaev's arm gets blown off bloodlessly) but this is reeeally minor and I can live with that. I am, however, worried about upcoming games like Modern Warfare 2 or Aliens vs Predator and maybe OPF2 but seeing that the former will come out one month before Christmas, I'll simply tell my mates to get me an imported copy as a birthday present just like I did with Gens/ZH last year. But yes, if it turns out that one of the few 18+ games that DO interest me is censored beyond my tolerance, I'll probably have to get used to importing.

[Thez]

This kind of behavior only shows the country is trying to follow China, thinking it knows better than the people who are playing the games they want to ban.
Honestly said, it's pure arrogance on the side of the German government, trying to show the world they know what's good for their people.

It can only backfire, the more you ban a game, the more people in Germany will want to get it out of pure spite or curiosity.

The few people who go on some crazy shooting of people or a suicide, themed in some random game doesn't mean the game is bad.
There are stories of parents letting their children starve to death after being addicted to WoW.

In each case, it's the people who are to blame, they decided to prioritize wrongly, but the game gets the blame.
The goverment lacks the few simple braincells needed to figure that out and instead go for Operation 'This Will Most Likely End Badly' and ban the game, only making it worse and giving said game more attention.

People are gonna face the things they want to ban anyways at some point in life, why bother banning it.

The only thing that should be looked after is that some 6 year old kid does not end up with a 18+ blood & gore game from the regular stores.

Seriously, what's next? Ban Pirates of the Caribbean for showing pirates in a positive light? I'm sure Somalia would love that(!)

[Shock]

Well in case of the new AvP game, if you've seen those gameplay video's, that will never make it's way into germany unscathed.

[Thez]

Well in case of the new AvP game, if you've seen those gameplay video's, that will never make it's way into germany unscathed.

They'll just change it into robots with metal chunks flying like they did with Generals

This post has been edited by Thez: 9 Jun 2009, 20:45

[Cobretti]

Some brave soul needs to do this to the nitwit who thought up this bill.

[Comr4de]

Some brave soul needs to do this to the nitwit who thought up this bill.

If only we lived in a world where cars explode midair before hitting the ground, then yes, someone needs to do that pronto

In regards of the entire conversaion, I can only echo what Thez, Rayburn and Stinger have said. The goverment will soon realize over time that their law is simply ridiculous and completely redundant since it's populace will want to get their hands on these games eventually. It always falls down on the respondiblity of the parents to do just that, parent, their children from playing violent video games. I mean really, under this logic they may as well ban movies, books, and any sort of film because they contain mature content. How hard is it to stop your child from playing or buying a violent game? I didn't realize it was rocket science.

[Cobretti]

Hey, it's Hollywood man, what did you expect? Every Car Is A Pinto.

[Shock]

Oh yes, that's something bothering me all the time as well, but that aint the topic