Slashdot Mirror
Brazil Bans Doom, Duke Nukem and 4 Other Games
CaptainCarrot writes "This story at Yahoo has the details. Apparently the police there think that some nutcase who went on a shooting spree in Sao Paulo last month was copying a scene from Duke Nukem. That he was also a coke fiend seems to be besides the point. "
OK, DOOM is really really bad, but Quake, Quake II, Quake III, Daikatana (did that ever get released?), Unreal, and who knows how many other games are perfectly OK? What the hell?!?!? At least they could try to be consistent with their censorship.
:) If you like dark comedies and FPS, you'll probably like Blood. The literary references are great, and there really is a lot of humor throughout the game. Also, the continuity between levels is better than any FPS I've seen before or since.
However, I've got to admit it, Blood is a very violent game. If you ever get a chance, play it.
Interesting, this was posted as game news, not as a censorship article...
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E2 IN2 IE?
> However, this is only a version of the >prosecution, which also stated that Meira had >traces of cocaine in his blood and had in the > >past been treated for stress-related problems.
:) 3am on 4 hours of sleep :)
When I was in high school, some kid in a nearby town slammed his car into building, killing himself. There was a note about how all his hard work had been for naught and all that sort of stuff and that's why he decieded to take his own life. When the police interviewed his friends they learned that in a recent game of Dungeons and Dragons, his character who he had worked on for nearly a year had fallen victim to a fatal curse or something like that.
When they interviewed other people they learned a injury was forcing him to miss out on his Senior year of high school football, and his girlfriend had just left him.
Guess which one that Media picked up on and blamed? Being in a town just a short ways away, we felt the impact a lot. I play RPGs a lot and during this time I was insulted a few times and even talked to by teachers at school, didn't like being called a satanist much either.
Almost all of the people who spoke to me had read the original news report which stated that D&D possibly caused this sucide run, very very few people read the later articles which started to point towards his other, real world problems.
Point I'm trying to make (in a long round about way and what is probably beaten to the ground by now:)) is this: how many of these cases where Video games have been blamed initially have actually turned out to be "not the whole story"?
I think there's just a whole idea of media and people as a whole who just run to the first thing they see and say "That's the reason!!"
Sorry for the ramble
One error I noticed in the story...Brazil had previously banned the car racing game "Carmaggedon" which the article refers to as "Armageddon"
One final note...I think this too shall pass. Does anyone besides me remember about 9 or 10 years ago, when Dungeons & Dragons was all over the news because some kids had used a sword to kill one of their neighbors and they played D&D all the time? This same type of hysteria and irrational attacks that focus on video games now focused on D&D then. Quite a few schools banned it from being played. Guess what? D&D is still here. 10 years from now, violent video games will still be here, and the level of detail will be incredible. Check here if you want to see what level of realism video games will be attaining next summer.
This hysteria shall pass, and shall come again some other time. Kinda like Halley's comet, only more frequent and quite a bit more annoying.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
When gunmen attacked a bar on the southern outskirts of Sao Paulo last weekend, killing four women and three men in a hail of bullets, perhaps the most terrifying feature of the incident was its sheer normality. It was Sao Paulo's 28th multiple shooting so far this year, and such carnage is a familiar weekend event in several other Brazilian cities.
[...]
The Justice Ministry estimates that the country's 160m people hold perhaps 20m guns, of which only 1.5m are registered. According to a recent United Nations report, 88% of murders in Brazil are committed with firearms, a higher figure than in any other country.
Duke Nukem is virtual. If you live in Brazil, you play the game for real.
You know, it's really hard to kill three people and wound eight with an automatic handgun if murder is illegal
Wait a minute, they already made murder illegal. I guess it didn't work.
were going to ban a video game because it "trains" people for violence or some such I would ban Rogue Spear. I jump back in my seat when I get nailed in that game (due in part to my speakers turned to maximum). The realism of Rogue Spear train people for tactical situations alot more than Quake with its rocket jumping and plasma guns. Video games are the LAST reason people kill other people unless you're a fscking camper out on the up on the quad damage platform. I suppose video games are being banned because coke and selective fire weapons have already been banned. Or so it goes.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Robin, would you like something to wash down that foot? The Brazilian government chose to make violent video games the scapegoat -- you made it cocaine.
People like to draw conclusions that match their personal convictions and blame the problem on something else. If you like violent games, you blame cocaine, and vice versa. Personally, I think it's got everything to do with boredom, watching overdubbed American sitcoms on Brazilian TV. We'll never REALLY know why it happened -- trying to find the WHY and pointing the finger elsewhere isn't going to do any good.
Speaking of futile quests to find meaning in things that have none, I feel another JonKatz article coming on...
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E2 IN2 IE?
Well.. nevermind. Looks like they might have actually completed the game. Two years behind schedule.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
It is not so much that we fear what we do not understand, as that we scapegoat what we do not enjoy. That which may be scapegoated may be suppressed; that which we enjoy ourselves we refuse to live without.
A recent poster mentioned a case in which, faced with the choice of blaming a suicide upon either a high school breakup, a sudden injury ending a football career, or a loss of a Dungeons and Dragons character, the media placed blame firmly upon the latter.
One can complain about the unfairness, or one can analyze it to determine the source of its absurdity in utterly plain terms.
Suppose, for a moment, that the media had chosen to scapegoat the breakup as the cause of the suicide. Immediate result--teen relationships deemed dangerous, parents advised to keep close watch on their out-of-control youth...but it doesn't work, because parents both remember their own, non-suicidal relationships and directly experience the estrangement caused if they meddle in teen relationships. Similarly, the many teens that had survived and moved on after a breakup realize the inaccuracy of blaming all breakups for the results of one breakup, and wouldn't care what their parents said anyway.
What's interesting, is while all parties involved in this scenario could *understand* the suicide in terms of a breakup, it's an ineffective scapegoat, and is thus curiously unsatisfying. If you can't suppress anything, the theory goes, you haven't done anything. It Could Happen Again.
What's really sad is that it's a direct consequence of being unable to put a dollar value on life! After all, if you absolutely *have* to do something, and you're not willing to take "acceptable losses" on the life side, you have to do something: Find non-life "acceptable losses" that are, of course, as little of a loss to you as possible. Teen dating is just too familiar to eliminate, so it's unsatisfying to blame.
And what of the two remaining options--football and D&D? Football's an American tradition. Only satanic freaks play D&D(note the distinct lack of understanding). Guess which makes the better Acceptable Loss.
And the real tragedy? Isolation is the real killer, but nobody wants to be forced to incur the "acceptable loss" of being friends with the isolated.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Cocaine is their number 1 cash crop. Can't crack down on the guys who grow that stuff. 'Sides which they kind of run the place. And shoot you if you try to crack down on them. So blame the video games. Much safer. No one was ever dragged from their car and shot execution style by a pissed off video game cartel.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The "theatre massacre" had an enormous repercussion in Brazilian media. The first move from the ministry was to restrict "The Fight Club" to sessions after 10PM and to adults only. Not a good deal IMHO -- the shooter is an adult, and it happened after 10PM anyway! Besides, the shooter declared that he didn't watch the movie before acting. What if it happened in Disney's "Tarzan", and if the guy was addicted to Civ or Tetris? Would they ban that too?
Last month a bank inside my school was robbed. The day after, they checked everyone's badges to enter the school. What's the idea? Would the bank robbers return using bad badges or something?
There's a clear difference between a guy that is already a psycho and happen to have certain (very popular) games in his computer, and all the rest of game players. How many of you slashdot readers have played Doom or DN and went to the streets exploding barrels and shooting people?
Brazil is a funny place indeed.
Here you can find a human rights report from the Department of State. It's not pretty at all.
/human1998/brazil.html
This excerpt is downright scaring:
The shooting of two suspected bank robbers by a police officer in Rio de Janeiro, recorded on video tape and broadcast in its entirety on the national evening news, graphically illustrated the commonplace use of lethal force by the police and the public's tolerant attitude toward such practices. On August 5, a uniformed police officer on duty in a busy public square in the Ipanema neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, alerted by a bystander, approached two men on a parked motorcycle who were suspected of just having robbed a local bank. The uniformed policeman drew his gun and approached the two men. As he came close enough to question them, he also attempted to take a gun from one suspect who then attempted to draw the gun himself. Without further warning, the policeman shot both suspects in the head at point blank range in succession and fired four more times as the suspects lay on the ground. The initial intense media coverage of the incident focused mostly on the positive public response to the policeman's actions. His superiors decorated him for bravery. Some media and human rights observers questioned the appropriateness of the officer's action, his lack of training and preparation to deal with such an incident, and his use of lethal force in a crowded public area.
http://www.usis.usemb.se/human
Officer: Why did you do it?
Dude: Nerf Arena Blast made me do it.
Maybe they just banned these to quiet down the folks who must have something "external" to blame. Forcing retailers to remove these from the shelves probably didn't make many retailers too upset. They didn't make them do anything with Quake II, Quake III, Rainbow Six, Unreal, etc... This way, the gov't was able to do what gov'ts are good at. Satisfy the whining ignorant masses without upsetting the people with the bucks.
Whew. Sorry for the long post...
However, let's put things in perspective - Brazil would never ban a game for nudity or sexual depictions. As wrong as this action is, it should be compared with American tolerance - even mainstream celebration - of hardcore violence, couple with their puritanical fear of sexuality (as if people aren't supposed to be sexual before the age 21!) Despite the wrongheadedness of the approach, I think Brazil has its priorities right.
Coincidentally enough, I'm in Rio do Janeiro at the moment.
I quote, "Duke Nukem and Doom have been designed by 3D Realms Co." Last time I checked, Doom was designed by id Software.
Go figure.
The one thing that gets me is that they ALL used two-button mice. I am SO used to 3-button wheel mice for Quake, I couldn't see using anything else.
However, the retro "Best of ID" c.d. is popular out here for nostalgic reasons. That's probably the release that will get pinged by this.
Ooosp, I meant outside of Sao Paulo, not Buenos Aires.
Excuse me, "Anonymous Coward" (that really made sense now!), but since I don't know where are you from, let me say that we do have laws here, and media whores such as this judge that banned the games (no matter how old they are, I don't give a damn, for I believe this is a case of freedom in all of its ways, not of how elite the game is, or how cool are its graphics, ...). There are instances of courts here. Yes, just like in the US. You know what I mean. Your thought is the most common between people that know nothing about foreign affairs. You called Brazil "they", like if it was a common, public and voted decision by the brazilian people. No, it was not. Most of us do not agree with that. We are not against the freedom of speech, acts, and will. We have pollitical parties, ranging from liberals to communists. What I mean, after all, is that the decision was taken by a single person, with its (stupid, btw) thought that the killer was inspirated on duke nukem 3d (it could have been grand theft auto, if it was a car theft, who knows what these kind of people can think). The judge is very uninformed about the case and all he/she got was popularity. We were shocked with such a stupid, and, btw, unconstitucional decision, and will FIGHT these kind of acts. I hope you understood what the situation is.