As noted here a few weeks ago, the Australian Christian Lobby publically came out against the addition of an R18+ rating for videogames in Oz. The group’s head, Managing Director Jim Wallace (pictured), recently subjected himself to a handful of questions on the matter at GameSpot.
Wallace was asked why he was against adding the additional rating category. He began his answer by recounting his command of an SAS regiment, and how in training, the key was to break a “very natural reluctance to kill someone else.” Wallace sees videogames serving as a similar kind of training simulator for the general public:
I think you’d agree that for SAS personnel involved in counter terrorism to do that is a necessary evil so to speak. But for us to be condoning games that did that for the general person out in the community, particularly when we’re going to get some of those people who have a predisposition to violence simply doesn’t make sense, and it’s not in the individual’s interest, and it’s not in the community’s interest.
Wallace admitted that he was not “overly familiar” with the classification system for games and was then asked why his group supported an R18+ category for movies but not for games:
You’ve got a completely different situation with games because games are interactive; increasingly interactive, and have high levels of simulation. It’s simulation and interactivity and repetition all of which are ascribed to games that make them a particularly dangerous form of medium to be flooding the community with. We’re not talking about movies that are a one off viewing or you might see a piece of violence in a 90 minute session.
Wallace agreed with South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson that the R18+ topic would hold little sway over the coming elections:
The only people who are going to be into this are the games people, so I don’t think the outcome of this particular study will represent anyone’s view but the games industry. I can’t see a whole lot of other people becoming motivated on it because they won’t realise it’s on, because it’s the gamers and games industry sending in all the responses.
More over at GameSpot.
Thanks Ryan!
Comments
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
"Oh, it only bothers a certain group of people, so it doesn't really matter."
Thank God for the tyranny of the majority, right mister?
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
To be honest, the community interests is not made up of White Christian men.
Even Homosexuals in Australia are not allowed to marry, all because of community interest.
Sorry man, but I am noy buying your arguments unless if you have EVIDENCE to prove what you are saying your right.
Instead of telling us, SHOW us what you are talking about.
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
I stopped reading after about the first paragraph. Yet another name-only-christian using religion to justify trying to mold the planet to how HE believes it should be. Let me guess, he had his way all children would be i ntheir sunday best, mind their manners and be seen and unheard.
If those were an earlier decade he'd be decrying movies too.
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
That part about the children doesn't sound all that bad to me. It's better than some 12 year old suburban wannabe gangster yelling explicatives at you after you nearly run their asses over when they run out in front of you in traffic.
-Ultimately what will do in mankind is a person's fear of their own freedom-
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
What more can I say than this:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2152789/epic%20fail.jpg
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
"You’ve got a completely different situation with games because games are interactive; increasingly interactive, and have high levels of simulation. It’s simulation and interactivity and repetition and blablabla further bullshit"
Yes, my mouse is a very realistic AKA47 simulator, hell i can even use an Xbox 360 pad to shoot a guy right in between his eyes (i carry one with me for self defense purposes)...
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
"I think you’d agree that for SAS personnel involved in counter terrorism to do that is a necessary evil so to speak. But for us to be condoning games that did that for the general person out in the community, particularly when we’re going to get some of those people who have a predisposition to violence simply doesn’t make sense, and it’s not in the individual’s interest, and it’s not in the community’s interest."
I would hope to fuck that the training that the SAS got was real actual training that involves actual guns being actually fired. And not just, you know, thumb wiggling. That does NOT translate into any actual training or skill. Just like if a football team put all of their training time into playing Madden, well they would fail and fail hard.
-Ultimately what will do in mankind is a person's fear of their own freedom-
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
I'm not disagreeing with you here, but many many football teams have used Madden to try out plays and show the team how it will work. Straight from the players mouths.
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
That is applying their pre-existing skill to the game, not gaining skill from the game, not the other way around. I've not touched a real gun in years. I seriously doubt that I could hit the broad side of a barn, despite playing shooter games on a near daily basis. So therefore to me the only thing I could take away from the games is thumb wiggling. And real guns require a bit more than that.
-Ultimately what will do in mankind is a person's fear of their own freedom-
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
"Wallace was asked why he was against adding the additional rating category. He began his answer by recounting his command of an SAS regiment, and how in training, the key was to break a 'very natural reluctance to kill someone else.' Wallace sees videogames serving as a similar kind of training simulator for the general public..."
I'm sorry, but does anyone else see, in this paragraph, a similarity to a certain other video game critic?
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""A Chrono Trigger is anything that unleashes its will or desire to change history!" -Gaspar
"A Chrono Trigger is anything that unleashes its will or desire to change history!" -Gaspar
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
I fail to see how this issue is directly related to Christianity, so why is this lobbying group speaking out on this issue?
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Debates are like merry go rounds. Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
Because they want to mold the world to how they see fit, and they're using religion to justify it.
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
Yes these video games train kids to be hardcore killers, just like the one from Penn and Teller Bullshit.
Seriously though if these games make people OK with killing random people why the hell hasn't some killer gamer even tried to assassinate someone like Atkinson or Thompson? I don't want either of them killed but still.
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Debates are like merry go rounds. Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
"It’s simulation and interactivity and repetition all of which are ascribed to games that make them a particularly dangerous form of medium to be flooding the community with. We’re not talking about movies that are a one off viewing or you might see a piece of violence in a 90 minute session."
I heard that movies have this feature that lets you watch them again! What was it called..."rewind" I think? You could take a rape or murder scene from a movie, which would be much more lifelike and disturbing to me than a videogame and watch it over and over and over and over again. This feature he is ascribing to games is in films also but he turns a blind eye to it as it doesn't suit his argument.
I'm sure that Mark Chapman read and re-read parts of Catcher in the Rye before he murdered John Lennon. He believed that killing him would be simulating a hero like a character in the book and would make him one as well. Given that his interpretation of the book is different from others, it shows that the book is interactive. Shouldn't this repetition, simulation and interactivity which are ascribed to books make them a particularly dangerous form of medium to be flooding the community with? </sarcasm>
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
Ok, this brings about the classic issue of videogame violence. Interactivity has not shown to desensitize people in any stronger way then any other form of expression. The common (and not totally insane) person is not affected in anyway. If such ideas were true, would there not be a huge percentage of those showing agressive tendencies in the last several years. There is no such data showing that mature adults get desensitized by violent videogames. This guy's views are based off of assumptions with nothing to back them up. And the only thing that I detest more than generalizations are assumptions with nothing to back them up.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." -Albert Einstein
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
If these people are so convinced that games train people to kill, would they not be afraid to even walk the streets with gamers?
Lt. Grossman, Jack Thompson, Atkinson, Lyndon Larouche, Keith Vaz, etc. have claimed for years that gamers consume media that is actually designed to turn us into cold-blooded killers. And yet, even Jack Thompson was willing on numerous occasions to attend gaming conventions and debates. If he were so sure that gamers were programmed killing robots, would he be too afraid to interact with them directly?
If these people and groups really bought their own rhetoric, they would be campaigning to have game consoles registered like guns.
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
In many cases Thompson seeemd to try to instigate people. Not only was he sure there would be a real threat to his life, he was actually counting on it to validate his claims.
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
I'll do you one better. A lot of games are squad-based tactical shooters (Rainbow Six, Counterstrike, Ghost Recon), and infiltration/espionage (Syphon Filter, Splinter Cell).
If these games were the top-of-the-line training simulators that these idiots claim them to be, why aren't the armed services using these supposed superhuman assassins that can kill anyone at any time without remorse that would've nabbed Osama bin Laden and the rest of the Taliban by now?
Because the myth that video games turn anyone that plays them into killers is BULLSHIT!
"That's not ironic. That's justice."
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
It would be amazingly easy to put both that organization and Atkinson in the hot seat based on Atkinson's prior broad sweeping claims about the "Gamer community", that only a small percentage would negatively react to expsoure to fictional violence but better to err on the side of caution by blaming the whole gamer community for the acts of those few and depriving the whole of the gamer community of Freedom of Speech in an effort to protect society as a whole.
It could be SO easy.
Nightwng2000
NW2K Software
http://www.facebook.com/nightwing2000
Nightwng2000 is now admin to the group "Parents For Education, Not Legislation" on MySpace as http://groups.myspace.com/pfenl
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
"Freedom of Speech" is a right in the USA, not Australia.
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I LIKE the fence. I get 2 groups to laugh at then.
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
Actually, Freedom of Speech is a Human Right as defined by the United Nations under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recognized in international human rights law in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The ICCPR recognizes the right to freedom of speech as "the right to hold opinions without interference. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
While Austrailia is among a few countries that does not have a bill or declaration of rights, there have been several instances where there have been efforts to change that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country#Australia
At any rate, the United Nations has clearly stated that this issue is a general Human Right that should not be limited by nationality. Of course, as we've seen, certain segments of the UN has sought to limit that Human Right as well.
Nightwng2000
NW2K Software
http://www.facebook.com/nightwing2000
Nightwng2000 is now admin to the group "Parents For Education, Not Legislation" on MySpace as http://groups.myspace.com/pfenl
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
Unfortunatly that is true.
"No law means no law" - Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black on the First Amendment
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
of course gamers are going to be interested in this were the one it damn well effects
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
EDIT: damn, responded to wrong post XD
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
yeah I removed religion from my post didnt want to start a flame war
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
Thanks. Appriciate the gesture. I won't mention it either.
At any rate, supporting +18 for movies but not games is just blatant hypocracy. We've seen how movies can be just as influential, if not more, than any game. While we may have a psycho go on a rampage every now and then, and blame it on a game, we've seen movies spawn genocide ("Birth of a Nation," anyone?)
When you're in that theatre, or even at home with the lights down, and you're really into that movie, you start to get in a state of mind where you don't notice sights around you or people next to you. That's why we get so mad when people talk or cellphones ring: it pulls us out of it. And when you're in that state, you become more open to suggestions. It's that same Alpha state you're in before you go to sleep; same state hypnotists use when making suggestions. We still have free will, we still can tell fact from fiction, but we tend to dwell on the ideas more, especially in political movies. We know it didn't really happen, but we wonder more about the concepts and premises that could relate to real life.
Meanwhile, the interactivity of games doesn't get you deeper. As long as you're awake, you can't go beyond that Alpha state. Playing games, you're in the same state you're in watching movies. The interactivity means you just get there easier, and quicker.
Re: AU Christian Lobby Head: Games Similar to SAS Training
"The only people who are going to be into this are the games people, so I don’t think the outcome of this particular study will represent anyone’s view but the games industry. I can’t see a whole lot of other people becoming motivated on it because they won’t realise it’s on, because it’s the gamers and games industry sending in all the responses."
Well yes, the only people who are interested in the R18+ are gamers since that is what the R18+ moniker is intended for.
Are we sure the Australian Christian Lobby doesn'st need someone a little more intelligent to run their organization? I mean seriously... way to point out the obvious there "mate."