The rot has now started in the UK as well, censorship ahoy!

[Big_Bubbaloola]

Our lovely Prime Minister Gordon Brown has not been having a good time of late, and this following statement really ain't gonna help him:

Game devs should remove knives from games!! Click here (http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=179444&site=cvg) for the report at PCZone.

What a twat! Please discuss.

[Odds_Bodkins]

Knee-jerk reaction to right wing media pressures (i.e. Daily Mail (UK's newpaper equivalent to Fox News) et al). All politicians, whatever their colour, do this.

Just be thankful that inbred, chinless fucktard Cameron and his fagging shadow cabinet bunch of mutants aren't running the show. You wouldn't even be asked your opinion, as they would just force legislation through without external debate.

Games that have excessively violent content/dark subject matter etc are clearly labelled as not suitable for those under 18/16/15 etc on the front cover. If the parents of little 10 year old Jonny purchase an 18 certificate game for him, a game intended for ADULTS, and little Jonny then goes out and enacts a scene from that game which results in injury or worse to someone else, the the PARENTS, and the store manager from where the game was purchased, should be held legally liable (i.e. prosecuted).

One of the main problems at the moment in this parental dereliction of duty; i.e its not our fault/responsibility, its someone/something elses.

[Big Stu]

Brown can't so short sighted that he believes just because WE ban stuff in games, that everyone else will too? If it happens, we'll just import games, or worse yet for the Government, resort to piracy just to play the games.

[Punisher 36O]

he is being very stupid, but i supose its common for people to just blame what is easiest to blame, i hapen to think bad things hapen from bad upbringing not violent exposure. for example i have watched and played violent games and movies my whole life. . . WHOLE LIFE!!!! and i know that it is quite wrong to stab somone or shoot ect. so if this govonment does ban all violence in this country mybe they will see that a kid will still go and be a chav and drink and do drugs and eventualy kill themseves or somone else, that its no doubt the parents fault. . . not the game devs. and i would also like to say a young person siting at home playing GTA is at home playing GTA not out breaking into cars, if games like that get baned i can see what would happen.

"so. . .. wana play GTA for real since the new one is baned?"

what a world we live in!

[GamerKing]

wat a wiener, as if people, just from playing violent video game, would go around being the crap out of people, steal cars, do drugs and other stuff. As if, the only people who would do that would be young people who don't know the laws.

[AzH]

<div class="quote">The rot has now started in the UK</div>
What do you mean, 'now started'? It started decades ago. In terms of games though, you only have to look at the Man Hunt 2 ban (and before that the changes demanded of Carmageddon [showing my age]) to see that the rot has been present for years.

[Big_Bubbaloola]

The thing is, as usual, the politicians are just paying lip service to a minority of peoples concerns. He won't actually do anything about it.

And this is the problem, if he actually had a backbone and pushed the issue straight away and did something, although I wouldn't agree with him, I might actually have some sembemlance of respect for him for actually standing by his word and deed!

But that is the problem all over, not just with politicians. Case in point are my bosses. They want to change our job roles at work, and it's not proving popular as it's just change for change sake. Instead of just doing what a boss is supossed to do and just push through the change, they asked our opinions on it and then ignored them when it wasn't what they wanted to hear! Ok, if they just changed the job, we would have been annoyed but then got on with it. This way, we're just even more pissed off than before!

Thanks, I needed to get that off me chest.

[Big_Bubbaloola]

Carmageddon

My god, I remember that furore (and yes that shows my age and all!!). They had to turn the pedestrians into zombies didn't they? Even though it was based loosely on the film Death Race 2000, they didn't think to ban the film as well!

[AzH]

Yeah, turned the peds into zombies and changed the red blood to green goo. There was a hack you could install to change the blood back to red though.

Sticking it to The Man since 1997. ;)

[tp500]

Fuck seriously this pisses me off so much. Crazy nut job parents are the ones who should be fined, they are the ones who want these COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS bans on videogames, because they are too fucking lazy to start being a parent and watching their kids. If a kid goes on a rampage, there is something mentally wrong with him, he has had some kind of trauma and needs help. The Virginia Tech killer was clinically insane and yet, they shrugged it off and YES LET HIM BUY A MOTHERFUCKING GUN! So you can easily make games a scapegoat, but once these people take the time to look at their lives and their children, they will realize...or not.

[Puscifer]

thats bollox..

its like.. &quot;we have no idea how we can stop knife/gun crime so lets blame it on computer games&quot;..

pshh

[Plankie]

... And movies like Saw and the likes are fully legal, hmm.

[Big_Bubbaloola]

Plankie, don't give them ideas!

[asu]

They should edit every movie that shows ANY weapons and replace them with walkie-talkies.

[daleluck1313]

Gordon Brown is such a twat. Tony Blair wouldn't have tried to ban knives in games, and (no offence Tony) he was a tad bit crap.

The stupid test they did about people becoming more aggressive when playing games such as GTA is bullcrap and all - of course you're going to become more aggressive during the game, you can't exactly go through it being a Sunday driver and thinking about bunny rabbits, for crying out loud.

[Graf Irrationale Zahl]

Game devs should remove knives from games!!

O.k. with me ... replacing knives with: crowbars, chainsaws, baseball bats, iron pipes etc.
Seriously, that is just populist crap.

One of the main problems at the moment in this parental dereliction of duty; i.e its not our fault/responsibility, its someone/something elses.

Ya, I guess (if I got you right). I don't think that we can solve the problem of youngsters being violent or even running amok by simple shifting the blame onto a single group or thing (parents, video games, politicians, teachers, terrorists, Marylin Manson).
I personally think, that the pressure of success, the lack of prospects, individual isolation and the exclusion from wealth are the crucial factors for teenagers stabbing their neighbors and shooting their classmates.

t started decades ago.
If I remember right, Clockwork Orange was banned in the UK, because kids started to copy Alex ;).

[Graf Irrationale Zahl]

They should edit every movie that shows ANY weapons and replace them with walkie-talkies.

They could start with Raiders of the Lost Ark ;).

[dontleave]

Wow, banning literature. Awesome.

Anyway, we should just pull out our respective Katana's, chainsaws, chainblades, bayonets, machete's, butcher knives, longswords, rapiers... well, you get the point!

[Eddy_of_the_dead]

so happy i life in holland
we dont have this bull shit

[Master_Bungle]

If he does do that (which he won't) I will stab Gordon Brown to death and tell him I did it cause I couldn't get my stab fix in games anymore... Well, obviously not, but meh...
My parents got me Terminator 1 and 2 on one video for my 8th birthday, and I haven't been in a single violent incident since Primary School! You would have to be mental to do something you saw in a game in real life. That means you can't distinguish reality from fantasy (Or you are just a nutcase) in which case, you shouldn't be playing violent games or watching violent films! Stupid Gordon Brown...

[GamerKing]

okay this has nothing to do with anything but I think its weird how hes named Gordan and the protagonist from Half-Life is to and he only uses a crowbar, coincidence or a conspiracy... or a big joke its all good.

[Big_Bubbaloola]

If I remember right, Clockwork Orange was banned in the UK, because kids started to copy Alex ;).

'Fraid not there mate. There were some copycat attacks, but they were few. The reason for the ban was Stanley Kubrick (the director) himself getting the studio to ban the film for him because he recieved death threats to him and his family. It was only released after his death.

[sandollor]

Banning something is only a temporary fix and will only make it more difficult to regulate games and movies in the future due to 'the black market' i.e. the internet. I believe that we (the United States) do need some form of regulation and that the ratings for games and movies would work fine, if and only if, the people actually enforced the rules. Although it would be easier for all involved to adopt one type of rating, be it game or movie ratings.

Okay, when someone says, &quot;I believe games have no impact on how a person acts.&quot; They are wrong. It is empirical fact that a person behaves the way they do for two reasons; nature and nurture. This is basic psychology. Nature meaning what they were born with, being genes and traits from their parents and nurture of course means how a person was brought up. This includes their environment and if a person grows up around violence it DOES effect their behavior. Although there are many factors including psychological hardiness, a person's nature and how much and what type of violence they are exposed to. I think we can all agree that there is a fundamental difference in movie/video game violence and real world violence be it war, crime or any other type.

'Insane' is not a clinical, psychological, or medical term. It is a legal term. Most 'disorders' have reasoning behind them and can be explained in some way. Just saying someone is insane means absolutely nothing other then that person suffers from a disorder.

I find it interesting that in the United States sex and sexual themes are more heavily regulated then violence and in Europe violence is more heavily regulated. Take for instance where I live now, Germany. Some games have been banned outright i.e. Counterstrike and some have had to be changed in order to be released i.e. The Darkness. I wonder why this is.

[Teknobry]

Counterstrike is banned in germany?! WTF?

How can they stop germans downloading the game through steam?

[asu]

Counterstrike hasn´t been banned in Germany. You can buy it in every store or dl it through Steam.
How can they stop germans downloading the game through steam?
They cant.

[Eddy_of_the_dead]

They cant.
:O im afraid!

[GamerKing]

Hitman blood money has been changed to be rated R18, I saw it.

[Dead Fish]

If you are interested in what German, censored versions of some games look like, visit this page: http://www.schnittberichte.com/index.php

It's in German, but you can just click on the letters (A-Z) and search for any movie/game/tv show/comic or game you want. Mostly there are picture comparisons between the cut version and the original. It's a huge site with many, many articles.

Some examples:

Half-Life (http://www.schnittberichte.com/schnittbericht.php?ID=3232) (Marines replaced by robots)
Half-Life 2 (http://www.schnittberichte.com/schnittbericht.php?ID=4610) (grey blood)
Call of Duty 2 (http://www.schnittberichte.com/schnittbericht.php?ID=3936) (no swastika)
Super Mario Kart (http://www.schnittberichte.com/schnittbericht.php?ID=3449) (removed Bowser, drinking alcohol at the end...)

[GamerKing]

Awesome, robots and grey blood.

[Buzz]

Fuck censorship, fuck the government and fuck the police.

Is what I say.

[asu]

(removed Bowser, drinking alcohol at the end...)
aaaaaaaaaaaahahahahaha this is hillarious!!
I´ll drink on that, cheers.

[Eddy_of_the_dead]

Fuck censorship, fuck the government and fuck the police.
anarchy???
you know that if that happens there will be no more games hu?

[Stupoider]

And no more law..

Wait a second, we don't have any law atm! ^^ Quoting from a strip of Strafe Left in PC Gamer, showing the 20th century in TF2..

[UK]DoomedYouth > [GER]DoomedYouth.