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German ministers attack "Killerspiele" News
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Tom Bramwell
A group of German interior ministers plans to ask the Bundestag to ban the production and distribution of so-called "Killerspiele" - or violent videogames.
According to Welt Online (thanks Eurogamer.de), the interior ministers for Germany's 16 federal states believe the games reduce our inhibitions and therefore pose a risk.
The ministers were acting partly in response to the Albertville-Realschule massacre in Winnenden in March, in which a 17-year-old boy went on a shooting spree that claimed 16 lives. The perpetrator, Tim Kretschmer, reportedly played games like Counter-Strike and Far Cry 2.
Welt Online quotes the ministers' draft bill as saying, "the production and distribution of games in which a substantial part of the game consists of realistically portrayed killing or otherwise gruesome acts of violence against human or human-like creatures are to be forbidden" (thanks to Alex from EG.de for the translation). They hope to get it through the Bundestag before Germany's federal election in late September.
Whether they will or not remains to be seen, but Welt Online is clearly sceptical - pointing out that even Germany's reigning coalition government was forced to withdraw attempts to ban paintball in the aftermath of the Winnenden murders due to protests.
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Comments: 1-43 of 43 in total
Poster
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Actually I've been told that their porn laws are rather strict as well. While they don't go along with the US sillyness of "boobs corrupt the youth", they are reportedly rather strict when it comes to actual porn, with severe laws in place for age verification systems (which they can obviously only realistically apply to adult web sites hosted on German servers).
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They should ban cars instead. Traffic causes thousands of deaths every year, but seems to be the elephant in the room. Same gos for the UK, or any other country of course. But let's not talk about that. Lets talk about those horrid games instead.
I think they should ban 14 year olds from playing Call of Duty, though, because they pwn my ass in Modern Warfare, and that pisses me off to no end. |
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Its amazing that even though the censorship here is one of the strictest in the world, that school shootings still happen.
Could it be that the games aren't actually to blame and it might be something less straightforward? Oh God no. They try to ban paintball and games but not the gun clubs. Ridiculous.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 08/06/09 @ 09:40
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autogunner
08/06/09 @ 08:57
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ah but you are forgetting german make a lot of money from guns, but not so mcuh from videogames. Its also election time so pointless vote grabbing is the order of the day. Makes me proud to live in a country with a government so corrupt and useless they are too busy protecting themselves to bother making pointless laws
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kinky_mong
08/06/09 @ 09:04
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Why address the real problems of why a person commits such atrocious acts and the media's glorifying of them for an interesting story, when instead you can scapegoat an easy target to drum up votes from a paranoid public?
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So if the draft gets passed: Germany based game studios like Crytek are moving out of Germany (way to help the industry) and games beside shooters like World of Warcraft are a possible candidate for banning as well.
Gun clubs are still allowed, and it's not like Tim got the weapons there, because his father was a member of one, who owned enough of them to supply a small army and kept them at home. It's gun laws and social environment / stability we should focus upon, not some games we play in our spare time. |
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mouthofyoureye
08/06/09 @ 09:58
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politicians and corporations create a society where they don't have to work and can spend their time shooting pheasants off their yachts in san tropez, whilst we slave away in our cubicles/allocated-section-of-conveyor-belt. THEN, they take away all forms of venting the anger and frustration that this state of affairs injects into the vast majority of the world's population. Then, when we have no other method of venting frustration than actually killing people they blame us for our own predicament, citing genes/low-work-ethic/subversive-attitudes as the cause of our deprived seat at the back of this shitty bus to shit-town.
but not to worry, the BNP and other euro-fascists are doing well - we'll all be dead by the time halo 5 gets banned! |
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lord_jamie
08/06/09 @ 10:34
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News just in:
As well as playing Far Cry 2 and Counter Strike, he has also been watching Kill Bill, The Terminator and Die Hard as well as reading American Psycho and Zodiac. It must be the games that are the cause though, movies and books have never influenced anyone. /sarcasm |
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actionfitz
08/06/09 @ 11:58
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@"The perpetrator, Tim Kretschmer, reportedly played games like Counter-Strike and Far Cry 2."
What are the odds!?!? --- idd. If I was a self respecting gun toting psychopath with severe emotional issues, you'd hardly find me playing 'Hello Kitty Adventures'... plonks. Are the gonna burn violent books (crime fiction etc)? Violent TV, Movies? Having to talk to Call Center Help lines (esp SKY TV) makes me want to hurt small children and kick puppies... gonna ban them too? \o/ |
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"Seems like the Germans, Belgians and Danes all value gun ownership over the lives of innocent victims."
Guns here in Denmark? Seriously? And no, that was a legitimate question, not a sarcastic one :). It's true that the current "war" between Hells Angels support groups and gangs of 2nd generation immigrants over the drug market (or maybe they just like shooting at each other, unfortunately hitting innocent bystanders on occasion) has seemingly made shooting almost commonplace in certain parts of Copenhagen, and illegal guns apparently aren't too difficult to get hold of, but it's definitely not my impression that the average Dane go around longing for firearms for "personal protection", and unless I'm much mistaken you can't even buy guns legally here (outside of permits for gun clubs or whatever they're called, but I think we're talking about an extremely tiny minority of the population here). |
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Midnight Raven
08/06/09 @ 12:44
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Set an example for the world to follow... ban EVERYTHING in Germany!
/is German, but lives abroad |
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@ Miths, sorry I was confusing Denmark with Finland.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid... But it also happens in The Netherlands http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/339483... |
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CountFapula
08/06/09 @ 13:39
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Glad to see that Germany are leaving the facist days of telling people what to do and how to live behind.
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Carpathian
08/06/09 @ 14:01
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I was going to post a long rant about the crass hypocrisy of a law like this but really, when it comes down to it, what's the point.
Anybody with half a brain can see the problem with tarring everybody playing 'violent' games with the 'potential killer' tag and yet time after time one party or another picks it up to gain political capital. That's all it is and it's blatantly so - they don't care about games or killers or victims or even if there's a link between any of those but just something to gain an extra percentage point on the polls. It's cynical, distasteful and sadly not a surprise in the slightest....... |
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Seems like the Germans, Belgians and Danes all value gun ownership over the lives of innocent victims.
Gun laws are pretty strict here in Germany (and get stricter). Not much use though if they aren't observed. The gun used in the Winnenden incident wasn't locked away, as it should have been. As for the planned law itself - meh. It'll never hold before the Supreme Constitutional Court. As long as there's someone who takes it that far. |
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CountFapula
08/06/09 @ 14:43
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The gun ownership deal isn't as simple as it seems either- in america, people complain about the gun crime and their is alot. But 95% of gun owners are never involved in crime in the us. But there's a lot of gun crime in smaller countries too, where it's illegal to own guns- the lesson is, bad people get guns regardless of the laws. That's why they are bad people- laws don't matter to them.
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BlankOBlank!
08/06/09 @ 15:31
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"the Germans are nothing but reversed americans these days. they have no problem with pr0n for everyone, but try to ban anything violent..."
Not that I condone the violent game knee jerk reaction but convincing people that youths go on the rampage beating people to death with dildos after watching porn seems a harder sell to me. |
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"The ministers were acting partly in response to the Albertville-Realschule massacre in Winnenden in March, in which a 17-year-old boy went on a shooting spree that claimed 16 lives. The perpetrator, Tim Kretschmer, reportedly played games like Counter-Strike and Far Cry 2. "
Christ, will our species ever be able to function without idiotic clueless fools running our countries. Killer plays games so must be games fault. Had a look at this guy on Wiki. Do these twats know he was actually firing REAL guns and was "a lonely and frustrated person who felt rejected by society"? Probably more to with it than Far Cry........ I just love the Germans hate of violent VIDEOGAMES. The irony is of course, Germany was the cause of some of the worst REAL violence this world has ever seen (twice). Violent games - harmless "naughty" fun Genocide and mass invasion - VERY VERY bad Anyway I'm off, I played FFVII yesterday so I'm off to buy a REALLY big sword. "................" |
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Sunyavadin
08/06/09 @ 19:32
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"If thats the case I wonder when we can expect to see turtles being thrown from gokarts on the autobahns?"
Oh man, that's a sport I'd pay good money to watch. But this is just ridiculous. I mean, has Bomberman been banned in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Pakistan yet? It's OBVIOUSLY the cause of their..... oh, wait... |
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feistycheese
08/06/09 @ 22:23
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Got a step-brother in Germany, and he gets all his games from over here anyway (UK) as the FPS released over there have 'green paint' come out of the bodies when you shoot them. Its a fair deal, I get his X-rated games for him, he gets my decent porn for me . . . . win, win situation!
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 08/06/09 @ 23:24
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YourMessageHere
10/06/09 @ 08:53
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Do average voting people really harbour an unspoken desire to ban games with violence in? I honestly doubt many people care at all, any more than they care about other violent media. All a politician needs to do is look at sales figures to see that games that involve violence are actually kind of popular. Why is this perceived as being a vote-winner of an idea (because really, why else would this be happening)?
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The main 3 reasons politicians orgasm about banning stuff like violence in video games or paintball, is because (1) paintball and video games are easily accessible to users of all ages (contrary to gun clubs, where there's a minimum age and other government imposed restrictions), hence also young and innocent children, (2) the existence of the powerful reflex of "monkey see, monkey do" as early as toddlerhood and (3) the scientifically extremely well supported proposition that the correlation between "plays violent video games" (or "plays paintball") and "may kill" is equal to 1.
Also, "Won't anyone think of the children?" and "I'm thinking of the children, can I get your votes now, worried parents"?
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most recently on 12/07/09 @ 14:02
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Comments: 1-43 of 43 in total
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