I can't believe this. What everyone should do is stop haggling the games, and put up some gun control laws! Seriously, that'll help alot. Even in America, if your being robbed with a hand gun, if America has some gun control laws, 'video-game violence' and crime, will drop, 35%. Either that, or move to Canada

Germans have this incredibly mindless attitude toward autocracy and authority. Basically, you follow the rules and the leaders - however stupid they are - and anyone who wants to do or be different - like gamers - is hammered down. So their answer to violence, find some scapegoat or make some law or rule to impose, but avoid the real issues.

This is one of the most ridiculous laws I've ever heard of, and the fact that it has so much support is absolutely mind-boggling. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? If someone is so mentally unstable that a game can drive them to violence, and they don't get help, and nobody gets them help... how is it the GAME MAKER'S fault?

@ hayabusa75

I've heard that people have genetic tendancies. Genes do determine sanity or insanity. I also believe that every gamer, who has ever killed anyone, would have done it no matter what. The games had nothing to do with it. Harris and Klebold, the Columbine shooters for example, were crazy. I've read about their activities before the shooting and they were even committed to mental institutions after breaking into a computer store one night. Harris even issued death threats, but the police didn't do anything about it. You see? They were crazy and Doom didn't make them crazy. They just were.

Also my religion doesn't say that all sex is bad. Only pornography, such as Playboy, can be harmful and any other form of sexual immorality. That's because the Bible says, "Flee sexual immorality." I didn't mean that all sex is bad, only pornography.

@Daniel:

There's a big difference between gene-driven mental retardation at birth and disorders caused by one's environment. You cannot make the statement that insanity is only determined by one's genes without at least acknowledging that distinction. Once again, your tendency to boil everything down to absolutes has clouded the original point you were trying to make. Who's to say that Cody Posey's genes were bad in the face of all the abuse that poor kid took?

By the way, a little sexual immorality can be healthy once in a while. You should try it some time.

@Daniel

Game violence can effect you. Anything can effect you. The real question is in what ways and to what degrees. Only unstable people consisting of already negative qualities such as mental illness, lack of respect and cruelty to others, and/or whatever the hell else are the ones that will copy GTA or Halo.

Anyways, what I don't get is how damn ignorant you can get with something such as anti-game bias like this. I mean no offense to any German GPers, but your country (or at least part of it) takes the cake when it comes to stupidity over video game related understanding. First, I hear something about them trying to ban violent FPSes. Second, I hear something about a guy at CryTek that got inspected by computer techs and armed police men or some shit. And I hear something about a proposed law somewhere in there trying to jail the gamers themselves.

I'm sorry, but when I view your country and some of the views I see and hear coming from some of the people in your country, then I have no choice but to sit there in awe and say to myself "What the fuck is this?!" Because here in the States that shit wouldn't fly and somebody would be in hot water or be frowned upon for doing some of those things.

All in all, I must say that I feel sorry for you German gamers and I hope that your country gets better at understanding games instead of consistently demonizing them as I, as a spectator of the things I've read, feel sorry for you.

/rant

Forget putting the potential digital killers into jails, put them in mass gas chambers! That way if they are released out on bail, they won't harm any law-abiding, upstanding, citizen.

In all seriousness, how the hell is this going to be passed let alone be enforced? A lot of fiscal/economist-friendly politicians are NOT going to like this as it forces a lot of game developers to work in different countries thus the German economy takes a big impact.

Once again, more reactionary ho-hum from a school shooting that had little to do with violent entertainment. Far Cry and Counter-Strike did not pull the trigger, the mentally disturbed indiviual did.

I wonder where Crytek would move?



I'm just looking on the bright side I swear.

"BTW,i dont think Call of Duty 3 will be released in Germany, they like to sweep anything about WW2 under the carpet."

Thats news for me, why do you think that? All CoD and MoH-zitles have been released here.

*spit take
WHAT THE...?
*double take

72% of people think video games CAUSED this and 59% of people supported a BAN?

Just who the HELL are submitting votes to this opinion poll?
People over 60?

I might add as a counter-point, the german state of Northrhine-Westphalia has just refused any "simple explanation" like the one of blaming it on games, "showing amazing lack of knowledge in the field".
So, not all is lost just because we have two Jack Thompsons in the wrong places.

This idea of a law is rediculous. and I find it VERY difficult to believe that 59% of the country seems to find this sort of legislation plausable. I'd bet anything that if this ban DOES pass, the market for games in germany would leave faster than rats off a sinking ship. And take all their money with them. I don't know how much the game market generates over there, but I bet it'd be a substantial loss.

Maybe the industry should just stop localizing and selling games in Germany until they can get rid of these zealots in power.

"Good to hear the ‘mericans will be given another reason to hate Germany besides not supporting our war in iraq."

A remark so insipid, I can't even respond to it.

@IanC: It IS released here and what you say is just not true - there has hardly been any country who has put more effort in remembering WWII and the nazi era. Only continuing, glorifying and promoting nazi hatemongering is restricted.

"It is absolutely beyond any doubt that such killer games desensitize unstable characters and can have a stimulating effect."

Yeah.... right.

BTW,i dont think Call of Duty 3 will be released in Germany, they like to sweep anything about WW2 under the carpet.

I really hope that this never becomes a law. I also hope that if it does, it will not spread to my country. It is ridiculous that basically see you as a criminal, only because you like playing games. What on earth is going on in Europe? Why are we losing all our liberties and why is nobody even revolting? I can't believe that so many people want a ban on violent videogames.

Of course, you will get used to violent videogames, thus you become decensitized (just like with any other media). But this certainly doesn't mean you are able to kill someone in real life. I still can't understand why politicians act as if Humans can't see the distinction between "games" and reality, when animals can. They can't just ban something, just because someone might act it out. They might as well ban every form of entertainment.

Also there are many children and adults that die in a traffic accident every day. And yet they want to protect the children against videogames. It hardly ever happens that someone will go beserk because of videogames. Actually I think it never happens. Games are just a form of entertainment. Most of the time the people who become violent have psychological issues and absolutely nobody is even helping them or acknowledging the problem.

I hope to God that this will never become law. They might as well lock up every single citizen. We all MIGHT become violent at one point. I thought we lived in the free west, but that certainly is no longer the case.

"It is absolutely beyond any doubt that such killer games desensitize UNSTABLE CHARACTERS and can have a stimulating effect."

I have absolutely no quibble with this statement. Violent media is always going to be a negative stimulus for unstable and already violent people. However, that's a far cry different to violent games actually CAUSING these people to be unstable. It all just falls back to this whole causation vs correlation concept.

Flashing lights can stimulate an epileptic attack, but that's not the same as flashing lights causing the very condition of epilepsy. Banning violent video games in their entirety just because some people are predisposed to violence and might gravitate towards such games to satiate their unhealthy desires is just dancing around the actual cause.

Why is all this effort not being put into looking into the causes of a person being unstable and violent in the first place? Why are all these studies worrying about a potential stimulus for a few people instead of looking at helping these unstable people be able to withstand any stimulus at all?

Until everyone stops skirting the real issue - that these unstable people exist and need help in the first place - it doesn't matter what they ban ( violent games, violent films, violent sports etc.) there'll always be some other stimulus that will rise to fill its place and the ACTUAL problem will never go away.

[...] Deux ou trois petits rappels. En Allemagne, les jeux vidéo n’ont pas très bonne presse, c’est le moins qu’on puisse dire. De nombreux jeux ont été frappés par la censure : soit ils ont été bannis (de Mortal Kombat à Manhunt en passant par Commandos : Behind the Enemy Lines), soit ils ont dû être reprogrammés pour ne pas l’être (de Carmaggedon à Counter-Strike), soit ils ne sont pas sortis parce que la commission de classification a refusé de les labelliser (Gears of War et Dead Rising). Là-bas, l’une des expressions les plus utilisées pour parler des FPS est “jeux de tueurs” (“killergames” ou “killerspiele” en VO). Les school shootings d’Erfurt en 2002 (17 morts dont le tueur, et 7 blessés), puis d’Emsdetten en 2006 (37 blessés, et le tireur s’est suicidé), ont considérablement renforcé cette perception quand on a découvert que les auteurs des fusillades, entre autres choses, jouaient à Counter-Strike. Des sondages réalisés sur place ont indiqué que la 72% des Allemands liaient la fusillade d’Emsdetten à ce genre de jeux, et que 59% d’entre eux voulaient les voir interdits. [...]