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Crytek Considers Leaving Germany Over Game Law
Heise is reporting that the largest German game developer and makers of the much-anticipated upcoming title Crysis, Crytek, are considering leaving the country in anticipation of a new restrictive law. "The Conference of Interior Ministers (IMK) of the countries had unanimously decided on a production and distribution ban for violent computer games for the first time in the end of May. The responsible Federal Ministry of Family Affairs is presently working on a less drastic draft of a law for the protection of children and youth. Instead of only the previous 'violence glorifying' games, also the 'violence dominated' games should be indexed by the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons (BPjM) in the future. These may then no longer be advertised and sold to youths."
http://www.digitalbattle.com/2006/11/29/crytek-mig ht-leave-germany/
November 29th, 2006
"Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons"
As socially progressive/liberal as Germany is in many ways, the sheer fact that it has such an organization is astounding and disappointing to me. First of all, it sounds way too much like something only a "Totalitarian Regime"(tm) would have. Second, it's such a misappropriation of resources it's laughable.
I like basketball!!1!
Nannyfascist.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
There are authoritarian governmental forces in Germany?! What's this world coming to?
This really shouldn't be much of a surprise. If a government essentially makes your business illegal, you've got three options. Close shop, move, or go underground.
I have empathy for the Germans, but, let it happen. Let the gaming entertainment industry leave. Let the nanny-state take over. Then pay attention as crime doesn't go down, as youths don't magically become better adjusted, as tax receipts go down due to industry lost.
Look how long it took for Prohibition in the US to be tossed out the window. Look at what the War on Drugs STILL hasn't managed to succeed in. And, compared to gaming, these two examples are MUCH more important.
More Twoson than Cupertino
In general, I've found that the German government is extremely concerned about not repeating the mistakes of the past. Unfortunately, they seem to choose censorship as the way to accomplish that goal time and time again. C.f. laws making it a felony to deny the Holocaust (I don't deny it, but the cones who do still deserve their free speech).
(rot13) rpbzbab@tznvy.pbz
game developer and makers of the much-anticipated upcoming title Crysis, Crytek, are considering leaving the country in anticipation of a new restrictive law. Said one local, "I am so filled with anticipation that my genitals have sucked up into my body cavity."
Google it. I can't make this shit up.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Organizations and laws which regulate the media with regard to protecting minors from harmful/disturbing content exist almost everywhere. Try to say "shit" or show a nipple on American television. Ask Rockstar how they feel about hot chocolate.
Why do we need legislation to protect children?
Isn't that what parents are for?
Parents should know their kids and what their kids are doing.
Outlawing lazy/ignorant parents, I think, would be much more productive than banning video games and porn.
Godwin'd in less than half an hour
NEW RECORD!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Why don't legislators ask for actual evidence of harm to children or society in general before chasing economically-productive companies out of their country?
Is it one of those "socialism" things, or what? Somebody help me out here.
Well it makes sense, Germany has always, through out its history been a peace loving nation.
Ach du lieber!
Well, the mishaps of the (in alphabetical order)
_ world_history) and then repeated by the Germans sixty years ago, which apparently cannot be forgotten and forgiven unlike the other? Why on Earth is the WWII repeated in games over and over again? There are more interesting and more technologically advanced battles to render, if the gameplay itself is the motif:
% 80%931989
% 80%932002
% 80%93current
Chinese
English
French
Japanese
Mongols
Portuguese
Russians
Spaniards
and many many other over the centuries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_lethal_wars_in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_1945%E2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_1990%E2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_2003%E2
Why is Germany such a scapegoat, still?! It makes no sense. Yet, do you think that the "Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons" is a self-imposed institution? Probably it is, after all. Introspect is not that uncommon.
- - -
Unless you give up your job and homeschool your kids, it's kind of hard to know (let alone control) what they're doing 24/7. And I'm not sure that's desirable, either.
I'm sure you wouldn't like to see explosives manufacturers (for example) targeting your 8-year-old kids. Buy a stick of dynamite, throw it at your friends, it'll be a blast! (add footage of cartoon character covered in soot, but still in one piece, and then everbody laughs).
Likewise, some people think that certain kinds of games (or certain kinds of movies, powertools, guns, junk food, industrial chemicals, cigarettes, liquor, etc.) should not be advertised or sold directly to children. It's a crazy notion, I know...
Your talk about "banning videogames" suggests that you don't know what this law says, and didn't even bother to RTFA (in fact, it looks like you didn't even read the fucking summary, let alone the fucking article). The law doesn't "ban" any games and doesn't even forbid children from playing those games. All it says is that the games can't be advertised or sold directly to children. If your kids want to play it, they can simply ask you to buy it for them.
So you see, this law is exactly what you were asking for: it "outlaws ignorant parents" by making sure they are informed, and forces them to make a conscious decision.
What Crytek is doing here is called "getting free publicity". Their "threat to leave the country" is nonsensical, for two reasons:
1. The place where the game is developed makes no difference; the law applies to all games marketed and sold in Germany. They could move to Mars and that wouldn't make any difference.
2. All this law does is force kids to buy the games through their parents. Is Crytek's target market "kids who buy and play games without telling their parents"? Even if it is (which I find hard to believe), there's still #1.
Did you bother to RTFA? This law simply forbids companies from advertising the games directly at kids ("stalking" them, to use your analogy) and shops from selling the games directly to kids (picture your own analogy). See the similarity?
Companies are still free to develop the games and kids are still free to ask their parents to buy the game for them.
> Here's a better way to accomplish the desired result- make it
> illegal for children to possess/play such games and have
> consequences for parents who fail their children in this regard.
While you're at it, why not prosecute parents that fail to indoctrinate their children with the state-approved worldview or religion? Surely they are "failing their children" by letting them see or think about something the Beloved Leader doesn't approve. Yes, let's turn parenting into the KGB.
If my kids want to play Doom, and if I think they're mature enough to play Doom, it's none of the government's fucking business. But since I can't (and have no desire to) control what my kids see 24/7, I expect sane limits on what can be advertised and sold directly to them. That is what this law does; it prevents marketing departments from undermining parenting, by forcing children to buy violent games through their parents.
Your notions of parenting and capitalism (not to mention freedom) must be seriously screwed up if you think that it should be legal to advertise and sell a certain product to children, but then it should be illegal for them to own it, with consequences for the rest of their family.
First I want to mention that I consider games as art. Many people put much effort into the production process with graphics, sound and gameplay. Each game is individual (has its special character). I am German and I won't buy any games in Germany that were originally produced for adult gamers. Why? Because they all have been changed until "child-safe". Wtf should I do with such a game? I give you one example... one of the worst things I've ever seen. Remember the game Commandos? Sometimes when you want to silently kill a soldier you have to take him on your back and pull him somewhere where you can hide the corpse. What did Germany do with this game, you ask? Well, when you kill the soldier he instanty becames a grave with a tombstone. Well you can imagine how idiotic it is to see someone carry a grave around. Then there are "war glorifying games", like Commando (not Commandos!). It's one of the first games that have been restricted here. What the hell is war-glorifying in this simple shooter with 8x8 pixel sprites? They are INSANE here in Germany. I warn you not to care about selling games here, because it is expensive to alter graphics and sound to make it "Germany-compatible". Forget it simply. Adults will buy games in foreign countries and hope that the expensive art pieces won't be discovered by the customs. And to the games industry: please don't alter games. Don't release them here, if you can't. We gamers are adults and can use our credit cards, if we really like something.
Nintendo Europe is also headquartered in Germany (I've been to their offices; it's weird, because they're on an industrial estate on the outskirts of this little village in the middle of nowhere) - what happens if this creeping nannyism spreads to include killing creatures with a sword or a bow (Zelda) or shooting aliens (Metroid) or jumping on turtles (Mario)?
You must think in Russian.
"Various regulatory branches and legislators made up of in-bred idiots who have apparently never read the constitution have tried multiple times to pull such worthless crap..."
Ah, you're talking about George W. Bush!
"...and been shot down."
Oh wait, you weren't.
Hitler played too many PS1 games back in Austria, look what happened to him! War and violence is a new phenomenon, lets burn everyone at the stake till the issue goes away. Oh and for people surprised germany has so many totalitarian laws, the funniest part is they create them to counter Nazism, apparently strict over reaching laws will stamp this issue out, oh, the delicious irony :)
Crytek leaving Germany because of a law prohibiting them to advertise and sell violent games directly to kids ? That would give the expression "political refugee" a whole new sense.
Seriously, we already have had examples of that kind of laws. I can't remember now in which country it has been prohibited to sell and advertise some product to minors, causing all the industry, for that reason, to emmigrate, staff and employees and their families. The product was alcoholic beverages, I believe...
I bet that law will be as efficient. The kids already know about the game, they'll be more interested in having it, they'll love the challenge, and they'll find young adults to buy it for them.
If you'd like to be shocked (as I was) pick up an American History textbook from a teens history class. You'll have to dig through a lot of other facts in records to even understand how the "historians" could get so screwed up. Garbage in, garbage out.
I'm not sure how this is any different to the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) or the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America). I'm not opposed to violence in film just because they are violence but I don't like the idea of children growing up with the idea that it's okay to run around a city shooting people where the worst thing that can happen is you are shot by police and wake up outside the hospital without your weapons. It's a fine line between over-the-top-censorship (like Wal-Mart's beeping out of expletives in all their music) and rightful prevention of exposure to the kind of violent ideas that might influence a child (a nine-year-old playing Hitman: Blood Money or Bully).
I remember being around age 13/14 when GTA San Andreas was released, I had some contrasting thoughts. On the one hand I was fed up listening to people at school go on about gratuitous violence and it seemed to me they were becoming de-sensitized to it on some level; on the other, i enjoyed playing the game as much as they did as soon as it came out on PC - and it hasn't made me a violent person. As far as I know no-one at my school has went on to kill people for money or for the sake of it, surely realising the distinction between fantasy and reality, but I wouldn't find it hard to believe that some people were influenced by it. I think what we need is an objective study by some reputably psychologists into the way teens distinguish between reality and what happens in video games, there surely is evidence out there but I'm not aware of it...
Last year I spent a couple of nights sleeping in the same place as German choir which was on tour. Everybody was just walking around naked the whole time.
No sig today...
Citizens are weary of fascist governments banning weapons before a takeover, especially in Germany. But they won't notice if the government bans all media displaying violence. That is, violence not used by police. A few 'cops and robbers' games get by with no 'mature' rating as long as you play a cop shooting civilians. As a result, people are naturally defenseless with or without arms, and they fear and obey the government with only verbal protests. They just vent their anger with peaceful political drawings and debates.
I noticed this tactic when I lived in Colorado and saw a few Mexican news channels. Things are different in the outside world. They showed wars, riots, people who actually stood up for themselves and returned fire at police. They showed raw videos of deaths and injuries in Iraq. You never see any of that on American TV. A news report of bombings will show an overhead map of Iraq, and a cute little 'bomb' symbol where the incident took place, or maybe a demolished building and a kill count. No carcasses, nobody physically getting an arm blown off. You'll see a few riots on the 'shocking police videos' shows - a high-school protest riot accompanied by the narrator, saying "Fortunately, the kids were detained with minimal deaths from police fire." A passing news report "Riots in the mid-East were quelled by police today. 45 deaths, mostly civilians. Now for sports."
So, we believe there's nobody fighting the government and no hope for humanity. Might as well set back until the aliens kill us.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
CryTek has licensed its CryEngine, graphics engine, technology to other games like Entropia Universe from Sweden where you can kill monsters for money.
I think that if CryTek finally needs to move won't need to go too far within Europe, but I don't think this measure is going to be too effective as Germany is not an isolated island in a globalized world.
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