Chief of Germany's national police union wants to ban violent games

I'd say the statements are specific to modern German society which is still in deep reactionary mode after deeds of Hitler before/during WWII.

For many that is long past, but for Germany - which stopped paying its war compensation money to alliance countries only in 1999 - this is all fresh.

It's all about supply and demand. If "violent stimulus" has no market value, do you think any company will produce such things? It's all about the god dammed consumers. What ever sells get produced.

If they ban violent games here, I'm gonna have to go on a shooting rampage just to fill the void.

Do you blame them? Come on, we all know HItler built a time machine, so he could play video games from the future.

Welll, it's not easy living in Germany these days :)
First and foremost, we already have some of the most strict youth protection laws in the world (UK and US 15+ games are 18+ in Germany, and you cannot mail-order any 18+ games without personal identification anymore), but that's not enught for some. Blood is replaced with green liquid sometimes, or left out completely
No, You cannot buy Manhunt in Germany. Well, who needs Manhunt, anyway?
As always, it's a witchhunt because nobody dares to say "yes, the parents are stupid" or "Yes, we do have bad teachers".
And yes, somebody who kills 15 people is not a poor boy, but a murderer and probably an asshole. ;)
Well and if you're playing video games these days, you have dog days in Germany ...

On the other hand, we can have tits in video games and say "fuck" in the public without being sued :)
Heartly greetings from good ol' germany,
Barely :)

"The world would be no poorer if there were no more killergames," the chief of the German police union added.

^^ I agree. I love my Resident Evil 5 and Rainbow Six Vegas 2, but if they were banned tomorrow I wouldn't be too upset about it.

Y'know, sometimes people just go nuts, without any help whatsoever.

I guess they're just attracted to socialism....

" "The world would be no poorer if there were no more killergames," the chief of the German police union added."

Well obviously not for him because he doesn't play them. That's like me saying "the world would be better without sex".

*cries in corner*

I wonder what videogames Hitler and Genghis Kahn played....hmmmm.

sorry if this has been said before, but this is the same lazy argument that those who are anti-gaming make, over and over. I happen to be a behavioral neuroscience major and the fact is this; violent individuals seek out violent activities. It might be music, gaming or whatever, the point is that the activities don't make them violent. they were violent to begin with and wanted to perform violent activities.
other people can play violent video games and not become homicidal maniacs.

It's nice to see fascism still reigning in Deutschland.

fuck it, we should just ban freedom and be done with it all. soilent green, here I come!!

Morons shouldn't be allowed to be chief's of any national unions, anywhere ever.

GG with the blanket blame statements jackass.

I guess they've got to blame something else now they can't blame the Jews for all of German societies ills. PETA will probably claim he was angry at the treatment of dogs after playing W@W.

You have no idea what kind of a witch hunt is going on right now. It's even worse than what Wal-Mart does to certain offensive records. The Metro Group, a company that owns a department store chain and two electronics store chains, is removing all USK 18 (compareable to M-Rated) games and movies from their range. All in the name of protecting children, of course.

Problem is - the whole banning stuff is completely beside the point. Since USK-18 games are only to be sold to adults, the only people suffering from it are - adults. But that's what you get if uninformed people are making uninformed decisions.

What about the argument that having this violent outlet actually decreases the actual real-world incidence of violence? I know some people who vent by killing people in Halo, and I wonder what would happen to them if they didn't have such an outlet. Of course, once the blame train gets started...

We should take this one step further and just ban all videogames period.

PS this wouldn't have happened if he had a PS3 instead of a 360.

I had Heini Schmitt once, until I learned to wipe better. Don't forget the top of the crack, folks!

Yes, we should ban violent video games, then when teenagers are running round with real guns, we won't need to worry about the consequences.

I DEMAND that we immediately ban bread, as every school shooter ate this dangerous substance during the week before school shooting, usually multiple times. Bread is clearly the cause, now who's with me?

He's actually not the national union chief but only union chief of Hessen, one of the 15 parts germany is devided into.

"Stupid is as stupid does sir..." Videogames don't make people homicidal maniacs, homicidal maniacs, make people homicidal maniacs!

Correlation is not causation. These people don't get the urge to kill because they play violent video games, they play violent video games because they have the urge to kill, and that's just one way they can vent that urge. Claiming that games cause killing is absurdity, and it's been disproved repeatedly.

"By focusing so heavily on video games, news reports downplay the broader social contexts. While a handful of articles note the roles that guns, poverty, families, and the organization of schools may play in youth violence in general, when reporters mention research to explain the shooters' behavior, the vast majority of studies cited concern media effects..." (Page 14-15)

"It is equally likely that more aggressive people seek out violent entertainment. Aggression includes a broad range of emotions and behaviors, and is not always synonymous with violence. Measures of aggression in media-effects research have varied widely, from observing play between children and inanimate objects to counting the number of speeding tickets a person received. Psychologist Jonathan Freedman reviewed every media-violence study published in English and concluded that "the majority of studies produced evidence that is inconsistent or even contradicts" the claim that exposure to media violence causes real violence." (Page 15)

Sternheimer, K. "Do Video Games Kill?" Contexts, Vol. 6, Issue 1, pp. 13-17, Winter, 2007. Obtained from http://www.videogamevoters.org/learnmore/gamesandviolence/