India's Parliament Considers Violent Game Ban

India's Parliament Considers Violent Game Ban

January 12, 2008

Will the government of India ban violent video games?

Indian video game site GameGuru believes the nation's government is close to such a move:

The nascent videogame industry in our darling country has been made target recently in the wake of preventing the future generations from taking or experiencing any form of violence,...


Neelesh Mukherjee, who penned the GameGuru article, has a theory on how the violent game issue came to be in the crosshairs of the Indian government:

[Political figure] S has two grandchildren... So Grandma and Grandpa... decide to gift the kids a Sony PlayStation 2... they also let the 10 year old grandson pick a game of his choice. The grandson named Z has experienced the delirious heights of R*’s controversial yet abysmal game Manhunt 2 on his friend's console... He tells his grandparents that he wants the very same game... The grandson on receiving the game happily and merrily hacks and slaughters virtual beings on screen.

 

Next morning there is an article in a newspaper... about this game being banned in the UK. The father suddenly remembers that his son has been addicted to the game... Mommy S gets petrified and worried and calls a meeting... They decide to go on a banning spree and draft out a proposal that will regulate content of “official” games released in India.


Over at Desicritics, editor Deepti Lamba picks up the story:

Games like Grand Theft Auto may not be legally available in India soon. Video game players may shrug this off since most aren’t dumb enough to buy legal games when pirated ones are available at less than half the cost of their legal brethren.

 

The point though is, who wants the Indian government to play au pair to our children? Mrs. Pataudi reportedly bought her grandkid a Sony PSP, and helped him get a game he had been wanting forever from the US and let him merrily hack away on his PSP without blinking an eyelid. But once the lady realized the game... was banned in UK, she decided to [draft] a proposal to censor and regulate the kind of games that enter into the Indian market.

 

This does not come as a surprise... Censorship comes easy to our politicians... The anti-obscenity law could easily have stifled the creative spirit in India but Indians, being enterprising folks, always find ways of getting what isn’t legally available; pornography, books, movies, electronics and even video games are easily available even in the smallest towns of India...

Comments

Yeah, democracy is a burden sometimes.

At least Tirany doesn't care about what you think. (Old Skool tirany here, not the soviet/nazi style.)
from the same assholes who wanted to arrest Richard Gere for kissing a lady in public.
"Mrs. Pataudi reportedly bought her grandkid a Sony PSP, and helped him get a game he had been wanting forever from the US and let him merrily hack away on his PSP without blinking an eyelid. But once the lady realized the game… was banned in UK, she decided to [draft] a proposal to censor and regulate the kind of games that enter into the Indian market."

So instead of just taking the game SHE bought for her grandkid away, she fights for a law to punish all gamers for her willful ignorance?
Thats how it works in government, why admit you were wrong, when you can make EVERYONE else wronger?
I'd usually scoff at video game legislation, but being of Indian descent and knowing how much media affects folks over there, I actually think it's a good idea. I mean the general public will RIOT over a MOVIE if it deals with something they don't agree with, like cross-religious love-stories and other seemingly innocuous things. :P
@Darke

so they should make it illegal to say things people object to because Indians don't know how to be civil?

i mean i knew India was backwards thinking, but i didn't know they were that bad.
I have an idea! Let's outsource all our media critics! :)
People in India are crazy. They worship hamburgers for f**k's sake! And they issued a warrant for Richard Gere's arrest just for an innocent kiss.
Hey, ever been to a mcdonalds? We americans worship hamburgers too, we just do it in a different stage in the cows life.
Ehh... as much as I may strongely disagree with Hindu beliefs and some of the practices of India, I think we may want to avoid making blanket statements about Indians in general. Not to backseat mod or anything, but things like that bug me.

Anyways, I suppose this shouldn't be too surprising considering what little I know about the government of India and the current cultural climate over there.
@Unrated

Land of the free, home of the whopper.
@Ken

I happen to be an American-born Hindu, and I could take offense at the hamburger-worshipping comment. But I'll focus on the story here instead starting an argument.

It's a shame that we've managed to outsource not only our jobs, but also the beliefs of those convinced that the government should be raising children, to India and the rest of the world
It hardly matters. India is a hotbet of media piracy, making games illegal won't really mean they won't be available.

Also, completely off the subject, but every Bollywood movie has the EXACT SAME STORY. Boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl likes boy but pretends she doesn't, boy makes a fool of himself, then there's a big song & dance number, the end. No wonder they pirate so much porn.
So let me get this straight:

She buys her grandson a PS2 and lets him pick a game. He picks Manhunt 2, a game that is rated 18+, and apparently DOES NOT REACT, she just buys it.

And when she sees what you can do in the game, what does she do? Does she take the game away? No! Why do that when you can ban the filth altogether?!

And apparently this is partly/mainly because Britain has banned the game.

I called bullsh*t on this one as soon as i read it. It can't be said too many times, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BUY THE GAME, NOR DO YOU HAVE TO PLAY IT.
This kind of crap upsets me, but if violent games are truly banned than we'll see who's really to blame when violent protests and massive piracy crimes come out in India. This won't cut down crime, hatred, etc; this will just piss off adult gamers who want a violent game.
@Necromancist - Not only did she buy it but I'm guessing, like some parents in the US, she thought "M" stood for Minor.
@ A Viking

We're not outsourcing the idea that the government should be raising children to India - if anyone's doing that then my money's on the UK.

The actions that they're taking and the response to it are much more similar to UK legislation then US.
.......................

Pardon my french, but... HOW FUCKING STUPID CAN YOU GET?!!!

Do these parents have absolutely NO free will or common sense at all?! "Offspring asked for game. Must get game. Must disregard rating. Must disregard name of game. Must disregard blatent box art."

...i'm sorry, this is just... BEYOND stupid.
would the indian government prefer that their children are doing violent things in real life than in videogames
You know, we really should invent something to fix this. Maybe we could put a little speaker in the box. That way, every time someone picks up the game, the speaker turns on, and the parent hears, "Don't you DARE buy this mature (or Adults Only) game for a minor!" And then it should be written in braille on the cover. That way, even a blind, deaf person would still know not to buy it for said reason.
ok

the other day, i met a confused grandmother in a gamestop store. i overheard that she bought a wii for her six year old grandson. she was completly confused on what she should by for her grandson. i told her about the esrb system and that was the end of her confusion. but one thing i did realise was that she tended to eye games with less violent cover art. so even if you dont have any knowlege of your local rating system( im not shure what video game rating system india uses) you should be ablwe to identify violent games based on cover art. so this woman has no excuse.

unrated, your comment. toatally uncalled for. i could bash your religon( athiesim) all i want but i dont.
Koku atheism isn't a religion.
Daniel

i know, which is why i listed it sepratly.

it was a typo, meaning to say ( or athiesim) instead of (athiesim)
Dear Gov't of India,

For a country that did so much to end English Colonial rule and run your own damn country, you sure do a lot of British ass kissing. Just because the UK wants to do something does not mean the bandwagon is your only way. The only person who is hurt by a useless law is yourself. Remember that. Oh, and I want my $10.50 back for that Bollywood movie about the guy who ate flowers. It sucked.

Signed,
Archgabe

ps. can I have my old job back? Thanks.
pps. Yes, my first job was outsourced.
ppps. On second thought, you can keep it. The boss was a jerk.
pppps. No really, keep the damn job.
Don't forget that India does not like to lose at Cricket...
Sounds like their government succumbs easily to nepotism. It's like if a royal family prefers X product over Y, they tax product Y.
[...] GamePolitics has an interesting story about a plan in the Indian parliament to ban violent video games. A pity, as I was just reading in Businessweek about the fantastic growth of the Indian gaming market. But that’s a bit of an old story: If you see consumer demand, regulate or prohibit supply. The result of course being that legitimate retailers comply…and the black market grows. Sphere: Related Content [...]
@archgabe

half my job is already at india, and people complain about it .
So they want to ban a censored version of the game??
Umm... doesn't India already have a massive black market? This won't work.

@ TBone

Only cuz the Aussies can't handle it when someone chooses to reply to their sledging.
The government of India (just like the government of every other country) has a history of doing rather "odd things" to solve their problems.
ex: free ham radio for undergoing a vascetomy, a one time thing that occured decades ago.
I mean no offense to any Indian posters.
Yeah, because all the traditional stories of India are carebear hug-parties and the country as a whole is peaceful and pacifistic.
What strange prose in that first article. (Also I see it leads with a quote from 'John "The Jigsaw" Killer'...man, I wish that was his real name.)
@Unrated
LULZ "wronger"
[...] Video Games Censorship Comes to India [GameGuru] and Government To Regulate Video Games in India [Desicritics] [both via GamePolitics] [...]
[...] Video Games Censorship Comes to India [GameGuru] and Government To Regulate Video Games in India [Desicritics] [both via GamePolitics] [...]

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