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German Police Chairman Calls for Violent Game Ban
A regional chairman of the German Police Union (DPolG) has apparently called for all violent videogames to be banned from the country.
Heini Schmitt, regional chairman of the DPolG in the German state of Hesse, links videogames to the recent Albertville school shooting in the town of Winnenden, where a 17-year old former pupil went on a rampage killing 15 people before turning the gun on himself.
The attack had thrown the German people into a state of shock, but as the nation recovers from the incident there are voices emerging, some that call for reform and preventative measures to help ensure the Albertville shooting is not repeated.
In an Echo Online report (translated by GamePolitics) Schmitt cites his concern with the apparent fact that a third of German youths “regularly and addictively escape into a virtual world”.
Schmitt – whose jurisdiction of Hesse sits outside of Winnenden – refers to games with violent content as “killergames”. He is careful to state that there’s no proof linking videogames with mature content to a high-school killing spree, “but neither can the role of killergames be completely dismissed.”
“The world would be no poorer if there were no more killergames,” he added.
The shooting has already sparked debate and argument within the German game sector. Retail chain Galeria Kaufhof has confirmed that in April it will begin to pull adult videogames and films from its shelves, while the German videogame developers association (G.A.M.E.) has criticised the move as an overreaction bordering on “impulsive hysteria."
Reports linking the school shooting to videogames have cited a number of titles, from CounterStrike to Far Cry 2. Described as a shy loner who had access to a collection of legal firearms, the 17-year-old school shooter had – according to reports – seemed to target women in his attack, one of which was a young woman who had reportedly declined his advances at a previous house party.
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I think this is going to far!!
IDIOTS saying its the games that turn these people into killers! its not the game (WELL it is kind of because they might play it tooooo much) Its mainly the parents that allow these ''killers'' to play 15+ games! Its proper stupid! But DONT ban violent games its the only thing that keeps me sane! If you do ban violent games i will be forced to play TMNT or SONIC (off all games)
I wasnt allowed to play over 15's until i hit the age of 15. now 19 & i still get ID'd :'(
In a fit of righteous anger my mother told me how it was the fault of irresponsible parents not knowing what their kids were playing. I reminded her that it was her, who bought me Mortal Kombat when I was 15. The irony was lost on her as she did not know what these words meant.
As for buying games at the Galeria Kaufhof, that's not even the place to buy games in the first place. If they shut down their sad excuse for a games section completely next month I would not be surprised.
The worst school massacre in the history of the U.S. happened on May 18, 1927, when insane anger spurred Andrew Kehoe to kill forty-two people, mostly children. That's 16 years even before Nolan Bushnell, the founding father of videogames, was born.
"Nolan Bushnell, the founding father of videogames"
Huh? Who? Oh, you mean Ted Dabney.
Just because I'm a gamer myself, I'm not going to deny that I do believe that violent games can affect people negatively. If not school massacres, I can speak from own experience when I say that people seem to get a sort of cold attitude towards killing. People who play a lot of violent games seemingly only for the violence itself are usually the kind of people who laugh at people getting hurt or dying (be it documentaries or fiction.) That alone kinda freaks me out.
BUT anyone who think this is reason enough to censure/ban video games is out of the line. Seeing as more than 99% of the population can handle playing games and separating fiction from reality -- it would be like banning butter because some people are obese. The people who perform these massacres usually display several warning signals. They're sociopaths, outsiders in school and overall fascinated with stuff like weapons and violence. Somehow, this seems kinda bound to happen, you just gotta realize it soon enough to prevent it.
Psycho killers have been around far longer than videogames, and so it seems much more like a social issue than anything else. Video games are new and will of course take the hit as scapegoats in the debate. Just like comics, movies, music and even books before them. You just gotta sit this all out until it blows over.
Video games are scapegoats for politicians and government organizations. Can't assess the cause of a shooting or violent behaviour? if the person ever played video games they are classified as an addicted gamer, and games are entirely blamed, not mental issues. In this case he had easy access to legal weapons, which is clearly the real problem.
Also, alldaybrekkie, i do not want to suggest anything, but I assume you at some point have developed mature rated games. if you wouldn't let your kids play them isn'r it sort of hippocritical to make them?
"Also, alldaybrekkie, i do not want to suggest anything, but I assume you at some point have developed mature rated games. if you wouldn't let your kids play them isn'r it sort of hippocritical to make them?"
Hypocrisy would be making a mature rated game and then letting your children play them after complaining about children playing mature rated games. Is someone who works a brewery a hypocrite because they wont let their children drink?
if a person cannot make the difference between a game and real life, the problem doesn t lie in the game.
We'll get PS4's sometime soon. And 3D specs - proper ones, that work. And loads of other innovations. Eventually it'll be difficult to tell the difference between killing in a game and killing in the real world. Til then, we'll just get closer all the time. Im a games designer, and I have kids. I dont let them play violent games. Im not stupid, I know its not good for them. Is it just a coincidence that the kids that carry out school shootings have always been playing violent games? Show me a school shooting where the child involved didnt like videogames at all...
Most kids play video games in some form. If you wanted to you could probably find a 'link' between chicken pox and video games.
Computer Games Gave My Child Chicken Pox.
Sad thing is it wouldn't surprise me to see a headline like that in the Sun.
I hate analysis like this because it assumes that normal, balanced people are thick and are unable rationalise between right and wrong or assumes that we are that feeble minded that we are unable to distinguish between the video game world and reality. BBFC's own studies show this to be the opposite of what actually happens; the study showed that you are likely to lose a sense of where you are with a movie than a video game. The reason being is because video games require constant input from the player and this acts to naturally pull you out of the game world as you are constantly on some level thinking about what action you are going to take and what input you need to perform to get it.
Blaming video games is also a lazy argument that is based in tabloid sensationalism and is insulting to the people who've lost their lives in such tragedies, surely they deserve a better investigation and understanding than this hack tabloid BS? Look closer at these cases and you'll find a mental health background where the person is or was under treatment for serious depressive or psycho-pathological disorders. Seroxat has been connected to at least one high profile high school shooting and has since been removed from market after it was discovered that the evidence submitted during the licensing process was below standard. Subsequent studies discovered suicidal thoughts induced in test subjects and increased aggressive tendency- particularly in children.
Of course its easier to blame a video game because that way we don't have to worry about the answers to those difficult questions about what is so wrong with our society that our children are on antidepressants in the first place.
One of the most recent shootings, the Virgina Tech one. As soon as it happened analists blamed violent video games. It was later found that he didn't play any video games. Of course the report that he didn't play violent video games got practically no air time at all.
In Montreal in the 1970s a man killed a bunch of women because he believed it was their fault that he didn't get into art school. I believe that it was at a university.
Shootings have been going on for a long time. No court has found a link to violent behaviour from violent video games. I wouldn't mind a ban on the sale of mature games to minors as long as they were rated appropriately. I mean come on, I'm 16 and if I didn't look older I would need my mom to buy Halo 3 for me. The game is practically a cartoon.
guns don t kill people.
video games do.
Impulsive hysteria really is the best way to describe this.
"a shy loner had access to a collection of legal firearms" - LMAO, so the kid had access to machine guns yet computer games are to blame?
If you removed computer games from his life entirely, the killing spree would have happened anyway.
If you removed the machine guns (for fuck's sake!), the killing spree would have been more of a hissy-fit spree, maybe with a few bruises and a black eye.