Bavarian Minister compares violent games to drugs, child pornography

I keep reading that as "asstastic" and it works for me.

Whoa, me too. I thought it was weird that you were calling the Bavarian cream dude "an asstastic" but I also thought that it worked.

What a Faking moron!!
Picture this: a cop walks into a room on guy is sitting playing halo with his friends, another creep is staring at child porn. The cop is flustered at what to do so he calls for backup

Sorry for double post, thank Joystiq's comment system.

No worries. I got to think I was seeing "asstastic" twice and I'm not sure what to feel about it.

I wonder if they have a german fox news.

i wonder what the rate is for the number of crazy killers that dont play violent video games vs those that do.

whatever happened to co-relation does not imply causation

So would this be their version of Jack Thompson, or are we still waiting for the German equivalent of him to show up?

yeah if every person that plays violent video games is a killer, every student in the city would be dead by now.

Yeah but nobody wants to pay attention to that fact that murder hasn't gone up drastically since GTAIV came out. It's not like everyone simply emulates the violence they see in a violent video game in real life, and if someone were to emulate that violence then it's because they had bad parents or they're crazy to begin with.

Now if you'll excuse me I saw a bunch of new ways to kill people in MadWorld and I'm going to go try them on people in a public area.

I'm sorry. I would try to do my part to shoot up people, but I can't afford a gun or bullets. All my money goes to food, rent, and games.

@Jack: Oh, yeah, I guess I should clarify that I didn't mean Germans, but all ignorant people who assume video games are the cause of violence. I discriminate equally.

No, what REALLY brings my piss to a boil is how aggressive politicians and "watchdog groups" are about video games but how little question there is towards violent, sexual, and morally questionable BOOKS.

It's okay to read about rape, murder, drug use, vulgarity, etc. But be damned if you want to experience it in a video game. Could you imagine a video game where you play a brother/sister who gets tricked into having sex with your sibling? But when you read Flowers in the Attic, which is aimed at teenage girls, it's A-Okay! My high school library literally had every Steven King book imaginable. And I'm a big fan of Mr. King because of it, but some of his stories are just down right dirty. Read any of the Dark Tower books and tell me that those are okay for school library's but video games are corrupting youth. It's like.. Because it's printed and you have to read it that makes it okay. I see it the other way around; your imagination is 10x more powerful than any video game or movie could ever be. When Steven King describes a man's head being blown into little bits, you really imagine some disgusting stuff. When you see it in Resident Evil it's like seeing someone shot in real life is: not nearly as shocking and gory as made out to be in movies and literature.

I'm really looking forward to Penn & Teller's Bullshit on video game violence. Those two always have logical reasoning while still making the deterrents look like asshats.

@BigD145: So what you're saying is, if violent video games were banned, you'd have the money for guns, and then the violent crime rate would go up? ;)

"And the fact that most people ignore other violent media aggravates me"

Here's what these people actually believe:

A video game is much more violent, and therefore deadlier, than movies or books because of one thing only. In a Video game you have to press the "B" button to see these violent act. Therefore they believe that kids are learning how to kill.

No, I'm saying guns, drugs (plants), and video games should be free. Worst case scenario: everyone stays indoors and if they feel inclined to shoot someone, they only have themselves as a target. Going outside is too much work. It's certainly more work than getting up and changing the channel after losing your remote.

Three words Vegeta:

Choose Your Own Adventure.

That may have been four words. Please ignore that first part.

Man, I killed so many people as a Spy For George Washington in that choose your adventure book. It's a miracle I haven't exploded and gone on a knife rampage in Mississipi.

http://www.videogamevoters.org/learnmore/gamesandviolence/

Vastag, B. "Does Video Game Violence Sow Aggression?" Journal of the American Medical Association. 2004.

In a summary of research, researcher, Brian Vastag, details the results of major studies and their findings. His conclusion is that:

* Consensus is lacking on whether video games with violent content fuel aggressive behavior in children and adolescents...
* If video games do increase violent tendencies outside the laboratory, the explosion of gaming over the past decade from $3.2 billion in sales in 1995 to $7 billion in 2003, according to industry figures would suggest a parallel trend in youth violence. Instead, youth violence has been decreasing.

He must be trying to say that child pornography and illegal drugs have been proven to not be dangerous in the same way that violent video games have been proven many times over to not create real life violence.

Not to mention the mushroom eating/poisonings!

Most politicians don't care about statistics. Why, if they did the world would actually make sense now.

To be fair, statistics really cannot be said for anything towards anything. Running several of my own experiments and thesis, however, I can say that by looking over previous research and conducting my own, there is no correlation between violence in real life and violence in video games, though those who do regularly enjoy video games of a non-violent nature did have greater compassion towards others.


That being said, this man is going too far as to compare child pornography, which is both emotional and physical rape, to a voluntary hobby such as video games, should be removed from office. Simply put he should not have compared the gamers to criminals. It is an unfair comparison.

what? your own experiments? wtf? Also that first part about statistics is bullshit too

Nate... are...are you serious? o.O

I am impossible to believe that you are unable to read the simple literature, definitely you have a feeble brain's weak person, and you do not have the dragon soldier's heart

Doesn't Batman have like gadgets to translate German for him?

Yeah, he does...it's called A.L.F.R.E.D.

Proving Godwin's Law since 2009!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

German politicians have the same right to make stupid statements about video games after a teenager shoots over a dozen people as any american politician does.

Do they have that same right? Because it seems like their country in particular (being as it was the catalyst for the last two world-wide conflagrations) was a much nicer place before violent video games. Oh, wait...

Sorry, but Goodwin's law doesn't apply on topics about German violence.

So you're saying that several generations of Germans ought to be persecuted because they happened to be born in a country that was at one point taken over by a psychotic killer that they probably had nothing to do with for the most part? That makes sense to you? You don't think there's a lesson there that you're missing?

Bavarian cream-filled donuts?

Breathing should be banned! Only for certain people, though.