Prime Minister Targets Games

Not to try and wind you up, but b******s! A 9 year old kid can take control of a tractor trailer pulling 10,000 pounds of cargo and bring it to a stop safely. If I was feeling silly, I may say that his quick reactions and driving ability came from playing games! :-)


If you mean a film in which an unwilling participant is abused and then actually killed, then no, of course not. The abuse and killing are criminal acts. Programming Manhunt is not a criminal act.

Also if by "staged" you mean a film in which people pretend to be abused and killed, then surely that means things like Hostel? I have no issue with adults watching that sort of film, not my cup of tea, but there you go.

schnide, I think we agree on the central idea of our arguments, but perhaps I'm using too many exaggerated examples to get my points across. Here goes in more straightforward language.

The problem is not a lack of legislation, the problem is a lack of education.

As you say, adults generally know not to give alcohol to kids. and they can't usually buy it for themselves. Why can't we educate parents to have the same attitude towards age-inappropriate games? I know most sales assistants at specialist games shops know the penalties for selling age-inappropriate entertainment to kids.

I do however refute your assertion that the games industry refuses to admit that inappropriate content may "damage" under age consumers of it. This is exactly why we have PEGI and BBFC ratings. This is exactly why most sales assistants are told about the age ratings on games and DVDs.

At no point has anybody in a position of responsibility in the games industry said that 18-rated games are appropriate for under-18 children. They may have refuted the studies that attempt to link violent games to violent tendencies with a causal correlation. However they recognise that some entertainment is inappropriate for some people, based on the age and maturity of the people in question.

We already have an appropriate level of legislation covering under age consumption of age-inappropriate entertainment. What we don't have is any education at all about the legislation or the ideas behind it.

I've had people I know, who are intelligent human beings and loving parents, tell me that the age rating on games is a difficulty rating! They were proud that their kids were playing 18-rated games already. Isn't little Timmy clever? Needless to say I set them straight very quickly, they now pay more attention to what their kids play.

Maybe all we need is for ELSPA and the BBFC to put together an advert that explains the age ratings. Put it on TV, in magazines and papers and in leaflets in games stores. Make sure parents know the consequences.

I think the point that Tyrion was actually trying to make, and you completely missed, is that scaremongers in the USA are claiming that videogames are causing a rise in violent youth incidents. The reality, however, is that youth violence has actually decreased during the time videogames have been available, though videogames are not claiming to have caused that decrease. In the same way that there are probably hundreds of factors that cause someone to take a gun into their school and then proceed to shoot and kill their classmates, the fact that they played videogames should in incidental, but it is being seized upon as the main cause.

I didn't miss that point at all. Thank you for trying to contribute though.

Videogames are very much unlikely to be the direct cause of overall increases or decreases in violent behaviour. However, as a contributing factor that may be very much different - it may well be that violent behaviour has decreased over all, but not as much as it would have if the level of violence in videogames had been recognised. It may also be that the overall incidence of violent behaviour has decreased but that the type of extremity of violence has changed.

I don't claim to know either way as I don't have the statistics, but to even hint that videogames are responsible for a reduction in violence without conclusive evidence when it may be quite the contrary, is dangerous.

Now before anyone starts getting their copies of C&VG out to start beating me like I'm some kind of Daily Mail reader, I'm a mid twenties male gamer. What I'm saying is that there's a general automatic reaction to refuse any suggestion that games increase violent behaviour. Recent media stories are too sensitive for me to get into specifics here, but when children and guns are being spoken of in the same sentence, and it's possible that they've been desensitised even if the slightest amount by their supposed acceptible representation in videogames, are you willing to say the industry does not need to look a little more inside itself at what it's doing? Even if the results might come back that yes, actually, we're okay?

Let's not get into specifics here, you know the basic point I'm making and that playing games and driving cars are not as comparable as first given.



No, I mean the general kind of snuff film that's available. Now I'm quite concerned that I know this, and probably shouldn't be making a big deal of it, but I'm under the impression that most snuff films are made to look real but are in fact, faked. So what you have is someone watching a film where someone is supposedly being murdered, and even though they know it probably isn't real, they're getting off on the idea that it might be.

Now I don't know about you, but games like Manhunt, few as they may be, are veering dangerously close to a similar idea. The fact that someone made a conscious decision to sit down and design a game which encourages graphic killing in the name of making money rather than furthering the cause of game design, does not make the games industry look very responsible.



I would agree that this is true, but I don't think that's all there is to it. The industry also needs to take a look at itself, and be aware that by continuing to make games that promote violent behaviour in particularly shocking or graphic ways, especially when it's not for the sake of gameplay, it's really not doing itself any favours.