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The Almighty Buck Games

Connecticut Groups Cancels Plan to Destroy Violent Games 350

An anonymous reader writes with an update to an earlier story about a group wanting to destroy your violent video games. "Southington, a town in Connecticut, has canceled its plans to collect and destroy violent games, stating that it has already succeeded in raising attention." Perhaps the real reason: "Backed by the Southington Chamber of Commerce, SouthingtonSOS originally planned to offer citizens $25 gift certificates in exchange for their violent games, films, and CDs, which the group would collect for 'permanent disposal.'"
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Connecticut Groups Cancels Plan to Destroy Violent Games

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  • by Dan667 ( 564390 ) on Thursday January 10, 2013 @12:03PM (#42547439)
    not helping the mentally ill can be their new top priority.
  • Oh wow! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Runefox ( 905204 ) on Thursday January 10, 2013 @12:04PM (#42547457)

    $25 to get rid of your old shooters? Man, they're a better trade-in deal than anyone else around. Plus, they're getting rid of e-waste! How thoughtful!

    Give them your Call of Madden 2011 and 2012, then go buy Call of Madden 2013.

  • Awesome (Score:5, Funny)

    by seepho ( 1959226 ) on Thursday January 10, 2013 @12:04PM (#42547461)
    Where else am I going to get $25 for my copy of Duke Nukem Forever?
    • Think I've got a copy of Hellgate: London somewhere they can have....

      Ah-ha, here it is, under my coffee cup!

      • by seepho ( 1959226 )
        They made the mistake of giving out beta access to that game with a $5 preorder, so I got away without buying it. I'd still rank that among the worst $5 I've ever spent, and I've bought Powerball tickets.
    • Where else am I going to get $25 for my copy of Duke Nukem Forever?

      Sell it to the Museum of Hype. It's pretty much the centerpiece of the collection.

    • by C0R1D4N ( 970153 )
      I wanted to turn in my copy of the Left Behind rts!
    • by flatt ( 513465 )

      If you are particularly enterprising, you can take that $25 and buy (at least) 10 copies of Duke Nukem Forever... rinse, repeat.

      Apparently these people have never heard of the Cobra effect:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect [wikipedia.org]

  • Where's Jack Thompson? Shouldn't he be there conducting it?

    Damn, missed my chance to kill him. Maybe another day, AR-50.
  • by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <gameboyrmh@@@gmail...com> on Thursday January 10, 2013 @12:07PM (#42547523) Journal

    Maybe there's some hope for us after all.

  • by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Thursday January 10, 2013 @12:08PM (#42547533)

    1. Announce intent to do something attention-gathering.
    2. Revel in the reporting.
    2. Announce cancelation.

    Cost: Zero.

    • by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Thursday January 10, 2013 @12:42PM (#42547969)

      "Southington, a town in Connecticut, has cancelled its plans to collect and destroy violent games, stating that it has already succeeded in raising attention."

      You know, this must be the first time I see someone publicly admitting to being an attention whore, and being proud about it.

  • by Baloroth ( 2370816 ) on Thursday January 10, 2013 @12:10PM (#42547551)

    Raise awareness of what, exactly? Violent videogames? That seems... odd, unless you are working for a marketing department. The dangers of violent video games? What dangers? I've seen exactly zero evidence of any such dangers (TFA says there is "ample evidence" but, of course, they don't actually cite what that evidence is, exactly). The only awareness that seems to have been raised is that the group behind this are a bunch of scared people lashing out at what they don't understand, desperately looking for something to blame. They said they wanted to "prompt discussions", but you can't have meaningful discussions without some evidence about how or even if video games have negative effects, and there is no such evidence.

    • To people like that, "ample evidence" just means they heard it from some lady in the supermarket checkout line who doesn't even have kids...
  • by sootman ( 158191 ) on Thursday January 10, 2013 @12:14PM (#42547597) Homepage Journal

    > SouthingtonSOS originally planned to offer citizens $25
    > gift certificates in exchange for their violent games

    which would have caused a spike in sales on cheap old games at GameStop the day before the event and accomplished nothing else.

  • by milbournosphere ( 1273186 ) on Thursday January 10, 2013 @12:15PM (#42547611)
    I can't really take issue with the program as they would have implemented it. It's a voluntary program, the person with the game is reimbursed for the game, and the game is destroyed. It's stated up front, everybody knows what the endgame is. At the end of the day, it sounds just like a sponsored gun buyback program. I wouldn't take my games personally, but at the end of the day it's a good potential resource for concerned parents out there. If the NRA is willing to sponsor a program like this one, I fail to see why they'd be protesting a gun buyback program in Tucson (http://www.npr.org/2013/01/09/168926749/nra-vows-to-stop-tuscon-from-destroying-guns).
    • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) * on Thursday January 10, 2013 @12:53PM (#42548099)

      I can't really take issue with the program as they would have implemented it.

      But you should take issue with it, because it is anti-science, and it is diverting the public's attention from the real issues. There is NO evidence that violent video games cause real life violence, and there is at least a correlation between video games and lower violence. This may be because teenagers are spending more time at home playing games, and less time on the street, joining gangs and getting in trouble. They would probably be doing more good if they handed out games rather than collecting them. If they are allowed to do this without protest, people will assume that their pseudo-science is actually legitimate.

      • I agree with the points you make about video games, their 'effect' on violence and their use as scapegoats. However, the program IS (well, would have been) voluntary and could potentially serve as a resource for parents of younger children who don't, for some reason or another, feel comfortable with their (non teenage) kids playing violent stuff. I'm simply trying to point out the hypocrisy of the NRA calling for a program like this one while lambasting voluntary gun buyback programs. I find it hilarious
    • If the NRA is willing to sponsor a program like this one, I fail to see why they'd be protesting a gun buyback program in Tucson

      The NRA doesn't sponsor video buybacks either. If they did, they'd be stupid. If someone did this trick in my neck of the woods, I'd do exactly what other posters suggested:
      * Go to WalMart, GameStop, etc. and clean the $5 bin out.
      * Get my $25 gift certificate for each.
      * Repeat.

      Gun buyback programs accomplish three goals:
      1: They allow criminals to destroy evidence by safely ditching

  • All they wanted in life was attention. They got it. Now they shut the fuck up. Overall, a happy ending... although it would be better if they would get their heads out of their asses and realize what the real problem is: mentally deranged psychopaths who are beyond fucked in the head. Not otherwise inanimate objects such as plastic discs, or even guns on their own without a lunatic wielding them.

    • Westboro wanted attention, too. And just like them, SouthingtonSOS ended up getting all the WRONG attention in their distorted sense of activism.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Step 1: Buy $5 Lethal Weapon DVD
    Step 2: Sell DVD for $25
    Step 3: Profit!

  • by girlinatrainingbra ( 2738457 ) on Thursday January 10, 2013 @12:47PM (#42548035)
    Okay, here's a simple one for the editors to fix:
    Connecticut is the correct spelling, not Conneticut
    .
    http://www.ct.gov/ [ct.gov] -- official Connecticut state government portal
    .
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut [wikipedia.org] -- wikipedia link
    .
    Let's see how long it takes to fix it or continue to ignore it. It's 9:45 am PST now. Start counting.
    • You must be new to /.

      The editors don't correct anything here...

      </sarcasm>

    • by Megane ( 129182 )
      They don't like to change article titles because the RSS feed thinks it's a new article, or something like that. (Which is why they should pay more attention when they green-light an article!)
  • Had a great conversation with my parents over break about the access little kids have to games like Grand Theft Auto. My 6 and 7 year-old nephews said THEY had played! Parents just don't seem to understand that "video game" doesn't mean Pacman and Asteroids anymore.

    Additionally, it would seriously help out with the maturity level on multiplayer maps.

    • Took my son to a friend of his 8 year old bday party. I forget the game xbox game, but from the title I just shook my head and low and behold it had an 'M' rating on it. I could see the mother looking at it and thinking of where she was going to hide it as their was no way her son was going to play it. Some parents are just clueless as to age appropriate. I'll stick with Forza Horizon and Lego Star Wars with my son.
  • by SirGarlon ( 845873 ) on Thursday January 10, 2013 @01:15PM (#42548429)

    Any campaign to buy back violent games and, especially, movies would be a drop in the ocean.

    After I heard about the Newtown shooting, I decided to spend the evening avoiding violence in all media. That meant turning off the news, of course, and looking around for what to do.

    What struck me was the shortage of non-violent entertainment in my house. With the exception of baseball, all my Xbox games are violent to some degree. All the DVDs on my shelf had some level of violence -- even the Disney movies and nature documentaries (I can't stand chick flicks, but lots of those are nonviolent). There's violence in TV commercials. I ended up watching some episodes of Through the Wormhole on my DVR.

    If you like violent games and movies, I have no problem with that. But since that day, I've been quite amazed by the pervasiveness of violence in games, movies, and TV.

  • by davydagger ( 2566757 ) on Thursday January 10, 2013 @01:31PM (#42548659)
    http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/422728/20130110/sandy-hook-violent-games-biden-southington-censorship.htm

    "Ferguson said that destroying games carried a "real risk":

    "Don't get me wrong, I am fully aware you are trying to do what you think is best," said Ferguson "but there is real risk in focusing people's attention on the wrong thing, as well as contributing to historical patterns of 'moral panic' that tend to surround new media.

    "I'm very appreciative of the sincerity of your group, but at the same time I've been concerned about some of your public statements linking video games to bullying and youth aggression which do not accurately reflect the science," Ferguson continued. "As a scientist, when we see that someone is saying something that isn't scientifically true, ethically we're supposed to take some time to try and speak with them and point that out to them...I've done a number of peer-reviewed articles myself on the topic, and have found no evidence linking video game violence to bullying or any other forms of youth aggression or violence.""
  • I was kind of hoping that their plans for permanent disposal involved putting all the CDs in a pile and blowing them up with explosives. Or maybe using them for a skeet shoot. They could have sold tickets to that to make up for the gift certificates they were giving out.

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