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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."
why not movies ? comics ? ads ? news ? etc, etc, etc
Smile... tomorrow will be worse.
In Soviet Russia these jokes are no longer funny - like here.
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?
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.
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
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
I think the statement here is that now that a country is willing to ban games, the "experiment" begins, to see whether games make an actual difference in the behavior of normal citizens.
And be glad I don't have mod points, I'd have modded you as Troll for assuming someone's race just because they disagree with you on an issue. I get so pissed off when people here someone is for finding out the truth (rather than making assumptions), they have to be white or something. I know that's not what you were saying, but if you'd actually read what is written, you'd know that is what you sound like.
I'd really like to see how this turns out so that all the "Games Cause Columbine" crackheads can STFU if it turns out a certain way.
Only in slashdot are posts of solidarity modded at -1 Redundant, while posts of antagonism are modded as -1 Flamebait.