CVG editor Tim Ingham recently appeared on British TV as part of a ridiculous round table discussion on violent games.

Ingham himself performed remarkably well, especially when factoring in the idiocy surrounding him, whether it was the piece’s pre-determined slant, a vast generation gap, or a host who couldn’t take the time to research, or comprehend, that videogames have their own ratings, nevermind parental controls.

Consider that the show’s host, Alan Titchmarsh (a gardener?), actually made the following remarks in the opening minute of the discussion:

Ingham comments that games are no different than movies

Titchmarsh: "But they (movies) have certificates on them…"

Ingham: "The videogames have exactly the same certificates…"

Titchmarsh: "But they are at home…"

Ingham: "I’m sorry?"

No, not the soon to be ex-South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson, but Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor (pictured).

The Labor Party member, speaking at a Sydney conference put on by the Australian Council on Children and the Media and Macquarie University, which examined the impact of violence and sexualized media on children, expressed concern over motion-sensing controls for videogames, saying, “Computer game manufacturers encourage users to put down their control pads and participate physically in a game through motion-sensing technology.”

This led O’Connor to proclaim:

These interactive features are set to increase the impact of the material being enjoyed by consumers.

 

We need to consider how increased interactivity will impact on children and what this means for content regulation.

A 17-year old gamer playing Counter-Strike in a Jilin, China net café was accused of wall hacking and, following an argument with his accusers, ended up being stabbed in the skull by with a 12-inch long knife.

Hot Blooded Gaming has the story of the incident, which, in turn, is taken from a Sankaku Complex translation of a Chinese blog. The 17-year old stabbing victim retained consciousness and was rushed to the hospital, where it’s reported that after hours of surgery, the knife was removed and the boy appeared to be recovering. Doctors said that the rusty knife missed major arteries, though the boy was placed under observation due to possible complications from the rust on the knife.

 The café in question was apparently quite liberal in requiring IDs for entry, making it popular with local youth.

So much for remaining neutral—a pair of Swiss resolutions dealing with violent videogames have been passed by the country’s National Council.

As detailed last month, the first resolution, proposed by Christian Democratic Party member and National Councillor Norbert Hochreutener, would make it illegal to sell PEGI 16 or 18-rated games to minors, while a second resolution, backed by Social Democrat Evi Allemann, called for a complete ban of violent and adult-themed videogames.

An Ireland-based Catholic marriage counseling service claims that the Internet, gaming and pornography are among factors contributing to a current rise in marriage problems.

Accord saw demand for its counseling services grow 10 percent in 2009, which Accord Director Ruth Barror blamed on financial problems, cyber sex and gambling, while Acting Director of Counseling Liam Lally told the Irish Examiner that Internet-related marriage problems have “jumped dramatically in recent years.”

A figure applied to these issues claims an 87.5 percent jump in marriage complaints related to the Internet since 2007.  Over the same period, financial issues grew 71.0 percent, while depression and stress-related claims rose 14.0 percent and 12.0 percent.

Lally continued:

The South Korean parents of a three-month old allegedly fed their gaming habits obsessively while neglecting their daughter, who effectively starved to death.

The 41-yeard old husband and his 25-year old wife, identified only as “the Kims,” spent up to 12 hours every night at Internet cafés playing games, according to a story on ABC. The couple came home one morning last September, after spending the whole night out, and alerted authorities upon finding their daughter deceased.

An autopsy revealed that the baby’s death came about from malnourishment. The Kims subsequently confessed that they had been feeding their daughter “rotten, powdered milk and had often spanked their crying baby.”

In a sinister bit of irony, officials reported that instead of taking care of their real child, who was born prematurely, the couple was infatuated with raising a virtual daughter in the massively multiplayer online game PRIUS.

The article also features a quote from Dr. Kim Sang Eun, of Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, who believes game addiction is a brain disease. She stated, “there's no certain clinical indicator to define 'game addiction' but our study shows that brain PET [scan] images of suspected online game addicts are very similar to that of a cocaine addict.”

The parents were arrested on Wednesday.

An advisor to the Chinese government who proposed a nationwide ban of private Internet cafés provoked hackers into defacing the websites of her business.

Yan Ki, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), suggested the ban in order to combat a host of social problems she blames on the cafés. Yan said that the Internet-enabled hangouts promoted truancy, videogame addiction and pornography, reports The Telegraph.

Yan was quoted as saying:

Many serious problems are linked to internet cafés and businesspeople usually ignore their social responsibilities. Desperate diseases must have drastic cures, which is to ban them all.

Yan, described as a “prominent business woman,” then saw the website for her chain of restaurants hacked, with links deleted and messages posted that mocked her perceived self-importance.

The CPCC is made up of 2,374 members and is described as “an advisory body.” The Telegraph wrote that Yan’s suggestions “stand no chance of being adopted.”

The topic of violent and adult-rated games has once again bubbled up in Switzerland.

MCVUK and TechEye both report on a resolution that passed unanimously in the Commission for Legal Affairs and would make it illegal to sell games rated PEGI 16 or 18 to under-age minors. Swiss parliament will now have a chance to vote on the measure, which was originally introduced by Christian Democratic Party member and National Councillor Norbert Hochreutener in 2007.

TechEye writes that Hochreutener believes the law is needed to “enforce ratings and make sure kids cannot play what are called 'killer games' in the German-speaking part of Europe.”

A second, and more troubling motion, would call for a complete ban of violent and adult-themed videogames within the country. This motion passed too, though with a closer vote of nine to three, and will also head off to parliament for vote. One of the backers of this proposal is Social Democrat Evi Allemann (pictured).

Allemann’s website offers some of her thoughts (translated) on the banning of such “killer” games:

Such games do not make each one a killer, but they increase the willingness of those who are already vulnerable. A blanket ban on such games therefore seems appropriate and proportionate, especially since they do not have any worth protecting cultural and social content and there are thousands of other exciting games that work without such extreme violence.

One way to implement the motion lies in the operationalization of Article 135 of the Criminal Code. This prohibits the display, manufacture, importation, storage, promotion, etc. of sound and visual recordings of cruel violence.

Another country to keep an eye on in the future.

Edit: Fixed the link for the translated section of Alleman's website.

The University of Alabama professor who stands accused of killing three of her peers last Friday is now, of course, linked with a popular role-playing game.

The Boston Herald, citing a source, claims that suspected shooter Amy Bishop was a fan of Dungeons & Dragons and actually met her husband at Northeastern University through an on-campus D&D club. The source told the paper that “They [Bishop and her husband] even acted this crap out.”

Bishop’s husband, James Anderson, described the pair’s immersion in D&D as a “passing interest.” He added, “It was a social thing more than anything else. It’s not the crazy group people think they are.”

The Herald reached deep down to offer the following insight into the topic of D&D and its potential influence on players:

Some experts have cited the D&D backgrounds of people who were later involved in violent crimes, while others say it just a game.

Another Herald piece paints Bishop as slightly unhinged, detailing an incident in 2002 at an International House of Pancakes where Bishop allegedly punched another woman in the face for taking the restaurant’s last child booster seat.


Thanks E.Zachary Knight via the Shoutbox!

The Church of England has issued a call for tighter regulation of videogames.

The Church, which perhaps still has a bad taste in its mouth from the use of Manchester Cathedral in Resistance: Fall of Man, addressed the issue of violent games in a meeting of its general synod on Thursday night.

Following an introduction, in which speakers were cautioned not to mention the names of specific games because “there is a risk of legal proceedings,” Tom Benyon (pictured), a former MP, took the microphone.

Benyon labeled the Byron Report “good in parts,” but said that it “did not go far enough.” He proceeded to read a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes which he felt “encapsulates the essence of what we are about today in the matter of violent and sexual DVDs.”

God's plan made a hopeful beginning. But man spoiled his chances by sinning. We trust that the story will end in God's glory. But, at present, the other side's winning.

He continued:

A bubbling sewer of gratuitously violent and sexual pornography in DVD games are washing all around us. Byron relied on the proposition that parents have a liability or are interested in controlling what their children do. We think, sadly, that that is optimistic and a prize hope.

Benyon went on to recount the story of a “family member” who “saw one so-called game some years ago and had nightmares. He was a teenager. He was an innocent and he was profoundly shocked. The damage that he suffered was substantial. The images remained with him for months.”

Benyon also had a compilation of violent games on CD that he was going to show, but he decided not to ruin the “evenings or supper” of attendees by showing it.

He added, “I know that the Devil is said to have all the best tunes. Without any question of doubt he has the monopoly of violent and pornographic videogames.”

The Archbishop of York offered analogies to Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, selecting a quote from the latter, that “law cannot legislate for morals, but it can actually regulate it.” He added, “On this great day of celebrating 20 years since Mandela came out of prison, can we help our young people to come out of the prison of these awful, awful videogames.”

Full audio of the hour-long meeting can be listened to here.


Via The Guardian

Jo Frost, best known stateside as the principal in the show Supernanny, has a new show airing in the UK and in its debut episode she attempted to tackle the issue of violent videogames.

The Guardian has a run down of the program (Jo Frost: Extreme Parental Guidance), in which Frost, with the assistance of Iowa State University’s Dr. Douglas Gentile, conducted an experiment on 40 boys.

In one experiment, the boys were split in half, with 20 playing a football game for 20 minutes while the other 20 played a first-person shooter for the same amount of time. Following their game play session, all 40 boys watched violent news footage and had their heart rate monitored. Boys who played the FPS were found to have slower heart rates while watching the violent on-screen reports versus those who played the sports game, leading to a voice over that declared, “Shockingly, just twenty minutes of violent gameplay was enough to densensitise the boys.”

Author Keith Stuart took the methodology to task, writing, “I'm no neuroscientist, but with the biological stress response recently engaged, surely it's no surprise that in the few minutes after violent gameplay, test subjects react differently to violent stimuli?”

Stuart continued:

So really, what does this all say about the long-term effects of exposure to violent videogames? I would suggest very, very little.

An additional experiment, in which Gentile knocked over a can of pencils in front of each boy individually, was supposed to measure empathy. Reportedly only 40.0 percent of the boys who played the FPS helped to pick up the pencils, versus 80.0 percent of those who played the football game.

The combination of the two tests, and the resulting conclusions, were a bit too much for Stuart to take:

Cognitive neuroscience is a complex field - it is perhaps not something to be prodded and poked at during a piece of realty TV voyeurism masquerading as documentary material.

He added:

…if just 20 minutes of exposure is enough to turn normal boys into desensitized monsters, our streets should be filled with violence. They're not.

ProCon.org, a California-based nonprofit charity that specializes in promoting "critical thinking" by presenting both sides of compelling issues has launched a new site dedicated to the topic of video games and violence.

The hub offers an introduction to the topic, noting that “The effect of violent video games on children and teens has been debated by researchers and the media since the release of the video game Death Race in 1976.”

It then lists a variety of research and opinions on the subject, from both sides of the fence, and offeres gathered images and videos on the subject. Visitors to the site can take a survey on the subject and add their own voice to the debate. A separate debate section highlights pros and cons offered by politicians, scholars or public figures.

A 1999 quote from Bill Clinton is used on the pro (or, yes, violent games contribute to youth violence) side:

… video games like ‘Mortal Kombat,’ ‘Killer Instinct,’ and ‘Doom,’ the very game played obsessively by the two young men who ended so many lives in Littleton, make our children more active participants in simulated violence.

A Henry Jenkins quote is utilized to illustrate the con side of the argument:

According to a 2001 U.S. Surgeon General's report , the strongest risk factors for school shootings centered on mental stability and the quality of home life, not media exposure. The moral panic over violent video games is doubly harmful.

Canadian website Canoe has doubled up on videogame violence stories posted to its site in recent days.

First up is a story with the banner “Man Wounded in Xbox Dispute,” which details the shooting of a 27-year old Winnipeg man by his 16-year old brother. While “it was unclear whether the dispute was over the possession of a video game or if it broke out while the pair was playing a video game,” videogames were central enough to the crime that they were utilized in the headline.

The shooting victim, thankfully, was upgraded to stable condition in the hours following the incident.

Canoe also took the time to produce a slideshow entitled “Video Games Linked With Crime,” which dredges up fifteen game-related or influenced crimes, including a supposed trend among graffiti artists to replicate Tetris patterns in their illegal works.


Thanks Allen and Trencher!

Image via Wooster Collective

Spencer Halpin’s Moral Kombat, the 2007 documentary that focuses on the subject of violence in videogames, can be viewed for free in its entirety on Babelgum.

In examining its controversial topic, the film talks with a slew of game industry people, politicians and critics, including Dr. David Walsh, Jack Thompson, Lorne Lanning, American McGee, Joe Lieberman, Henry Jenkins and Doug Lowenstein.

The film will be free to watch online for 30 days.

In making the documentary, a variety of cutting-edge technology was employed, some of which is detailed in an article on Apple.com.

Disclosure: Spencer Halpin is ECA President Hal Halpin’s brother. GamePolitics is a publication of the ECA.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Times Online, Iain Duncan Smith took a little time to make disparaging remarks about videogames.

Smith has long been obsessed with fixing what he terms today’s “broken society.”  His solutions included promoting the importance of marriage and implementing more taxation on alcohol and reversing 24-hour liquor licensing laws.

As a contributor to today’s societal ills, Smith said about games:

We are driving children to lose their childhood, and some video games are incredibly violent, like Grand Theft Auto. They are meant to be 18 but nobody cares what it says on the label.

An article on Computer and Videogames took Smith to task for his comments, responding that the MPs voting for adopting the PEGI system obviously “care” what’s on a game’s label. Also singled out for “caring” were ELSPA, retailer GAME and a group of videogame publishers that attempt to keep inappropriate games out of the hands of younger gamers.

The CVG article also puts the onus on parents to police what their kids are playing:

But unless our politicians make sure parents 'care' enough to say "no" - by backing Parliament's own legislation - we're fighting a losing battle.

The heartbreaking story of a nine-year old Texas boy committing suicide at school led a Clinical Psychologist to attempt to pin part of the blame for kids acting out in ways outside of the norm on violent videogames.

The fourth-grader in question was a student at Stewart Creek Elementary School. He asked a nurse to use the restroom, locked himself inside and tragically hung himself. In a CNN video report on the story, Clinical Psychologist Dr. Brenda Wade was brought in for commentary.

The doctor cited two factors for why children are acting out in ways “never imagined possible”. The first was that there is now “more instability” in families, because of external stresses and the economy.

The second factor? Violent videogames of course.

Dr. Wade stated:

The other factor is that younger and younger children are exposed to very violent videogames with content that I would shudder to have an adult watch on a regular basis.

We just covered, a couple days ago, the story that children are watching as much as 52 hours a week of TV and sitting in front of a screen. A lot of that content is not uplifting and it’s not teaching our children how to handle problems and feelings.

These statements came moments after the Doctor cautioned that we “don’t want to blame and cast dispersions” at what role the boy’s family may have played in the tragedy.

Dr. Wade bills herself as a nationally syndicated talk show host and best selling author (as seen on Oprah). Visitors to her website are also offered a free love lesson.

Thanks Sean!

Frankly we had purposely avoided “gaming causes rickets” stories up until now because any link to videogames in the research was tenuous at best, but when pro-gaming MP Tom Watson calls foul over the link and assists in ridiculing the tabloid-type headlines screaming about the latest threat to humanity at the hand of games, it’s worth a look.

Events began with a press release issued to call attention to a new study from a pair of doctors which reported on a growing Vitamin D deficiency among the UK population.  A lack of Vitamin D can lead to rickets, a condition that can cause growth problems and bowed-legs in children.

In the press release it was noted that “A traditional UK diet often lacks Vitamin D and this could be a big reason for the increasing problem, as well as changes in lifestyle, such as children staying indoors playing computer games.”

A free paper in the UK (the Metro) picked up the story, splashing a “Video Gaming Leads to Surge in Rickets” headline across its pages, leading GamesBrief columnist Nicholas Lovell to pick apart the Metro story bit-by-bit.

Lovell wrote:

This survey makes no causal link between games and rickets, or even Vitamin D deficiency. It has identified a significant public health issue of rising numbers of cases of rickets, an entirely preventable disease that was almost eradicated fifty years ago. The potential causes are many, ranging from a changing population ethnicity, the lack of playing fields for schoolchildren, a culture of fear that prevents children playing outside unsupervised or even feckless parents who no longer feed their offspring a teaspoonful of foul-tasting cod liver oil every day.

Both Lovell and Watson emailed the study’s authors, Professor Simon Pearce and Dr. Timothy Cheetham.  Amusingly, Pearce emailed Lovell, “The average age of a child with rickets is around 20 months old: too young to use a keyboard and mouse!”

Pearce also replied to MP Watson, writing, “No we really didn’t do a study to show that, or say that Gaming causes rickets. It was a classic piece of dodgy lazy journalism, taking 3 words out of PA’s hyped-up version of our press release.”

As Watson summed up:

So, once again video games get a kicking in the press based on an untruth. And the poor health academics who are trying to get their important research across to policy makers have their work undermined by nonsensical headlines.

Watson, for his part, was determined to help the researchers get their message across, promising to request that the government take a look at the case for adding vitamin D supplements to food and for better ways to encourage parents to make sure their children get more exercise.

Watson also indicated that he would ask Department Health Ministers what type of work, if any, they are doing currently to address this issue.

Thanks to everyone who sent this one in.

Following an argument over the best strategies to utilize in FIFA 2009, an Italian teenager stabbed his father in the neck with a 15-inch knife.

16-year old Mario (no last name given) cut his 46-year old father Fabrizio in the family home after the discussion over tactics resulted in the patriarch shutting off the television. Mario then retrieved a clean knife from the kitchen, stabbed his father, and returned to the kitchen to clean the knife in front of his mother reports Reuters.

The mother didn’t know anything was amiss until Fabrizio, who survived the attack staggered into the kitchen bleeding.

FIFA 2009 was given to the boy as a birthday present just a few days earlier. His mother said, “…we bought him FIFA 2009 because we didn’t want him playing violent games.”

As noted by submitter Allen (thanks!), it isn’t about if the games are violent or not, it’s about the person playing them.

A 30-year old man suspected of stealing an SUV was arrested by police in his home while playing Grand Theft Auto III.

Tampa Bay Online has the story on Michael Ray Ekes of Haines City, Florida, who was busted after the stolen vehicle was found in front of his home. For some reason Ekes was asked what he thought of GTA III. The suspect replied, “It’s a blast.”

Sheriff Grady Judd offered the pearl of wisdom that, “Crime is not a game.” He continued, “Real-life crime has real-life consequences – and I hope he goes to prison for a good long while, where they don't have 'Grand Theft Auto' video games.”

At the time of his arrest, Ekes was free on bail on two counts of grand theft auto and was on probation for a series of other offenses.


Thanks to no one in particular for sending this in

A 15-year old Romanian male stabbed his adoptive mother seventeen times after she cut off the family's Internet service in an apparent bid to quell his online gaming addiction.

After the eruption of violence, the boy, Ionut Savin (pictured), took all the money he could find in the house and went off to the local Internet café, where he reportedly played Counter-Strike for four hours. The boy also apparently missed over 200 days of school as a result of his gaming dependency.

In a further twist, the victim was found by her husband on the couple’s 16th wedding anniversary. After police were called, the boy returned home and offered, “I think I’m the one you’re looking for.”

Savin was described as a “model student,” but “quiet” and “introverted.” He is currently hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic.

HotBloodedGaming found the story, which originally appeared on the Romanian website Adevarul.

|Via Kotaku|

Anti-game crusaders may have a new (and unlikely) ally—porn star Ron Jeremy.

The subject of videogames cropped up in a debate at the Consumer Electronics Show between Jeremy and anti-pornography activist Craig Gross reports PCMag. The inclusion came as Jeremy was attempting to infer that the porn industry is in business only to serve adults over the age of 18 years old.

He stated:

We don't want kids to watch porn. Though if they do, he added, there are far worse influences out there — like video games.

 

[Studies have] found that violent video games are much bigger a negative influence on kids

Gross and Jeremy did manage to agree, however, that it’s up to parents to keep explicit or non-age related material out of the hands of their kids.

GP: Having a hard time (no pun intended) here believing that Ron has read all the relevant studies. This incident just illustrates (laughably) how much of a scapegoat videogames have become for social ills. Perhaps a new pro-videogame crusade could be launched under the banner "At Least It's Not Porn," or Frumpy Middle-Aged Mom and Ron can team up to promote the evils of games.

Orange County Register columnist Marla Jo Fisher took to her blog to issue an apology of sorts for writing that videogames were created by Satan.

Noting that her blog was inundated with comments from outraged gamers, Fisher entitles her post My Bad: Video Games Are Not From Satan, and proceeds to substitute Harry Potter’s Lord Voldemort for Satan as the specter behind evil videogames.

Fisher then resumed her rant against games and gamers, stereotyping videogame addicts as having a “deathly pallor,” who have “forgotten what daylight looks like.”

What does she think about videogamers that, inspired by their love of the medium, eventually became developers?

Also, I’m not too convinced by people who were such ardent gamers they became video game creators. That’s like saying, “Gee, I loved crack so much, I went to Colombia and started my own business and now I’m rich.”

How about the educational merits of videogames?

Video games are educational? Sorry, people, I do not believe for one second you are learning quantum physics while you are shooting down zombies. Or that you got your scholarship to MIT by using the skills you learned shooting guerrillas.

About the only insult missing from Fisher’s column is a quip about gamers living in their parent’s darkened basement—something to look forward to in her next blog perhaps.

Armed with a BB gun, a 14-year old California boy stole a pair of bicycles and after being apprehended reportedly told deputies that he felt like he was playing a real-world version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Bakers Field Now reports that the minor was arrested by Wasco police officers after a brief chase, which he compared to an episode of Cops. He told officers that he considered “shooting the deputy in the eye,” but was scared that he would be shot in return if he missed. According to a newscast, officers also attempted to taser the boy, with “little effect.”

No word on how the boy was able to manage fleeing with two stolen bicycles.

Thanks Jack!

Opening with the salvo “It is well established that the Daily Mail does not understand videogames,” blogger and game marketer Bruce Everiss lays into the UK tabloid’s constant attack on games.

The latest article to draw Everiss’ ire was a piece written by Andrew Alexander on politicians Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg. At the end of the story, Alexander takes a shot at Shadow Minister Ed Vaizey’s plan to boost the UK games industry:

'Culture' also has a minister of its own operating under the grand panjandrum of the Secretary of State. The Shadow Minister, Ed Vaizey, provides a foretaste of nonsense to come with his declaration that the video games industry - there's culture for you - has been let down by the Government. It has not grown fast enough.

He proposes a Video Games Council.

Why there should be a government role in this field may well defeat you. It is at least as silly as the role of Hereditary Butler to the Crown etc and no doubt more expensive.

Everiss answers:

I have some news for Mr Alexander, by any and all definitions video games are culture. They entertain, have creativity, genre, subtlety, a history, engender emotion and have everything else that ballet or the opera have. Except that video games are massively more popular.

In fact Mr Alexander actually provides compelling evidence for the need for a Video Games Council, because if we had one we would not have to suffer so much ignorance from journalists (and politicians).

Everiss details other accounts of the Mail’s anti-game stance and also laments the lack of tax incentives for game developers, which he blames partly for the UK’s slip to a world rank of sixth place when it comes to producing videogames.

A staff writer for the Orange County Register took to her blog for a long-winded diatribe against videogames, even going so far as to say she believes that games were invented by Satan.

While scribe Marla Jo Fisher may be trying to write down to her “Frumpy Middle-aged Mom” tag, and possibly attempting to inject some humor into the article, her anti-game prejudice is no laughing matter.

A parent, she notes that her house is the only one on the block with no videogames at all and claims to have had her anti-game attitude reinforced even more after reading the recent story of a mom calling 911 to get her kid to stop playing games. Most horrifying however, in an event that scarred her for life, Fisher once saw a kid walking out of a library playing a Nintendo DS.

Fisher wonders how the current crop of game-obsessed children will ever learn or accomplish anything:

Here’s my question: When do kids ever think these days? When do they ever have brains free from electronics long enough to ponder the universe? To think of things that might someday lead them to a cure for cancer?

If Sir Isaac Newton had been playing a DS, I’m sure he never would have noticed the apple falling from the tree, so he never would have formulated the theory of gravity.

Of course she finishes with a shot at the Grand Theft Auto series, asking if her kids would be able to learn how to be carjackers or how to outrun the police by playing the game, adding “Those are skills I really want my children to acquire.”

Thanks Andrew

As the worldwide gross box office take for Avatar surpasses one billion dollars, the film’s director took a pot shot at videogamers.

In response to his movie “winning” a “black lung” rating from SceneSmoking.org for depictions of cigarette smoking on-screen, James Cameron told the New York Times the impetus behind Sigourney Weaver’s character Grace lighting up:

… from a character perspective, we were showing that Grace doesn’t care about her human body, only her avatar body, which again is a negative comment about people in our real world living too much in their avatars, meaning online and in video games.

Cameron would no doubt then be intrigued by Microsoft’s recent patent application that seeks to tie the appearance of online avatars to a user’s real-world health and fitness.

Ah, the Caribbean… home to tropical drinks, sandy beaches, offshore bank accounts and now, a violent videogame roundup.

As part of a holiday push to get its students to avoid violent videogames, the Cayman Island’s John Cumber Primary School is organizing just such an event, in which violent toys and games will be collected and destroyed, this according to a story in the Island’s newspaper.

The school’s campaign against violent games also spawned a list—emailed to pupil’s parents—of games to avoid for the holidays. The list included Resident Evil 4, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, God of War, NARC, Killer 7, The Warriors, 50 Cent: Bulletproof, Crime Life: Gang Wars, Condemned: Criminal Origins, and True Crime: New York City.

School Principal Joseph Wallace stated, “Research has showed…that over time, when these kids play the video games constantly…it desensitises them to the act of violence.”

He added, “But there’s no off button in real life; there’s no restart.”

Cayman Islands Premier McKeeva Bush is also on board with the movement, pleading with parents to keep their children away from “the video boxes.”

A local Blockbuster Video store co-owner, Deborah McTaggert, expressed doubts that many games would be culled from the roundup, telling the paper, “I think you’d have to pry them out of the kids’ hands.”

She also commented on blaming games for real-world violence, saying:

If you have no relationship with your kids and they’re locked up in a room with violent video games, I guess you’re probably going to have some problems.

 

Do I think we can attribute this to video games? I mean, I don’t think the really violent games are good, and there are titles that I don’t sell (at Blockbuster). I personally don’t like horror movies…but if I don’t bring them in, will it stop the violence?

Perhaps the Cayman Island school drew inspiration from a similar drive put on in Germany this past October. Germany’s “Killer Game Drive” resulted in a small handful of games being turned in.

In light of Australia’s refusal to classify Sega’s PC game Aliens vs. Predator, the country’s ABC News outlet ran a short video piece on the controversy with comments from everyone’s favorite Attorney General, Michael Atkinson.

The report quickly covers the Aliens vs. Predator story, noting that the game’s developer, Rebellion, will not edit the game in order to appease censors.

Gary Farrow, cast as a typical gamer, was asked about the  lack of an R18+ rating in Australia. The 42-year old offered, “We’re talking about just labeling content, so we have a fairly educated idea as to what to expect [from a game].

Atkinson’s comments on calls for an adult videogame rating:

This is a question of a small number of very zealous gamers trying to impose their will on society. And I think harm society. It’s the public interest versus the small vested interest.

Atkinson on violence in games:

I accept that 98%, 99% of gamers will tell the difference between fantasy and reality, but the 1% to 2% could go on to be motivated by these games to commit horrible acts of violence.

You don’t need to be playing a game in which you impale, decapitate and dismember people.

Australia’s Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (IGEA) CEO Ron Curry was also interviewed in order to counter some of Atkinson’s remarks. He stated:

It doesn’t seem democratic that a single attorney general should be able to dictate what the vast Australian population can interact with.

The government trusts us to be adults with films, but they only want us to be children with games.

Thanks Ryan!

An unnamed (for obvious reasons) UK district judge feigned illness in order to skip work the day following the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

An article on the Times Online details the judge’s story as part of an account detailing "secret gamers," i.e. those who can juggle playing games and maintain a successful career… go figure! The 48-year old judge, a married father of two, waited in line for an hour at midnight in order to score a copy of the game on launch day, feeling “like Charlie waiting outside the chocolate factory.” He apparently stayed up late playing the game, necessitating his call in to work the next day. “Will” spends “hundreds of pounds a year” on new games.

The article also details the gaming habits of a 37 year-old advertising executive—who plays Lego Batman with his kids—and a 35 year-old female speech and language therapist, who is deep into playing Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune 2 with her boyfriend.

The story introduces the aspect of videogame addiction, but plays down that part of gaming by quoting a psychologist who in 22 years of experience has “only met 10 people who are genuinely addicted.”

A related article, written by a former member of the video appeals committee, a part of the British Board of Film Classification, details the writer’s brief addiction with Carmageddon, one she stopped because she claimed to feel the urge to run down grandmothers in real life following extended bouts playing the game.

She noted losing interest in the title once in-game granny tire targets were changed to aliens and their blood changed from red to green.

Authorities in Beauvais, France believe they have prevented a possible school shooting by a 13-year old “computer games enthusiast."

A TimesOnline story details the unfolding events under the unfortunate headline “Computer Games Fan ‘Planned School Massacre.’” Suspicion was initially raised when the boy, named Bastien, left extra early for school, eventually leading his parents to a blog post of his that read: “This is my last message because Tuesday November 17, 2009 will be the last day of my life. Sorry to leave you..."  Police were alerted and sealed off the boy’s school, Saint-Esprit. The teen apparently saw police at the school and avoided it, ditched a shotgun and 25 cartridges in a field along the way. He was found later at a cyber-café.

A friend of Bastien said that, “He always wanted to go into the Army. He loved battles. He was passionate about history, warriors. He played video games up to one or two in the morning...” Other buddies told reporters that Bastien was a World of Warcraft player.

Even the Mayor of Allone, Christian Sadowski, painted Bastien as a gamer, saying that he knew the boy was a fan of computer games, adding, “Many young people end up finding it difficult to tell the difference between dream and reality. He played his little fantasy on the net and then carried it out.”

The boy was anxious about an upcoming parent-teacher conference as a result of receiving less-than-stellar grades.

GP: Glad they caught him obviously, but the secondary focus on games in this article is gratuitous as is usually the case.  But as we, and Lorne Lanning, know, this is how the mainstream media rolls. At least they didn’t call WOW a “murder simulator.”

Update: GP reader Soldat_Louis rounded up and translated a handful of other stories and media outlets that played up the videogame link:

• "Considered as a good student coming from a normal family, the middle school boy, a video game adept, (...)" (Le Point)

• "According to a police source, 'bad grades could be the cause of the murderous intentions' of the student, a video game adept."  (France-Soir)

• "It's on his blog that the student, a video game fan, has published his intention to make a name of himself (...)" (Le Télégramme)

• "The kid is considered as a good student. He comes from a normal family. He is a video game adept and maintains his own blog. (...) [The attempted shooting] revives the memory of [the Winnenden shooting]. Perpetrated by  Tim Kretschmer, 17-years-old, also a video game adept, (...)" (La Dépêche)


Soldat_Louis also pointed us towards (and again translated the relevant part) a debate over “How to protect your children against the dangers of the Internet” that took place on French radio station RTL this morning.

Véronique Fima of the Action Innocence nonprofit group apparently came to the defense of games and gamers in the debate, while noting that in the case of the Beauvais story, the Internet played a positive role and assisted in stopping any violence.

On the point of videogames, she stated, “First of all, I wouldn't want them to be incriminated in the first place (...) rather than knowing that he was a video game aficionado, I would like us to ask the question : what was the deep discomfort that made this child act that way (...) All children and teenagers all play video games, yet they're not all mass murderers."