China Bans Games That "Glorify Gangsters' Lives"

As we discussed in June, China has been working on plans to impose further restrictions on the games that can be sold or publicized within its borders. The Chinese government has now begun implementing those plans, starting with games that involve gangs, saying, "These games encourage people to deceive, loot and kill, and glorify gangsters' lives. It has a bad influence on youngsters." According to a Xinhua news agency, "The ministry ordered its law enforcement bodies to step up oversight and harshly punish those sites that continue to run such games."

Comments

Genes Determine Violence

[Anonymous Coward]

Beijing is wasting its time. Genes determine violence. Some ethnic groups are prone to violence. Playing violent video games will not affect the rate of violence.

Consider Africans (and African-Americans). They murder and rape at a much higher rate than either Europeans or Japanese. Most Africans in Africa cannot even afford video games, yet they rape and kill with wild abandon.

Look at the crime statistics of South Africa. After the Africans seized control from the Whites, the rate of violence skyrocketed.

Thus just proves the old saying: you can take the African out of the jungle, but you cannot take the jungle out of the African.

Re:Real vs Fake

[symes]

Perhaps the Chinese are confident that their games industry can come up with games that are both fun, engaging and yet do not glorify reckless murder. And I'm sorry to all you hand wavers out there decrying this decision because "the Chinese should be able to discern reality from fiction" - unfortunately there is a significant number of people in this world who cannot and these games contribute to a normative environment that condones violence. Just look at how easily kids are convinced that they should wear the latest clothes from brand X, drink coke, eat macdonalds, listen to hip hop, walk with a swagger... you sincerely believe some of these kids are not influenced by these games? I think it is a sad indictment of the moral state of our society when people argue for the right to murder - real or imagined.

Now get off my lawn

Re:Small Potatoes

[Improv]

You're talking as if western libertene thought is a faith. It's another way to run a society, and one that we've probably taken a bit too far (even if its foundations are sound).

We'd probably be better off if parents (opressors!) were to make sure that youth in the US have better role models than our rappers. Consumerism has, at least in some areas, created terrible role models for children and given us a cultural rot that wastes potential of individuals and encourages crime. We may be able to find ways to combat this that are compatible with a libertene culture (with or without the state, we have an obligation to do cultural steering). China's taking a more direct route to fix an obvious problem, while the worst flavours of our political philosophies have a head-in-the-sand attitude, refusing to use the state to do any cultural maintenance/steering/enrichment and refusing to see it as an obligation outside the state. The latter are proposing a suicide pact where they would have us watch as society falls apart because to do anything else would mean not being "neutral".