Germany's New Berlin Wall for Video Games

[waggit]

legislation that would put game designers, publishers, and yes, players, in jail for up to a year for "cruel violence on humans or human-looking characters." (http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/12/18/mmr_uk/)

[doctor_fruitbat]

Oh for fuck's bloody sake. I suppose it doesn't matter. No-one gets hurt except millions of gamers, bullied children and rational thought, right?

[Haroshi]

Bosse was reportedly a fan of paintball, yet I haven't seen any outcry about making paintball illegal, even though it involves firing projectiles at real people.
That's pretty much what i'm thinking.

[Boyinabox]

Damn.
Thats half my counter-strike clan gone.

[doctor_fruitbat]

More than anything, I dread to think the state of the German parliamentary system if it's full of old farts who can't see the link between praising a pair of school kids for gunning down their classmates in a video blog, and doing that exact same thing.

[Darkscull]

the majority in the bundestag at the moment is the CDU and CSU (Christian democratic union and " social ").
they don't seem to be like the christian right of america, but they look like one of those parties that is quite reactionary, and so would probably support this bill if it has enough 'public' support (ie. is in the tabloids)

luckily the second biggest party is the Social democrats, who i assume will oppose, and i can't see the minor parties supporting it.

this is all from wikipedia, so don't take it as if it's from an intimate knowledge of german politics.

[Urlosenged]

It's stupid, moronic shit like this that makes me wonder just how we came to the conclusion that humans are the most intelligent animals on the planet.

[Splush]

Goddamn that's crazy. I knew Germany were kind of dicks about banning the sale of violent games but banning the playing of them is absolutely draconian. Common sense says that this law won't pass, it just can't.

[Mat^]

I would love to see this come into place.

Reason being?

Increased sales of games like loco-roco, katamari damacy and viva pinata.

[Haroshi]

Radom German game trivia:
-In German versions of rayman, his blood is purple.
-In the German RE4 the 'Assignment Ada' and 'Mercenaries' minigames are removed, and there are no exploding heads or decapitations.

[WraithMaster]

Germany has quite a few odd laws but methinks this might take the cake. Though this might all be chalked up to the fact that older generations tend to blame something that they never had as a kid for problems today (i.e. when they were kids, TV could have been viewed as evil, waaay back books were viewed as poison to children's minds and even further back, philosophers were put to death for teaching their students things that the older generations thought was blasphemy/just plain wrong).

Last month, 18-year-old student Sebastian Bosse showed up at his secondary school in Emsdetten, Germany, and opened fired on students and teachers before turning the gun on himself and taking his own life. Luckily, no one was killed...
Just felt like pointing that out for grammatic stupidity.

[Mercury126]

Germany is far too restrictive with violent video games, Gears Of War wasnt even given a rating there, Bully/Cannis Canim Edit was banned. This is just going way too far, I really hope this wont pass.

[Flava Dave]

Last month, 18-year-old student Sebastian Bosse showed up at his secondary school in Emsdetten, Germany, and opened fired on students and teachers before turning the gun on himself and taking his own life. Luckily, no one was killed...


Just felt like pointing that out for grammatic stupidity.


He got an extra 1up just before shooting himself.

[Jay]

Yup, fuck off your future voters, thats the way.

[Tiode]

Geez, goes on a rampage because everyone calls him a loser. Goes into the school, shoots 20 and kills none. Looks like they were all right, the guy was pwnd!

Had the dude actually spent a bit of time on counterstrike then perhaps he wouldn've have gone in with pistols. Even a CS n00b knows an M4 or AK would've been the weapon of choice.

He was probably running and jumping whilst firing as well...

+++ COUNTER-TERRORISTS WIN +++


Hehe.

My gran is exactly like how the german guys are behaving, when i was playing GTA: San andreas, she started yabbling about how this games put it into the head of children to buy guns and etc etc. I turned around and said " So you think im going to go and shoot everyone in my school because i played a violent video game?" That got her for a bit.

The thing is about video games is that they're created so people can experience things that the can't do in real life Thats whats so much fun about them.

[Purple Wabbit]

*sighs*

Obviously no one in Germany's government has ever studied Psychology.

Numerous studies have been conducted on this very issue, to measure the correlation between violent media and aggression. None of them have ever come out with conclusive evidence that they are positively correlated. Since there are literally hundreds of these studies, doesn't it suggest that there isn't one?

In fact, studies have found that, while positive role models etc do seem to elicit positive behaviour, at least in children, no such link is found between negative role models and aggression, at least none enough to be significant.

So there you have it. So many studies and not a shred of conclusive proof. People will panic about anything these days ¬_¬

[doctor_fruitbat]

Even that shouldn't be a point of contention here, because it's so damn obvious what the cause was, and it sure as hell wasn't video games.

[Splush]

I'm doing a pyschology degree and I've never really come across anything very directly relatedto this issue, I'll have to ask a tutor some time. From what I know about conditioning I'd be prepared to believe that somebody could be conditioned to act violently by being exposed to violent images (and games, perhaps even moreso) but violent media specifically isn't something that's come up in my course.

Even if there was proof of a significant link I still don't think you should tell people what they can do if that action isn't directly limiting somebody else's rights. If it contributes to an eventual act of violence it's still the violent act that should be illegal, not what might have led to it.

I wonder which country is worse for this, Germany or Australia? Australia seem to just love banning stuff.

[WraithMaster]

I'm doing a pyschology degree and I've never really come across anything very directly relatedto this issue, I'll have to ask a tutor some time. From what I know about conditioning I'd be prepared to believe that somebody could be conditioned to act violently by being exposed to violent images (and games, perhaps even moreso) but violent media specifically isn't something that's come up in my course.

Even if there was proof of a significant link I still don't think you should tell people what they can do if that action isn't directly limiting somebody else's rights. If it contributes to an eventual act of violence it's still the violent act that should be illegal, not what might have led to it.

I wonder which country is worse for this, Germany or Australia? Australia seem to just love banning stuff.
Link (http://0-search.ebscohost.com.helin.uri.edu:80/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=12860913&site=ehost-live)

There's a link to an article talking about research being done on it. There's not much on that page though. I think I have seen some articles on this before that do agree with what Wabbit said though.

[Ozzylator]

How many people play Counterstrike? After about five minutes of pinging my steam came up with 21268 total servers for version 1.6 alone.

How many Counterstrike players have shot up a German school? One.

You do the maths.

[Splush]

I can't read that link, it wants me to log in.

The whole thing just sounds so hard to research properly that when I read there's no evidence for it happening it doesn't necessarily mean much. It just seems like such a tricky thing to research properly. You can't do it under lab conditions because it concerns a long-term effect, and it would be ridiculously hard to remove confounding variables with a real-world experiment, not to mention it probably being totally unethical.

I'm not saying I think video games make people kill each other, just that there being no evidence to support the idea isn't necessarily a satisfactory reason to claim it doesn't happen.

Penny Arcade did a great comic about one pretty dodgy piece of research earlier this year: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/12

[WraithMaster]

Presents a perspective on whether or not prolonged exposure to violent video games makes children more aggressive and violent. Comments from Juliet Van Eenwyk, who is studying the issue for the Washington State Department of Public Health in Seattle; Weakness of the current studies; Cut back funding and what it means for research; How youth violence has been decreasing despite the increase in the sales of video games; The reactions of various governmental bodies to the possibility that games do beget violent behavior; How St. Louis and Indianapolis passed laws aimed at preventing children from buying violent games; How the most significant correlation between hostility and aggressive behavior comes not from games but from parental involvement or lack thereof, in a child's life; Response from the game industry; Call for independent ratings.

That would be what the link says.

[Splush]

Thanks, sounds interesting. Good to hear Washington State have commissioned research on it, I wonder if the German government are bothering to do that?

I just found this one (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VH7-3V8C7YH-6&_coverDate=09%2F30%2F1999&_alid=511457328&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=6059&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f03a9b35b7ae9aa83dcaf9c685096a43) through ingentaconnect.com:
One of the main concerns that has constantly been raised against video games is that most of the games feature aggressive elements. This has led many people to assert that this may have a detrimental effect on individuals who play such games. Despite continuing controversy for over 15 years, there has been little in the way of systematic research. This article reviews the empirical studies in this area, including research methodologies such as the observation of free play, self-report methods, and experimental studies. The article argues that all the published studies on video game violence have methodological problems and that they only include possible short-term measures of aggressive consequences. The one consistent finding is that the majority of the studies on very young children—as opposed to those in their teens upwards—tend to show that children do become more aggressive after either playing or watching a violent video game. However, all of these come from the use of one particular research methodology (i.e., observation of children’s free play).
It seems to summarise research that has been done so far (until 1999, anyway) and says everything's been useless because of methodological issues. That's kinda what I said, so I feel clever! 7 years is probably a long time in such a hot area, though.

I'm starting to think I should be doing my honours research project on this, my degree still wouldn't get me a job but at least I'd be able to impress people on internet forums :)

[WraithMaster]

I did a research project on it last year. That's the only reason I knew they did experiments already. It's amazing how such a geeky topic can get you such a good grade though.

[Splush]

Yeah, I'd be worried about the examiners not taking it seriously but obviously they shouldn't be biased. There's a girl in my class doing a project about internet subcultures or something which sounds a bit like she just wanted an excuse to sit on myspace for ages, but if she makes a good project out of it then fair enough.

I just remembered, back in high school somebody did their higher (thats the last year of normal high school in scotland) english reading review on the lyrics of Radiohead's "OK Computer" album :)

[Mat^]

Bully/Cannis Canim Edit was banned. I'm all for that.

It was shit.

[albie_123]

I would love to see this come into place.

Reason being?

Increased sales of games like loco-roco, katamari damacy and viva pinata.

i play katamari damacy and i will kill every single person in my school by rolling a huge sphere over them

[Nocashvalue]

A german game designer's views:
http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=31767

[Splush]

Those are some mindblowing experiences. And there was me thinking Germany was a nice liberal progressive country.

[doctor_fruitbat]

That makes me angry. I mean, really, really angry. And to think that just now I was planning on popping some heads on CS Source, eh?

[GRiM]

Those are some mindblowing experiences.
Oh Come on! That one's just begging for a gun suicide pun.

[Splush]

Heh, pretty poor choice of words now that I think about it.

[dmalone569]

It's always the same. Some crazy child shoots a gun in a school or whatever, and instantly, games are blamed. Then the newspapers say Bully encourages bullying, and in San Andreas you progress through the game by fucking and killing prostitutes (even though the damn gimps have never played either), then mums get horrified and watch their kids play games in case they will kill someone in the street with a large knife and AK-47.
It annoys the shit out of me.

[Splush]

They should get back to blaming rap music (http://www.lyricsdownload.com/ill-bill-the-anatomy-of-a-school-shooting-lyrics.html).

[Preasure]

Anyone with half a brain knows these games aren't real, but people not into that sphere opose them out of fear of the unknown. Technology is widening the gap between younger and older generations, notice how (generally) young people are much more adept with technolgy than older people? As with any large divide of cultures and views, conflict will arise.

[tehmoogles]

Rap Music, in my opinion, contributes more to the hoodlums that we see today in Britain, than video games ever have or will. It just epitomises all that is wrong with our society.

[CoX]

lol, bump

[the last sheika]

ÜBER BUMP
ÜBER BUMP
HE WANTS TO BUMP YOU AND ME
ÜBER BUMP
COMES FROM OUTER SPACE
HE WANTS TO TALK ABOUT THE GERMAN RACE!

Much Blode pea.

[tehmoogles]

Oops. Forgot about that. I forgot it was an old thread.

[doctor_fruitbat]

Funny someone should bump this now; the BBFC recently did a study into video gamers and their relationship to games, since their policies on game classification hasn't changed since about 1983. They found the exact opposite to what most people believe; the interactivity of games made people less immersed in video games than in films, the reason being that the constant interaction with games prevents you from sitting back and soaking everything in passively, as with films.

[Simon]

Ah it was a bump, I wondered why the article was so old. Honestly, how do people like that get into government? Oh thats right, Christian parties...anyone who puts their religion in front of their politics clearly doesnt know what they are doing, you cant run a civilised country with anachronistic dogma. They should take away the right to think, its a liberty people seem too eager to abandon...