In my experience, Germans usually have a very acute sense of history, but history is being entirely forgotten at the moment: Many German politicians are lobbying for a ban of “killer games”, and trying to lobby the European Union for common regulations.
There have been several school shootings in Germany, and some of the killers have played video games. Isn’t that sufficient proof? Time to ban those games.
Incidentally, the last school shooting in Denmark was by someone who studied Nordic Literature (yes, just like me). Isn’t that sufficient proof? Time to ban those books.
If history teaches us anything, it is that censorship is not a good path to go down. It has been put more succinctly:
Dort, wo man B?cher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.
Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.
Know your history.
Censorship has a seamless history in Germany. At the very start of the current democracy, the fear of a relapse into fascism lead to a total ban on all related symbols and paraphernalia, e.g. the swastikas (there’s currently a proposition to extend this to an European level).
Lots of games aren’t available through numerous means (sometimes they’re really banned, more often just advertising and putting them in shelves prevents the publisher from releasing them to the German market). I won’t even start with games where the enemies were made explicitly more non-human or where the red blood was changed to blue (Mortal Kombat characters had some nasty perspiration).
We also have a rather good history of finding scapegoats. In medieval times it was Jews poisioning wells, now it’s “killer games”. I wonder what happens once Beckstein et. al. discover internet forums…]
One reason why this may get through: No big impact on the German economy. If ID Software were based in Cologne, things would look different…
The analogy may be correct, however, germany’s history is frequently mentioned in discussions as if no other country had its share of history. In fact, It may very well be that in no other country people reflect so much on their history as in they do in germany. The political and social life here is dominated with discussion whether or not something is appropriate given our history.
In this case the development seems to have nothing to do with the computergames per se. Some politicians simply use the recent tragedies at school and pretend to “do something about it” in order gain popularity. Since germany’s computer game lobby is virtually non-existent, it is a “crime without victims”. Germany has already a well working review system for games, so everything being said is just hot air anyway…
hvorfor er det at spiludviklere, forskere, forhandlere , ja ALLE i spilindustrien altid synes at spil ALDRIG har noget ansvar….
og logikken i at fordi en har l?st en bog og dr?bt mennesker, s? skal b?ger forbydes, og vi vil ikke forbyde b?ger, og derfor heller ikke spil…..
Den logik kunne medfordel pudses af p? et grundkursus i logik.
Det er ganske korekt at det er vulg?r behaviorisme at h?vde en entydig og dirkte kausalitet mellem spil og vold. Eller mellem porno og voldt?gt osv.
Men derfor kan man for fanden da godt mene at enkelte spil er for voldlige, for stupide, for ubehagelige, for uhumane…
Selvf?lgelig kan spil v?re voldelige, stupide, ubehagelige eller uhumane. Spil kan udtrykke ideer og holdninger, og derfor kan de ogs? udtrykke holdninger som jeg er uenig i.
Men sp?rgsm?let er jo det du taler om:
Skal spil behandles p? linie med andre kulturelle udtryk, som noget der ikke skal censureres medmindre de overtr?der fx racismeparagraffen eller lignende.
Eller er spil noget helt s?rligt der ikke skal v?re omfattet af ytringsfriheden?
Didn’t the allied powers have a bit to do with any sort of omissions in the German constitution which would allow for this sort of censorship?
Politicians and assorted groups of folk in the US attempt to do that (and all sorts worse censorship than that) all the time even though they can’t, because the constitution prevents them.
‘Can’t imagine what they’d be doing if they could.