Bizarre, but apparently true. Germany wants to ban video games which contain violence. Doesn't that mean just about all computer games, apart from maybe Pong and iboobs?
There has always been talk about the harmful effects of computer games ever since I was a kid, and most of the arguments seem to me to be nonsense. Certainly some of the early games, such as Space Invaders, Apple Panic or Skate or Die were pretty violent, and even in the 8 bit era there were calls from a prudish minority for games to be banned.
Does this mean that the playing of Chuckie Egg should be banned in Germany? There are no laser guns or explosions, but the player's rotund hat wearing character can be instantly killed by large blue anatidae, or chased mercilessly on the final level by a gigantic menacing yellow duck.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
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2 comments:
Supposedly this is only supposed to apply to the games that are cruel or seek to normalize violence. But it looks like some pretty major titles, such as Gears of War, are getting caught in the net:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games
That's an interesting and sometimes amusing list.
"Banned because of a lesbian encounter between an alien and a human"
Banning Wolfstein 3D seems a bit harsh, but I know that anything depicting Nazis is often banned in Germany.
Basically politicians are natural control freaks, and they want not only to dictate levels of taxation but also what information and cultural media you have access to, such as music and video. I've not played many of the games on the list, but I expect that the violence/cruelty is no worse than that within some horror movies, or depicted daily on the news from war zones.
In my opinion games should only be banned if they're clearly inciting people to commit antisocial acts in the real world. In most cases though games are not intended to represent the real world - only fantasy and/or very abstract versions of it. From my experience, people often play games precisely because they want to escape from the real world for a while, and even young children seem to be able to distinguish the difference between the "game world" and "real life".
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