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Honduras Bans All Violent Games & Toys
DaytonCIM writes "Honduras has issued a blanket ban on all violent videogames and toys, which is set to come into effect next June - giving retailers in the country a six month grace period to clear stocks of the games from their inventories. Among the banned games named are Resident Evil, Shadowman, Street Fighter, Turok, Perfect Dark, Quake and Doom. Read more here."
I always wondered why Honduras was such a violent place. Guess it was all those videogames, huh? Well, now that the problem has been solved, I guess I'll take the Misses to that now-peaceful paradise for a second honeymoon...
GMD
watch this
God... all 3 consumers in Honduras won't be able to support id software anymore.
Nyquil = Nectar of the devil
Oh no! Hondurans will never be able to play crappy knock-off computer games again!
Banned chess.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
why not movies ? comics ? ads ? news ? etc, etc, etc
Smile... tomorrow will be worse.
Despite never being released in the UK (well, not until lately) films like A Clockwork Orange and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre were available if you asked around people. Maybe not very good quality copies - but, with digital data there is no generation-to-generation loss of information...
What are they gonna do when all the Dinosaurs come over from that damn island again? What will their citizens use to train to defend themselves?? :)
The / in
Only wizard's chess will be banned.
In Soviet Russia these jokes are no longer funny - like here.
but for the life of me, I can't figure out what in the world it is. Someone do some research and figure out what the hell is going on.
We live in a society in which there is a large population of people who think it perfectly natural to do a risk/gain analysis of the idea of murdering someone, threatening to murder someone, etc.
This does not need to be the case...while a huge number of people are willing to beat up other people, cut or stab them, or shoot them, there are very very few people who are willing to gauge someone's eye out.
Our art and media does not portray eye-gaugings, and the very thought is sickening to people.
Well you know what? I think that if the very thought of what is portrayed in violent materials made us feel the way we feel about eye-gauging, that is, if we weren't desensitized to it, then it would not even occur to people to do a risk/gain analysis. (However irrationally).
You can really hurt someone by gauging their eyes out and letting them continue to live. There are a lot of people who want to hurt other people, who don't know any other way to live.
As long as our art shows us what it means to do x, in a context that does not sicken us, there will be x.
Policy-makers should look closely at the work of sociologists in Honduras over the next generation, looking especially at the ways in which violent crime changes.
Let me reiterate my main point: There are certain things in society that people don't think to do, because they are, and by rights should be, disgusting and wrong actions.
Violence and carnage should be one of these.
Honestly, I can get just as worked up over an abstract game (tetris, space invaders) as one in which I see the human form maimed and injured.
Look outside yourself for a moment: Do you think it is possible that we can redefine our ethos such that certain thoughts are sickening to people, and that among these thoughts there could be all actions violent?
You've got it all wrong... In SOVIET RUSSIA, games ban you!
Among the banned games named are Resident Evil, Shadowman, Street Fighter, Turok, Perfect Dark, Quake and Doom
That game is hardly playable, let alone violent enough to be banned!
(-1, didn't read the article)
When you have a social situation where the majority are scraping by, the minority are rich beyond belief, as well as living in gated communities with body guards, guns, etc., you will have this problem.
Lack of apathy breeds violence.
In this situation, if you banned all guns, knives, and machetes, you'd have people dying from being stabbed to death by forks.
If there is no hope and you have nothing to lose, then murder and violence is bound to happen.
Ban the recreational stuff, but make sure those guns are still easy to get.
Sent from your iPad.
In other news:
Honduras officially voted "worst country to be a kid."
Outside of Africa, that is...
In the Honduras they ban all violent games and toys...but... In Soviet Russia, all violent games and toys ban YOU.
It gets my vote for the best new arcade game of 1987!
I thought this thread was about Honduras, not the US.
I'd rather be playing Burgertime than either of them, though.
I live in a Central America country (Costa Rica) and even though it is somewhat diferent (a little better economically and socially, no army, etc.) I have to say that most politicians in such countries are just a bunch of jerks. Most of the laws (and we have lots more than other countries) are plain stupid, some contradictory, and most are not enforced. Why would such a law make it through a Congress? Well..., to show people that they are doing something to control violence, even if it is useless. The violent nature of the people come from years of civil war, a very militaristic system, whole villages laid with mine fields, not from video games. Video games do have some penetration, it is VERY common to have arcades where you can rent a Playstation for less than $1/hour, but the violence they see in games is just what they see on the news or on the street. Will it be enforced? not likely.
please excuse my apathy
Honestly, I can get just as worked up over an abstract game (tetris, space invaders) as one in which I see the human form maimed and injured.
As a Martian-American, I find your comment thoughtless and insensitive. Maiming space invaders is not okay! >:-[
Among the banned games named are Resident Evil, Shadowman, Street Fighter, Turok, Perfect Dark, Quake and the old stalwart of the moral moronity, Doom.
Yeah, yeah. What about Grand Theft Auto?
Do you think that's banned too?
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
Where's the logic in removing games which contain supposedly 'violent' behavior? I mean, if their fear is, in the first place, that these games have and will make human beings who interact with them more violent... WHY TAKE AWAY THE ONE THING PRIMARILY PACIFYING THEM!?
"Sir! The gamers! They're coming! They've constructed their own weapons of mass destruction modeled after those in all of these games. I'm starting to think that this was a BAD idea!"
The now angsty gamers will rise and fight back. Afterall, they've been made violent by what they loved, and now that it's gone, they need to bleed off that violence. Heh. Heh. Heh.
Informatus Technologicus
The US ambassador who formerly presided over the use of Honduras as a staging and supply area for a Nicaraguan terrorist force is now the US ambassador to the UN.
It would be nice to see the actual Honduran document describing this ban -- the list of "named" games here is fairly ridiculous.
This could just be a case of sloppy journalism (no surprise to find that here on the Internet) but how could any list of violent games fail to include Grand Theft Auto? GTA3 and Vice City are not only incredibly violent games, they're really good games. This combination will result in the maximum violent media exposure.
Assuming that is the concern here, games like this (how about DOAX Beach Volleyball -- that looks like it'll be the best volleyball game ever made!) should be gigantic targets for censorship.
All in all, though, this kind of censorship is going to prove fruitless. Even if all the children in a country of six million people play Grand Theft Auto until their eyes bleed, only a very small number of them will be able to pull of the feat of attaining a sniper rifle, a rocket launcher and learning to steal cars in order to recreate their gaming experience in the real world. This would be such a small number of children, in fact, that it will be fundamentally impossible to positively pin sole blame on these violent games.
However, take a game like Kingpin. (Anyone remember Kingpin?) Every single child in Honduras could emulate the swearing exchanges from Kingpin and the only result would be teachers giving up in disgust and grand parents weeping silently on their death beds. All that swearing and macho posturing would be very easy for a child to copy, there is really nothing to control that kind of behavior.
Sure, video games can be strong role models and, sure, they can be very bad role models. But let's think about exactly how that works.
And let's get some more information, for crying out loud.
Spang!
-Dylan
They didn't gouge it all the way out. His sight was back to normal after 6 months or so I heard....
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
If the soviet union still existed it would be likely that video games would be banned not because of the violence, but because of the american ideals in them. (an american on mars in DOOM, individual company ownership in Duke Nukem, ect)
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
No more street fighter!?! Oh well, I guess the streets will be safe from stray Hadoken fireballs and Sonic Booms.
--- If we knew half the things we shouldn't we'd stop wishing we knew it all
I guess something good is that they get to experiment with that kind of law and if it really doesn't work out then the rest of the world would have also learned. I do feel sorry for the kids though, but they would have to ban the Internet too no? And what exactly is a violent toy? Any kind of toy could be used violently.
Also it would be interesting how kinds exteriorate violent emotions, if they can't use toys and play games maybe they will be violent for real.
It won't work... I think it was mostly passed so they can look north and think out loud to the media "Hey, we're less violent than the USA." The only real result of this will be massive amounts of bootlegs, just like when banning most items. Berrik
Current karma: Terrible (due to mods without a sense of humor)
what happened (apart from GB rising to World Superpower)
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
what about toy hammers & screwdrivers & cars & tanks
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Now, when they complete phase 2 of the operation (covering all surfaces with Nerf(TM) foam), We can all go live there in paradise.
I worked on one of the games mentioned. It's mildly amusing that the game they're judging is a toned down version of what the original design included. Near the end of development, there was a big surge in media condemnation of violence in computer games in the US. Very probably at the time of one of the school shootings, but my memory isn't what it used to be. Anyway, management reviewed the game and understandably - after donning clean pairs of trousers - asked us to remove a fair amount of the more questionable content.
I recall one instance was a room with a disembowelled body pinned to the ceiling with various medical implements. It was hastily removed by one of the artists just deleting the necessary texture maps, rendering the object invisible. The subsequent bug report I got was something along the lines of "Level x, room y : ceiling bleeds when shot"...
This may actually be a blessing in disguise to the rest of the world. When violence maintains its levels after such a ban, there will be good proof that games aren't an exclusive cause.
Not that the morons will care, of course.
Everywhere I go I hear "It's the game's fault." or "It's the media's fault." or even "That violent music." When you live in a militaristic culture that teaches violence as the best form of conflict resolution, and the people that kids have over them put violence into practice in daily policy, why is there such a huge surprise when the kids do violent things? If you want your kids to not be violent, you have to set the example for them. Banning violent games, toys or art is putting a band-aid over a bomb crater. Outlawing firearms does no good either. Until the underlying culture of violence is challenged it won't matter what you ban.
I'm a happy pessimist. I expect and prepare for the worst, when it doesn't happen I am pleasantly surprised.
Even though violence may very well stay near the same level, they'll find a way to skew the results. Also, if they're on a big anti-violence kick, they'll probably up things like police response, etc, and other measures which might actually have an effect.
After a bunch of kids get a ride in the blue-and-white, and settle down a bit... violence decreases, but they say "hey look, see banning those video games is working!"
Of course, a very realistic and possible scenario is that kids who previously gamed and/or played violent games, will now find other forms of entertainment that may be less savory. Instead of being distracted, they can go causing fights, etc, because they are bored. This isn't to say that all kids who play video games are bad, but it will likely happen because many lose their "outlet for frustration."
It strikes me as a bit silly that they're banning virtual entertainment when they seem quite happy starting a war about a football match! (or should I say 'soccer' - I was forgetting you yankees hijacked the name 'football'!)
Power pills and gigantic turkey legs on platters will be able to safely walk the streets at night. Thank you, Honduras, for teaching us what it is to love again.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
ists.
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