After a tragic school shooting in Germany, legislators have put the blame once again on video games. A new German bill would outlaw violent video games and put both game developers and players in jail for up to a year. Will a new Berlin Wall be erected around gaming?

Yet again legislators ignore the actual root o the problems and use video games as a scapegoat for the worlds troubles. Buying guns online without some sort of background check? A culture that promotes social superiority based on things like brand name clothing and clique's? They take the easy way out and just ban what will be the easiest to get rid off.

If they wanted to cut down things like this, mayhaps a look at sports. How often do we see hockey/Soccer/football/ETC mom/dad shoots/beats/stabs someone from the other team/kids rival.

ITS VIDEO GAMES..

No its the system idiot. How quick they are to also forget the lessons about WW2. First step is subdue the people that could strike back..

Oh well get used to it.. Its comming to a shore near you.. Soon the only free people will be felons wanted for playing Unreal2004 in a backally cybershop.

That's the problem with democracy individuals may be smart but people in large numbers are stupid. It'd be nice if just once governments looked past sound bites for the election and instead *gasp* actually tought it through for something that'd would work! I was going to start throwing suggestions out there but they're pretty much irrelevant but at least i got to vent.

I can see 2 different outcomes if this law actually passes:

1) Enforcement will be nil, games will just be ordered from out of country, and gaming will go on as usual, minus any sponsored events. No charges will be laid.

2) Enforcement will actually happen. A whole bunch of normal teenagers will get prosecuted and people will start to realize that millions of kids are playing these games and only 1 school shooting (that I know of) took place there. Either #1 will then happen or the law will get overthrown / rewritten to uselessness.

Either way, a ban on violent video games will never happen to this degree. There are too many millions of people playing them for this to ever happen. Not to mention the huge amount of money involved in the industry as a whole. It would be like one day the US government decides to outlaw alcohol (I know, already happened), which causes vastly more problems for society than even the staunchest critics of video games contend.

On a side note, I would much rather have a ban on violent video games than alcohol. Don't mess with beer.

hope we dont see something like tininmein square 8O

What can I say? Bunch of fk tards governments and politicians that don’t know shit about how to prevent and help these depressed kids. I’m certain that after banning some of these games there will be more kids that goes psyco, grab a gun and some grenades head off to school to let off steam. Why? Because for this kid video games is another way of letting off steam, he can’t do anything about being bullied and there is no one to talk to or help him. Trust me teachers won’t help him either, parents are no much help, because most of the time parents will tell their kid to ignore them and they will go away. But that is really not the case, they come back again and again if u ignore them, and more people will start picking on you when themselves are feeling bad or had a bad day. This depressed feeling is even worst when you have no one or very limited N.O of friends to talk to. Why are the adults or should I say oldies in the governments say that it’s the game that turn this kid into killing other people? Because they have never experienced what this kid is going though, the society back in 1950 or 1960 is very different than today. You hardly get any bullies that constantly pick on the same person, now in year 2000 you have more bullies and these bullies hardly pick on one another, they just choose a defenseless one and keep on at it. You will never know what it is like or why he did it unless u have experienced the same thing that he went though day after day.

I do think that there might be a way to prevent this, the governments should provide some sort of support for these extremely depressed kids to let off steam. Either by setting up a organization for these kids to go to and talk to some people, or get these kids together and organize some sort of activity for them to forget about depressed memory for a few hours. It’s like over clocking a computer, you can’t over clock much with everything stock and cheap, you need a decent mother board and a third party cooling device or water cooler to get the best result. Every little bit of effort (money spent on components) helps, you can only get it done efficiently and effectively if you do it carefully and bit by bit. Setting up a support for these kids might not be of great help at first, but if it is done right and each step is done carefully it should help a lot of kids.

Another reason why adults blame a lot of things on games is that they don't like their kids playing games and wasting their life away. Truth is you don't know how to limit or control your kids, there are many ways to control what kind of game they play and how long they can play it. Don't ban the games from your kids, use the gaming time like a reward. For example: You must do this first or help with something first and play for 30min. Limit the amount of time spent on gaming by using it as a reward, but reward must be worth it otherwise human beings tends to sway away from hard work.

For video games? Its not that important.... life above material possessions

Well, pretty much every teen plays violent video games. It's like saying "gee, all of these violent teens drank milk... wait a sec... I think I've got something here!"

Please... if you are a parent and your kid is deranged enough to go to a school and shoot a bunch of other kids, don't you think that you would know?

Anyway, this latest "Video Games = Violent Kids" trend has caused me to research school violence a bit. And what I found was that it doesn't really appear to have much to do with video games. Did anybody else notice that one of the alias' that one of the Columbine shooters went by was the word that was carved in to one of the bodies of a famous Manson murder victim? Coincidence?

Also, I looked over the police report, and the one kid (Eric) wrote essays that any idiot would read and think "watch this kid". I read a paper he wrote where the protagonist was a shadowy figure that shot up a bunch of jocks, then stabbed some jocks, then crushed one's skull. He said that looking into the shadowy guys' eyes was like "looking at an emotion of god" and in that instant he understood his motives. (I'd link to it, but the report is a 900-page PDF of scanned documents).

Anyway, my whole point with all of this is that kids that kill people have issues. These issues are not caused by video games. The only way I can possibly think of that you can link video games to teen violence is that kids that tend to play video games a lot (like with all of their free time) tend to be less social, and thus become outcats, thus breeding anger, thus the desire to kill.

But, the problem is: this has to do with their inability to interact with other kids their age. Plus, the violent content of the games wouldn't play a role in that theory at all. So, once again, I say Germany needs to chill out.

I like the milk comparison. =)

*sweeps off milk moustache*

This topic got me to wondering though... If Germans still had all those 50Mbit DSL2 lines, but no games to waste bandwidth on... What happens then?

Furthermore, I've also noticed that one effect this is guaranteed to have is a dramatic increase in piracy.

I would say that the "gansta rap music" all the kids go on about these days has more influence than violent video games. At least those are real people talking about how its cool to shoot guns at other real people. On the other hand, we even have our own countries going to war to kill people just to get their hands on some of that "sweet, sweet black gold" (and no, I'm not talking about Beyonce). I'm sure pornography is also to blame, all those S&M videos are glorifying violence. Am I missing any other stereotypes here? Oh yeah, the gays. I'm sure that homosexuality is the root cause of all of the violence, I just can't figure out why. But then again, no real government needs valid reasons (WMDs anybody?) to justify their actions.

In case you weren't sure, I am joking. We all know the real reason for German teen hostility is because they are angry that their country's pop icon is David Hasselhoff. Proof of the so called "Hofficide connection" can be seen as he has released a Christmas Album so bad that it is proof that he is the devil. If I had to listen to that as much as I am forced to hear our pop music, I would kill too.

*EDIT* fixed spelling

Note that the law doesn't forbid FPS in general, but only games that depict "cruel and inhumane" violence against the "human dignity". It's therefore a revision of an already existing law that forbid retailers to sell such games to minors and companies to advertice such products in public where they could be seen by children.

Whether it makes sense to forbid such games mainly depends on the definition of "cruel and inhumane" violence. Given that things like child pornography, snuff videos or violent sex (real rape and not some harmless BDSM) are illegal it's hard to justify that the same laws don't apply to the most violent games.

Please do me a favour and look up what fascist actually means (dictionary)

Don't you think that this is a bit melodramatic ? All we're actually talking about is an inofficial draft by a populist politician who realized that a couple of votes could be won by pretending to have a simple and pragmatic solution to a problem that worries society.

In a world where torture is again widely acceptable to gather information and civil rights are seen as a nuisance in the fight on terrorisn we really have more important issues to worry about that this socalled censorship.

regards,
gaf

I think you miss the point here. Its not illegal to show the 'illegal' acts you mentioned in cartoons, even very realistic ones. Video games ARE NOT REAL! I know, its hard to believe, but when somebody dies in a video game, nobody in real life is harmed. Videos depicting "child pornography, snuff videos or violent sex" are not illegal (assuming the 'child' is actually over 18). There have been many movies made on these topics, so why would this be illegal in video games? So this 'extension' of the law could also be used to make alcohol, tobacco, pornography, and voting all illegal. Does this also mean that if I take a doll and light it on fire, that I should be charged with some sort of obscenity charge?

As far as 'fascism' is concerned, I think he was just meaning this ridiculous act of censorship can be compared to censorship found in fascist countries.

Why is banning certain areas of literature much different than banning certain types of games?

I do agree that there are more important issues in the world, but that doesn't mean that we should ignore this one.

I think this can best be summed up with an unfortunate observation of reality repeating itself over and over... Altruisim is still the most dangerous motivation in government.

Very true. Maybe the German Chancellor should ask to be voted some 'emergency powers' to help expedite the enforcement of the ban on violent video games. He could even create a special police force for this called the 'Special Service' or just 'SS' for short. Then we could also use public embarrassment as a deterrent to prevent people from re-offending, we would put white arm bands on them. If they kept committing the crime, we would have to move them into an area for "Gaming Help Ordered Tough Therapy Sessions" or "GHETTOS" for short. To help pay for this service, once they are in the GHETTOS we will take their possessions and sell them off. Eventually, we can even set up some camps for the worst offenders to be sent to. Once there we will let them meditate and try to bring up feelings of love and joy. To ensure that they can concentrate on this, we will have to move these so called 'Concentration' camps into the more rural areas.