Germany trying to ban violent games?
MonsieurEvil
Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 4Members, Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 4Members, Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
<div class="IPBDescription">Where my teutons at?</div><a href="http://www.gamezine.co.uk/news/formats/xbox360/all-violent-video-games-be-banned-in-germany-$1301757.htm" target="_blank">http://www.gamezine.co.uk/news/formats/xbo...036;1301757.htm</a>
"According to german website Chip Online and supported by Spiegel Online, ministers of the interior of all sixteen German federal states came together for a conference today in Bremerhaven where they agreed to forbid the production and distribution of all video games "where the main part is to realistically play the killing of people or other cruel or unhuman acts of violence against humans or manlike characters."
"The law is hoped to come into effect before the country's federal elections in September."
Anyone here from Germany that can back up this story (looking at you Nem)? Sounds like the whole country is being run by Jack Thompson.
Movies and TV and music full of violence still allowed though. As are soccer hooligans.
"According to german website Chip Online and supported by Spiegel Online, ministers of the interior of all sixteen German federal states came together for a conference today in Bremerhaven where they agreed to forbid the production and distribution of all video games "where the main part is to realistically play the killing of people or other cruel or unhuman acts of violence against humans or manlike characters."
"The law is hoped to come into effect before the country's federal elections in September."
Anyone here from Germany that can back up this story (looking at you Nem)? Sounds like the whole country is being run by Jack Thompson.
Movies and TV and music full of violence still allowed though. As are soccer hooligans.
Comments
There was a school shooting a couple weeks ago - and behold, the shooter played Counterstrike (apparently he also had a depression and access to real guns, but who cares about that...).
So naturally, the dumb ass politicians blame everything on PC games.
Recently two cities cancelled LAN tournaments, they didn't care about a weapons expo though.
This resulted in a public demonstration of ~500 players yesterday.
I can only hope that the parliament stops this another time.
They even try to forbid paintball...at least that's what they tell the press to seem all busy and pretend to do something about the problem.
Of course, the silliest thing about this is that this won't prevent people from PLAYING violent video games. It'll prevent them from BUYING them. The copyright lobby should pay close attention to this stuff, because a country of 80 million (out of which <insert number> percent buy video games) is at risk of being turned from customers into pirates.
I associate Germany with censorship, beer, and efficiency.
Of course, a lot of Germans I've met contradict this perception, but at the same time a lot (probably the majority) confirm it.
Shortly before elections you throw reason overboard and try catch as many undecided votes as possible, by beating down on something your voting demographic does not care about.
Hence you are not going after the weapon lobby und the "Schützenvereine" cause they roughly represent (according to their own numbers) 10 million members who are in the voting age.
Same thing with the online censcorship:
It was planned to have all ISPs add entires to their DNS serves so that if you are trying to reach a banned domain you will be redirected to a different domain which showed a stop sign. Everyone who was against this has been called pro child porn. Of course everyone with a bit of knowledge was against this ineffective and also dangerous meassure, cause the BKA (Federal crime buro) was supposed to maintain these ban lists and did not need to make them public. THis meant that you could easily cencor everything at your leisure. IF you however publicly post those ban lists, then you give everyone a list with domains which contain child porn.
Quite the dilemma, aint it? So why not simly go after the actual producers or for a first step simply ###### call the domain hosters and tell them: You know, under the domain asdfbnhsdf.com hosed by you there is child porn, please delete? The answer is simply: By adding these centralized bans you can prepare to ban the political opposition and its pretty easy to force weak minds in line with the basiv premise:
If you are not for my idea you are a child rapist.
Funny story: I started permanently saving DNS lists, so I can IP surf if I have to...
Let me just list out the famous German standup comedians. There's... eh... well there was that guy...umm...and wait, remember the...hmmm...
Well Bismark was funny <i>looking</i>, does that count?
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
..funny comparrison..you're indeed funny ppl!
Doesn't that count as making them not "manlike", or does "manlike" just mean "two arms and two legs". And a head. And a torso. (and hands and feet).
Censorship of anything never sits well with me, but I imagine something that would effectively destroy the video game industry in germany would be voted out or quickly overturned after mass annoyance (I doubt it's something that would cause serious protests, however).
"...where the main part is to realistically play the killing of people or other cruel or unhuman acts of violence against humans or manlike characters."
A cynic (which totally isn't me) would be tempted to say that Germany officially endorses animal cruelty. But not me. Nope.
For the first time in my life, I'm ashamed of my country and it has nothing to do with genocide.
No, there is no official censoring.
Publishers sometimes change contents to get a 16+ instead of a 18+ rating etc.
At least Germany has a healthy relationship to nudity.
Not like you prudish americans (Hot Coffe Mod anyone?) <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
This is really the first time in your life that you've found anything in Germany to be ashamed of besides the Holocaust? Really?
Publishers sometimes change contents to get a 16+ instead of a 18+ rating etc.
At least Germany has a healthy relationship to nudity.
Not like you prudish americans (Hot Coffe Mod anyone?) <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" /><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
My eyes are opened.
My country loves nudity. One of our national papers has a topless model on page 3 every day. Which means it's a terrible newspaper, and yet still maintains high sales.
P-P-P-PWND !!"!"12121223456 :DDDDDD
<!--quoteo(post=1710804:date=Jun 7 2009, 12:55 PM:name=MonsieurEvil)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (MonsieurEvil @ Jun 7 2009, 12:55 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1710804"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Let me just list out the famous German standup comedians. There's... eh... well there was that guy...umm...and wait, remember the...hmmm...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, if you're looking for political humor, one obviously has to mention Dieter Hildebrand, a man who once held up a national construction project in the area of a billion DM by satirising it. He retired a few years ago, though. More recent ones I enjoy would be Georg Schramm and Volker Pispers. Both are pretty far to the left, but what did you expect from me?
If you're more into the topical humor, I'd suggest Dieter Nuhr or Michael Mittermeier. The latter one actually had quite a bit of success in New York's comedy clubs, but the language barrier proved too big in the end. And of course, let's not forget Germany's most popular late-night host, Harald Schmidt.
There's quite a lively scene, really. It's just that they, you know, speak German.
Oh, you were talking about the "Killerspiel" debate.
Well, as someone who has met the people perpetuating it, who has read the research they base themselves on, and who happens to know a few of Germany's games lobbyists, my opinion on the whole thing can most easily be summed up as: "Ha-Ha!"
Should I elaborate? Well, oh Innenministerkonferenz, how do disbelieve you? Let me count the ways:
<ul><li>Any attempt at an outright ban on a type of media is capital-U unconstitutional. Article 5 of the Grundgesetz, which enforces freedom of opinion, has received more protection from the German Supreme Court than any other aspect of our constitution, and it features but two exceptions: Youth protection (not applicable for blanket bans), and racism.
Every one of the ministers of the interior knows that the proposed bill would not only fail, it would likely end the career of the persons more visibly connected to its passing.</li><li><i>Nobody</i> knows what exactly a "Killerspiel" is supposed to be. They really have no idea what exactly to ban here. All hitherto proposed bills would not have actually been able to ban Counter-Strike, for example.</li><li>They <i>all</i> want the games industry in their states. Günther Beckstein, the Bavarian minister of the interior, actually handed out the German Computer Game Award a few months ago - which makes sense 'cuz Bavaria is still smarting from alienating Crytek. None of them really want to make that mistake again.</li></ul>
This is electroal posturing that'll look good in front of the older demographics and can be easily attributed to the <i>other</i> ministers in front of the younger voters. I don't even feel like getting upset by as obvious a publicity stunt as this one.
Ok, <i>slightly</i> off-topic, but anyway.
I'm not saying there's no nudity in the USA, of course there is. But do you remember the Janet Jackson incident?
One nipple, visible for a second, caused a "riot".
In Germany, Eminem pulled his pants down on a fairly well-known TV show. No one cared.
I even saw a election poster with a topless girl on it once. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
That would have been banned in the USA.
But back to video games...
b) Ya germany likes to censor things, alot. They kinda have this thing against violence these days, unless your one of those twisted german sadists. It takes about a week for intrepid reverse engineers to figure out how to restore the violence to most of these DE specific censored titles, or at least that is what my experience has been looking at Folks complain about the lack of blood (hahah ns 1.x)
Germany / Europe seem to more at home with sexuality and the human body (as evident with all this nudieness)
c) I will never forgive you for taking my +v in #naturalselection
d) Nemesis zero makes an eloquent post. It almost wants me to go find the fake movie poster staring MonsE Vs. Ned (the discussion forums, hahaha)
Well Bismark was funny <i>looking</i>, does that count?
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" /><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
How many french stand-up comedians can you list? How many italian ones? How about russian ones? Japanese? Indian? You don't know german stand-up comedians because you don't speak german and they do. How much german television do you watch? How many german stand-up shows do you go to? The reason you don't know any german stand-up comedians is because you've never made an effort to know about any german stand-up comedians. I can't fault you for that - you don't speak german, so it'd be a waste of your time. I do however fault you for making an argument from ignorance.
<ul><li>Games are not actually censored in Germany. Censorship is defined as a pre-viewing of media that decides over its publication. In principle, I can publish anything I want over here.</li><li>Freedom of speech is limited by youth protection and anti-racism laws in Germany. As such, there are institutions that are allowed to redact racist media (Neo-Nazi material tends to fall under that heading), and institutions that can order media to be made inaccessible to minors (here defined as anyone below 18).</li><li>In practice, this means that if you want to offer your game in a space accessible to minors, it has to be approved by the Entertainment Software Self-Control Board (which is independent from the German state and did, for example, rate CS at 'our' PG16). If you don't want to do that, don't sell it where minors can see it.</li><li>Since publishers <i>like</i> to sell to minors, they will alter their games in ways that will make them acceptable to the board. Hence the tendency to bleed green. Yeah, we don't know how that improves things, either, but there's no rules system that can't be gamed.</li><li>In some cases (Epic, I'm looking at you), companies may decide that this process won't be economical for them, and not access the German market.</li></ul>
In any case, it is not that difficult for adults to get access to imported and therefore unrated games, and parental consent trumps any of the described rules. The system is, at worst, inconvenient. Frankly, I am not even convinced it is such a wrong way of doing things.
<!--quoteo(post=1710850:date=Jun 7 2009, 03:21 PM:name=lolfighter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (lolfighter @ Jun 7 2009, 03:21 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1710850"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I do however fault you for making an argument from ignorance.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That doesn't seem fair. The poor old man finally manages to construct <i>some</i> argument, and you start faulting him on the specifics? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
Seriously, I don't think MonsE was being entirely serious on that post you cited there, <i>lolfighter</i>...
What, this one?
<img src="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/uploads/post-28-1047485023.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Seriously, I don't think MonsE was being entirely serious on that post you cited there, <i>lolfighter...</i><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Oh. Well, in that case, neither was I.
I'm not saying there's no nudity in the USA, of course there is. But do you remember the Janet Jackson incident?
One nipple, visible for a second, caused a "riot".
In Germany, Eminem pulled his pants down on a fairly well-known TV show. No one cared.
I even saw a election poster with a topless girl on it once. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
That would have been banned in the USA.
But back to video games...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
But I'm not american <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
I wonder when people will stop trying to blame video games for everything. Will it eventually just die out, or will we have to wait for the next thing (first it was music, then movies, then videos, now games)? Because it's getting tiresome. Hell, all of the "experiments" that prove that video games cause violent behaviour would get laughed at if a student proposed them for an undergraduate level psychology experiment. Because they are poorly designed and don't test what they're claiming they do, or at least the reported results are not actually what they are testing for.
Also, the discussion forum became boring when science vs religion debates were banned. They were the <i>best of them all</i>.