Slashdot Mirror
German Police Union Chief Wants Violent Game Ban After Shooting
A recent shooting in Germany has raised the ire of many politicians and officials, and they're turning to video games as a scapegoat after it was revealed that the shooter was a fan of Counterstrike and played Far Cry 2 the night before the rampage. First, a major retailer decided to drop mature-rated games altogether, and then the Minister for Social Affairs suggested restricting "addictive games," such as World of Warcraft, to adults only. Despite an unfavorable reaction from gamers and game developers alike, the chief of Germany's national police union has now spoken out against violent games as well, saying, "The world would be no poorer if there were no more killergames."
I can go to Germany, kill a bunch of people, tell everybody I am modeling myself after the chief of the German National Police and then they'll call for a ban on German National Police Chiefs. Sounds like a plan!
Seriously? This is completely ridiculous. There is no way that just video games alone made this person go on a shooting rampage. Several studies by groups such as Harvard Medical, The Journal of Adolescent Health, and the British Medical Journal have shown that there is no conclusive link between video games and violent activities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversy). These people don't think that uhm...the media for instance has anything to do with it? Let's get real here people. There is no way playing some Far Cry 2 or any game like it alone contributes to the initiative to do violent things.
For me, video games are a great way to relax after a long day. It's an unwinding period and I don't feel violent at all when playing. I'm not alone saying this, there are many others who feel exactly the same way. The German police chief should look at the facts and statistics before he jumps the gun.
Just my two cents.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
Blame the games. Because we know how many people are killed each year by mice and Dual Shock controllers.
This is in the same vein as people who blame pornography for rape.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
...leave it to a German to take one person and blame a mass of people for that one person's faults. counter-strike and Far cry 2 aren't animate objects. they can't load a clip for you. they can't cock the hammer and pull the trigger. Run a search for violence statistics on google and you'll see that since the creation of violent video games, world-wide violent crimes have gone down, not up.
for free wallpapers, visit Sargosis.com
So you're saying he's upset with the subject matter of Wolfenstein 3D?
It was also found he was breathing the night before he killed those people. We should ban that too.
You'll find that the vast majority of school-shooters play first-person shooters.
The vast majority of young males also player first-person shooters.
You'll even find that the vast majority of young males eat bread.
What exactly does this tell us?
I would say something about violence in Germany, but I am afraid someone might call Godwin's Law.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
This wouldn't have happened
1) if the guy hadn't had access to inordinate amounts of bullets (you can't kill 15 people with less than 15 bullets)
2) if the guy hadn't had access to a gun that was stored outside the legally required locked safe
3) if the guy hadn't been given weapons training even though his diagnosed mental condition (again, this was against the law)
Once you've addressed these issues, we may want to talk about banning violent games.
Look, the whole world culture is becoming more violent when compared to - say - the 1950s. Comics like Tales of the Black Freighter existed in the 1960s, but they were harder to get instead of say, Archie comics. Television had violence in shows like Gunsmoke, but always with a moral tone.
Movies like Last House on the Left would have a hard time getting made even in the 1980s. Yes, Texas Chainsaw Massacre existed, but Last House on the Left depicts a violent rape, and the Saw movies are torture porn.
Responses to web boards (every major newspaper now takes comments to about every single story) depicts a violent world. I took a look at the Entertainment Weekly website, looked at an article about Natasha Richardson's death from head injury. Unfortunately, the sysadmins at EW don't screen comments. It was horrific, with comments that are hard to repeat, many talking about what they would do to her corpse and many being glad that she "got what she deserved".
Videogames are simply reflecting this culture shift. A game like Bully simply reflects what goes on. It's a deep, and very unfortunate, confusion of the chicken and the egg. Somehow, legislators look at Resident Evil 5 and see something that they don't see in the remake of Dawn of the Dead. They look at Far Cry 2 and they take a pass on Sorority Row, a trailer I saw last night that looked as violent and horrific as anything I've seen from Wes Craven.
Somehow the interactive nature of video games makes people feel that it "thresholds" behavior. If you fantasize about harming animals, you need therapy. If you actually bind, torture and kill animals - you are quite a step closer to being a human killer. Somehow, this logic is being applied to shooters. That makes playing shooters itself a deviant behavior. I think it signals something deeply wrong with our culture, but it's interactivity alone does not single it out as threshold behavior.
Nah, we just have that a lot in Germany. Something bad happens, and politicians jump to it and want to ban violent computer games over it. So, for example, someone shoots some people at a school and the day later, we learn from the press that we need to ban Counterstrike, and also that suspicious pornography was found. Then of course we need to something against child pornography, regardless of no child pornography being involved whatsoever in the shooting or the shooter's private live. You get the idea.
That said, I would personally appreciate if computer game makers could cut down on the violence a little, I don't like it very much in my games. Of course, other adults who like to shoot pixels should be allowed to do so, and the government should stay out of it.
It seems that most responses to this sort of article are of the form "violent video games have nothing to do with what he did!" And then when something about a black shooter in a ghetto comes up, most people say "It's his society and location, if we could just get rid of the ghettos/black gangs/whatever, we'd have less violence/shooting/murders."
So it seems that in general, people do think that the environment one lives in affects one's decisions. Well, video games are part of my environment.
So instead of simply dismissing video games as having anything to do with decisions (which, IMO, is a ridiculous proposition, the idea you could spend 20+ hours a week playing video games and not have it affect you, whether that's morally, ethically, intellectually, ... grammatically ... what about, oh, say, myspace? no affect?)... I'd propose that we start posting how video games (especially violent ones, since that's this article's topic) DO affect you. How does virtual violence affect someone.
And preferably more than the curt "Duh, it lets you cool off virtually making you less likely to kill someone in real life." I'm not sure that is any more or less proven than video games causing real life shootings. If it does... then [citation needed]
Crappy journalistic research.
It's "just" the chief of the Hessian section of the DPolG, not the Chief on the federal level.
And there's several police unions as well, with the DPolG only being second largest (about half as big as the GdP with a few micro unions not worth mentioning).
Apart from that, it was pretty clear that everyone's gonna scream BANZOR KILLARGAMES after the little fuckwit ganked his old school, so no big surprise there.
What is imo most surprising is how careful and diplomatic Christian Pfeiffer is with his statements. He usually was pretty rabid anti-"Killergame" the last couple years and I expected him to gloat and go "TOLD YA" to his critics, but he actually says stuff like games are not the deciding factor, not the original cause for stuff like that, just a small piece of a big puzzle with social issues being the real problem, etc.
I'm confused. It's like if Jack Thompson would go ahead and offer to become BFF with John Carmack.
Sure. Let people buy guns. When they use them to kill people, ban video games. Hey, some crazies have killed people because God told them to! Let's ban religion!
When ever you see a tragedy such as a school or public shooting or anything for that matter the first thing you do is say why, the second thing you do is find the easiest answer. The truth is that if someone does something that people don't understand they tend to blame the thing that person did that they didn't understand. I would agree that violence can breed more violence but it's pretty hard to blame video games when you see it played out in movies, TV, on the streets, and anywhere. The question is, is that when every one I know plays violent video games and not one of them has been convicted of a violent crime what does that prove? Counter-strike has 4.2 million users(just the original not source as there would be some cross over between the users number comes from Wikipedia) world wide. If this game(which is 10 years old give or take a few months) truly breed the kind of violence that made this kid kill people that's 0.0000238% of all people that play are made violent enough to commit a crime, I'm pretty sure that's an anomaly.
I would hope that things would settle down people would look at it a little more logically and decide that this kind of thing is silly. I would hope parents would be aware of the mental state of their children and be trying to get help if they can, and be aware of what content they can handle. I have heard of kids calming down once fighting games were removed but as a parent you should be watching them instead of letting them socialize on video games alone. If you let them play video games watch or play with them, of course as they get older it's harder to do that besides not giving them money to buy games, and then if they are still violent it's tragic but at least you shouldn't be blaming video games at that point.
...as is evident from the hundreds of thousands of CS gamers who DIDN'T go on a murderous rampage.
The world would be no poorer if there were no more killergames.
Nor would it be any poorer if there were no movies in which people died, or books containing stories involving violent conflict.
I also think the world would get along just fine without football, golf, chess, horse races, and many other things.
But that doesn't in any way justify me taking those things away from people who want them....let alone those who turn a decent profit from facilitating them.
Understandable point of view - I'd be against eugenics if I was at the fucking stupid end of the 'tard spectrum.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Maybe they should ban guns?
TOP DSLR Cameras Reviews of the top DSLRs
External locus of control. The shooter had it. Why do you think 14 out of 15 victims were female? He was gunning for females, because he was blaming all females for his condition. He blamed them for so much that he thought they collectively deserved to die.
Now the interesting part: pretty much everybody who wants to ban videogames because of events like these believes just as much in an external locus of control as the shooter. Except instead of believing that a group of people is directly harming them, they believe that a group of people is influencing "their" people through violent games. And instead of wanting to shoot the people they accuse, they want to ban their product.
Granted, it's better to ban a product than to shoot someone. But the fundamental drive is the same. It's also the drive that's behind book burnings and conspiracy theories like the protocols of the elders of zion. It's bullshit that makes people feel better and in control - it's not them that's the problem, and there's an easy solution at hand.
I despise both the shooter and the idiots who clamor for video gaming bannings equally. One's more harmful than the other, but that's just because the other is a bigger pansy. I'm convinced that under the right circumstances, the head of the state's police union would be just as willing a shooter as the 17 year old kid.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
to reduce warfare! Ban Monopoly to reduce greed! Ban Poker to reduce deception! Games don't cause the darker side of human nature...they allow a safe acceptable way to explore it in symbolic simulacrum.
While we're at it, lets also ban drugs, that way, we'll never see them on our streets again! ... Oh wait, we do. The only thing this will accomplish is an advocacy of piracy. Do you really think passionate gamers aren't going to turn to the torrents to get their fix? Keep dreaming you simple-minded jackasses.
Help fight spam
During the "interviews" regarding WCG, most gamers start losing their highly competitive edge by 25. They're as young as 14-15. These people can make 100+ grand a year. Restricting gaming to adults is ridiculous and hurting people's livelihoods.
You think gaming is dangerous? How many people suffer more serious injuries than carpal tunnel syndrome in sports like Hockey, Football and Boxing? And how sick is Olympic gymnastics. Besides the fact they stunt their growths, and their level of obsession is insane.
You know what I think, Germany is bitter about not winning WCG, what with it being in their country in 2008 and is doing this so they can say, oh well, our competitors couldn't practice till they were 17 unlike the Koreans.
Besides if we don't practice zombie hunting, and anti-terrorist efforts, those losers who don't have experience will be victims of the zombie hordes and freak out if an AK47 lands in their hands and they have to defend themselves.
But seriously. Critical thinking skills. Hand-eye coordination. Prioritizing. Improved Reflexes and Motor skills. Typing Speed. Memorizing. Build-order. Tactics. Resource management. Tolerance to Mundane and repetitive actions. These are all skills garnered from games like SC, RE, CS, WC, racing, Civilization. These are skills maybe if our politicians had, they wouldn't have screwed up the world so much.
You mentioned *fiction* works. What about a Book that a significant percentage of people not only claim is NOT fiction, but a work full of moral and ethical teachings? What if that Book has scenes of drunkenness, incest, genocide, murder, prostitution, debauchery? How much worse would be the effect of that?
The world would be no poorer if there were no idiot politicians looking to gain fame and control the masses, and leveraging the bodies of the recently deceased to do it.
Ok guys. Here's the secret... Violent people (read: people with a tendency towards violence) do violent things. People with violent tendencies are DRAWN to more violent forms of entertainment. This is not to say that the form of entertainment is the cause. Millions of people around the world do not kill people the day after they play CS:S. I am also not saying that just because you have violent tendencies that playing CS:S or watching "Silence of the Lambs" or "Halloween" will cause you to go out and shoot, eat, or stab people. The people that do stuff like this are simply violent due to some freak coincidental chain of events that happened in their lives and the choices they made to cope with those events. Parents need to teach their children how to cope with stuff going wrong... But even if they fail that responsibility, it doesn't warrant the person committing such acts to do so. Nor does it warrant the government to ban these forms of entertainment for the general public. (Or people "targeted with violent tendencies" for that matter.)
You compare the fact that the UK had a period 350 years ago when it wasn't democratic to the fascism and systematic extermination of millions of minorities in Germany 70 years ago? I'm sorry, but that's preposterous
No its not. The UK under Cromwell exterminated 50% of the population of Ireland. AT LEAST 500,000 people were killed, because they were Catholic.
This is my sig.
Before video games were invented, Germans didn't murder people.
(j/k)
the kid was mobbed by his class and his teachers.
That's why he went to his former school to kill his harassers.
In total he played 10 minutes of FPS as shows his online counter.
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
There are many correlations between violence and other things. Studies have shown that 97% of all people who participate in school shootings are wearing pants at the time. Contact your government representatives and get them to ban wearing pants in school!
Yeah, I know: we're all tired of idiots saying "I blame society."
However, for smart children, this society is a mess. It has no goals. It suffocates us in platitudes (equality, generosity, compassion) while forcing us into a life of conformity to very basic aims, like money and popularity. While all this public bloviation goes on, commerce destroys everything good by turning it into a lowest common denominator product. The smart kids see this; everyone else is oblivious.
From my reading of the documents that school shooters like Jeff Weise, Eric Harris/Dylan Klebold, and Pekka-Eric Auvinen leave behind, this more than anything else is their motivation: our society is a monstrous hypocrite that has lost direction, and because it cannot face that, we all serve in boredom and frustration.
Futurist Traditionalism
What video game shall we blame for Adolf Hitler's actions?
(Oh, that's right. VIDEO GAMES weren't invented yet!!!)
The human mind is the greatest weapon ever created, plain and simple. Because the German police have lost touch with reality and decided to be patrol officers instead of being active in their society, what that teenager did was ALLOWED to happen.
There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
-- Dick Cavett, mocking the TV-violence debate