Gabriel013

Taken from gamasutra.com

In the aftermath of a recent school shooting in Germany, the regional governments of Bavaria and Lower Saxony have proposed new legislation that could punish those who make, distribute, or even play video games featuring "cruel violence on humans or human-looking characters" with a fine and up to a year in prison. The newly drafted bill is scheduled to go before the upper house of parliament next year.

The 18-year old shooter, who according to an online report from MSNBC was an avid player of the popular first-person shooter Counter Strike, attacked the Scholl secondary school on November 20 in the western German town of Emsdetten, and wounded as many as 37 people before killing himself.

However, some within the German competitive video game arena see this latest move as a knee jerk overreaction to the incident, with Frank Sliwka, the head of the Deutsche E-Sport Bund, a German online gaming organization, commenting, "We have among the most drastic censorship rules for games," adding, "Now we are being labeled as a breeding ground for unstable, dysfunctional and violent youngsters."

Interestingly, the MSNBC report also highlights the fact that Sony could also find itself on the receiving end of this new legislation, should it pass, with its PlayStation 3 console set to debut in the region in March 2007. Activision's Call of Duty 3 and Sony's Insomniac developed Resistance: Fall of Man continue to be the biggest selling titles for the platform, and both would be subject to the law's stringent violent game penalty.

Along with Australia, Germany has one of the strictest controls on video games content, with a long history of banning or forcing alterations in games. Previously titles banned in their original form in Germany include Doom 1 and 2, as well as Manhunt and Command & Conquer. More recently, the Xbox 360 releases Dead Rising and Gears of War were both denied an age rating in Germany as well, thus making it possible for the games to be deemed illegal to sell by the German government.

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dillonthebunny

i think they should ban Coffee....

i think if you take every death/ injury where the assailant has blamed Video games for it or they have account the fact of these incidences because of Video Games.. i bet if they looked, they would discover that they all DRANK coffee!

its a killer!


its like Jessica Fletcher.. lock HER up, and they might just find that the murder population of the USA goes right down!



Seriously tho, there is a problem with kids that have mental health, and that play these games.. but then theres a problem with pissin mental health problemed kids off, when you shout at them for pissing on your lawn or spray painting your fence with something that isn’t remotely artistic.

The difference is that some kids can get their hands on guns and some cant, some can deal with their problems with killing and some talk it through, some self harm, and some harm others. if we could identify those with problems before they acted that would be a bonus, buts its almost impossible.

BUT its like that kid who killed himself over EverQuest a few years ago… his parents said something like “oh we knew there was something up when lil Timmy didn’t come down to eat with us for seven week”… ..I mean, THEY were the only ones that could possibly notice, and did they? Nope.. big fat no!


So the fact that kids grow up to be adults… so all the weirdoes knocking around the UK, EUROPE, STATES.. the World.. they were all kids once, but I guess back then it was harder to kill, maybe because it was easier to get attention in other ways?. These days I do wonder if that’s what it is?

Maybe going in to a public area and trying to kill 40+ people is what ‘grabbing attention’ means to them? Obviously wrong diddly wrong wrong to put it mildly.

But where (if you were to lay blame) would you lay the blame? Fact that in the states you can buy guns at the age of two? Or (as Borat said ) just to kill Jews? Or opening a bank account? Or do you blame the parents that are so hooked up on modern life that having kids rate a big fat 2nd on their radar?

I’m sure that the number of fukced up kids isn’t different from 30 years ago, it just seems that they have a different way of dealing with it.

shit, we have ASBO kids in the UK.... theyre pretty mental in the head, and in everything they say or wear ... but who do you blame?

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