Officer's Group Calls for Ban On 25 To Life

Kotaku reports that the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund is calling for a boycott of 25 to Life. From the post: "It is absolutely unconscionable that game makers are enabling young people--or anyone--to dramatize shooting and killing as a form of entertainment while officers and innocent people are dying in real-life on our streets every day. We're encouraging parents, caregivers and everyone who is concerned about both law enforcement officers and children to ensure this game never makes it into the homes or hands of impressionable young people."

Boycott / ban

[Otter]

The FA correctly notes that the call is for a boycott, but the headline there refers to a "ban" instead. Bizarrely, the submitter decided to use the body's correct wording in his body and the headline's error in his header.

So what is it?

[amliebsch]

Both the summary and TFA seem to confuse a boycott with a ban. But they're not the same. The NLEOMF only seems to be calling for a boycott, or for what might be called "discretionary purchasing." I didn't see anywhere in their statement where they called for it to be illegal or impossible to buy the game. So TFA's complaint that "they shouldn't be able to dictate what I play. What's next, a ban on all movies depicting violence against police?" and the summary are pretty unfair to the organization, and are probably just flamebait.

Hmm.

[velocipenguin]

It looks like the original wire service report included various bits of unpleasant information from the Brandon Vedas [nydailynews.com] incident. That's some astoundingly sloppy reporting.

Re:Curse these games!

[iocat]

Maybe things were different in my neighborhood, but we would often stage elaborate, drawn-out, death sequences... ideally including falling from a tree if a pile of leaves were available. Of course, we also had the "other guy" rule (as in "right now I'm a different guy, shoot me," or "you be another guy for a second so I can shoot you."), so we weren't really killing each other...

That all aside, the group seems to be calling for a BOYCOTT of the game, not a BAN on the game, which are two very different things. I think the story headline should be revised.

Download contents

[Anonymous Coward]

For anybody wondering before downloading, it's 15 minutes of RealPlayer footage of US soldiers (presumably in Iraq) getting shot by snipers, backed by chanting in Arabic and interspersed with occasional stills of Arabic writing.