Video Game violence illegal in Germany?

[Dr. Doom]

I'm a little confused by this.

German gov't considers jail time for gamers
Proposed legislation targets pixilated mayhem and virtual violence; legislators consider acts of cruelty against "human-looking characters" as reason enough to fine, imprison.
By Emma Boyes, GameSpot UK
Posted Dec 12, 2006 1:57 pm PT

Games in Germany already face strict censorship laws--titles such as Gears of War are deemed to be too violent, and the German board of classification (the Unterhaltungssoftware Selbskontrolle) refuses to give them a rating, effectively meaning that the games can be sold only at adults-only retailers.

Nazi symbols are also banned in the country, except for art and educational purposes--so games which use them, including the Wolfenstein series, are also banned from being released in Germany. Even games such as Dead Rising are regarded as crossing a threshold of acceptability since violence towards zombies is considered to be too close to violence towards real people.

Now. legislation currently being drafted would take these standards a step further. The bill, which was introduced last week by the states of Bavaria and Lower Saxony, proposes a new offence. Those found guilty of "cruel violence on humans or human-looking characters" could face fines, or jail time of up to 12 months--and those it applies to include developers, retailers, and consumers, reports UK newspaper The Guardian.

The proposed legislation comes on the heels of a shooting on November 20 where an 18-year-old student went on a shooting rampage and wounded six people in his school before killing himself. Backers of the bill also point to the 2002 Erfurt massacre where another German student shot 13 people, according to the paper. Both incidents have been blamed in the media on violent games and much has been written about the two shooters' fascination with games such as Half-Life: Counter-Strike.

The proposed legislation makes the future for German game companies unclear. One company, Far Cry and Crysis developer Crytek, has already made known its plans to relocate to another country should the any legislation of this kind be made law.

Ok, so am I crazy or does this make absolutely no sense at all to anyone else? Barkworm, I think you need to pack up your things and GTFO of there before they start making hamburger patties out of people.

[愛]

This kid shot some dude in a video game and now he's shooting up his school! It was the video games! It couldn't have been that one movie he saw, or hearing his peers talk about it in school!

I'm really tired of people placing blame on video games for real life violence. Violence is everywhere. Don't single us out just because it's the easy escape.

[Anarky]

Nah, it doesn't really make sense. The Germans have a thing they call "Indizierung" (verb: Indizieren, which I'm about to use). Basically, the Indizierung prohibits advertisements for that game. And games get indiziert when they're too violent or too mature. They still can be sold, but not to people under 18 and the games can't be on the shelves. That's why many developers create a softened version of their games, with green blood for example and no gore at all, so they can still get sales and all that.

Now for the actual new law: Whenever someone shoots someone and has, at some point in his life, played a video game and/or watched a horrormovie, every gamer gets deemed a potential spree killer and everybody yells that the games must be banned. It has been the same when Erfurt occured and nothing really happened. Now that ResistantX shot at people they're crying again. And the Bayern (aka. Bavarians) as well as the Niedersachsen (= Lower Saxons) - who thinks these translations up anyways - are the first to yell since they're known to be very conservative states.

So what's going to happen now? People are going to yell, eventually everything will die down apart from a couple of lunatics who still yell. But nobody will listen. Nothing will happen and when the next Spreekiller does his shtick, the same thing is going to happen over and over again.

Besides, if you really want those games, you can still order them online from Switzerland, because we don't have an Indizierung or anything else of that nature.

[Dr. Doom]

Well the article makes it seem like you're liable for doing harm to a fictional character, which is easily the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Quickly, send the police over to little Heinrich's house, the lads's gone crazy! He's thrown a turtle shell at Luigi and cost him the bloody race! Oh would somebody please think of the children?!

[Anarky]

And that's exactly why it's never going to happen.

Also, if you want those games, you'll get those games. No law can stop that. And where's a will, there's a way. And even the dumbest of politicians will see that and thus deeming this new idea stupid.

And they'd need to censor about 90% of their television programs too. So it's complete and utter nonsense.

[愛]

So, uh, what's with all the censoring? Don't tell me it's because of WWII. I need a story.

[Anarky]

The censoring of the Nazi symbols is a direct result of WWII. There's a lot of symbols banned, actually. Here are some (all except the last two are banned) (http://www.recht-gegen-rechts.de/gesetze/gesetze11.htm). The censoring of all the blood and gore in games takes place for one sole reason: Sales. See, if you can't advertise a game with lots of more or less unnecessary violence, you'll lose a lot of money, because Germany is a big market. So what they do in order to be allowed to advertise the games is, they censor them. Red Blood is turned green or removed alltogether, corpses just fall over and disappear instead of bleeding out and lying around waiting to be shot over and over again and so on... Of course, this takes away a lot of the fun playing, since you have this nagging feeling in the back of your head that you haven't seen it all. That's why clever people invented a thing called "Bloodpatch". Bloodpatches just turn off the censoring and you can enjoy the game in all its goriness. Or if you're not willing to wait for bloodpatches, you simply import games from somewhere (preferrably Switzerland, because of the shipping cost) and you get an uncensored version.

[Peanut]

Sounds like how the Japanese got screwed on Dead Rising. You'd take a swing at a zombie with a sword, and he would stay intact, instead just stumbling onto the ground, as if hit by a strong wind.

[愛]

Thanks for the explanation. That makes a lot of sense. It seems kind of ridiculous to go through all that work just to censor out some violence and bad words, though. Oh well. I'm American. This is just what we deal with every day.

[Dr. Doom]

Hooray for giant, contental multimedia regions that encompass multiple countries!

[ThirdMarioBro]

Mind if I say "Fu*k Germany"? Thanks, then I will. **** Germany.

[Barkworm]

Haha, our conservatives... They always make me laugh.

[ThirdMarioBro]

If there is one thing I hate, its religious nuts who precieve to know what's best for us, and decide that we must do what they say for our own good, because we're not capable of making rational judgments on our own...


...oh wait, that's most of the human race. Oh snap.

[Anarky]

Religious? Who said anything about religion? Besides, you know you shouldn't use that subject here.

Anyways, those aren't religious people. Sure they believe in God and all that, but God isn't the powerful argument over here. Over here, it's "security" and "safety", not "God". Actually, using His name as a sort of weapon in debates is something I've only seen in the USA so far. It might be used in other countries as well, but the USA really sticks out in that direction.