Switzerland Pursues Violent Games Ban

BanjoTed writes "We hear lots about the issues facing violent games in Australia, but the anti-games bandwagon is gathering pace closer to home — in Switzerland, to be precise. The Swiss government is gearing up to consider a total ban on mature games in the country."

Watch those crime rates climb!

[Cruciform]

If we look at the youth crime rates in the US, they dropped of precipitously when the PS1 came out and have stayed low compared to previous decades ever since.

If the trend was the same in Switzerland, what happens when you take away that outlet?

Most of the drop in crime likely comes from resolution of boredom, but it probably serves as a panacea for some of the whackjobs out there too.

You know where this is going

[janwedekind]

There are Flash games and soon there will be HTML5 games and then they will be discussing the introduction of internet censorship.

Re:"Mature"?

[mike2R]

He does have a point though - most of what is classified as "mature" in games really only appeals to teenagers. Take the sex scenes in Bioware's DragonAge; speaking as someone in my thirties they are cringe-makingly awful, but I suspect my eighteen year old self would have enjoyed them.

It isn't just games. I recently reread what I remembered as some excellent Sci-Fi books, Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn series. I still like the books, but I found the constant gratuitous sex scenes really got a bit wearing after a while. When I first read them, I found those sections titillating.

Re:Part of a general pattern

[biovoid]

Your ignorance of the Swiss political system is evident. Parties have very little impact on these issues. Do some research before making completely unfounded responses.

Politics of Switzerland [wikipedia.org]

Re:Part of a general pattern

[SerpentMage]

Wait one minute... The majority of Germans back the laws against Jews and Gypsies? Please get real references here....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party [wikipedia.org]

Hitler came into power through a minority. His party never had the majority. The problem was that at that time Hindenburg was vehemently against the Nazi's, but to get a "functioning" government he allowed them to be a government. Think of it as follows in a modern context. Stephen Harper who is in the minority in Canada was allowed to be a government in by the governor general. The catch, and this is where things became dangerous once Hitler's party became the government one of their first acts was to impose absolutism. In a watered down way it was Harpers peroge where he stopped allowing the government to function.

I am not saying Harper is Hitler because he is not. What I am saying is that Harper and Hitler from a political action perspective were very very similar. Once Hitler's party gained full control the propaganda started...

BTW not every German was for Hitler. Neither my mother's family nor my father's family were Hitler supporters (and we are not Jewish either). My mother's parent's were "disabled" and hence were one of the ones who were considered sub-German quality. And my father's parents thought the Nazi's were trouble, they were industrialists my grandfather hated extremists! Though they were scared enough to not say much. As much as people enjoy the rights to free speech, right to demonstrate and a right to a fair trial. In those days you "disappeared".

Re:Part of a general pattern

[thijsh]

More exact it was a vote of over 100.000 people in Switzerland about the fate of their nation which was 'threatened' by a total of 4 (you read it right, four) minarets. A mayor factor why these people voted for the ban is the christian party in the country... Exactly like the ban on violent games the ban on minarets was engineered by a few conservatives who use fear to get a lot of people to vote their way. In the case of minarets they even had propaganda-posters like this: http://warincontext.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/swiss-anti-minaret-campaign1.jpg [warincontext.org]

Maybe it's tyranny, but the majority is just cattle...

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Thank you mother Helvetia

[XAD1975]

This won't prevent me from driving 15 minutes to enter France and buy my games there. However, as Swiss Citizen, I feel concerned since: 1. This law will infantilize me and strip me from my adult judgment over what is good or bad for me. 2. This law doesn't deal with the real issue which is the lack of liability of today's parents in their progeniture's education. They tend to rely more and more on school & State to raise the kids they chose to have. 3. Child Pornography and Video Games are put together in this extract while they are different issues to be adressed. 4. What about other medias carying violence such as TV, Theatre, Sport, etc?