Venezuela bans violent video games
Ugh, yet another country…
Last Thursday in Venezuela, a new law criminalizing “violent” video games and toys was approved by the National Assembly.
The law scapegoats gamers for the obscene levels of violence in our country (see below), and goes to extraordinary lengths to criminalize gaming, to the point of holding out long jail terms to people who buy the wrong kinds of games.
It’s no joke. Last year, on a trip to the US, I was able to buy a Nintendo DS for my brother, and a puzzle game that deals with using weapons to defend the fish stock of penguins in Antarctica, Defendin’ de Penguin. Early next year, when the law kicks in, bring such a game could land me in jail for 3 to 5 years, for importing forbidden violent games, as the penguins use snowball guns to ward off walruses, foxes (in Antarctica? OMG think of Biogeography!), polar bears and the Yeti.
via Venezuela bans violent video games: a first-person guest essay – Boing Boing.
10 Responses to “Venezuela bans violent video games”
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That’s the slipperiest of slippery slopes. What do you do with Pac Man? Katamari Damacy? i’m all for a reduction in mainstream video game gore porn, but my Spidey Sense tells me this isn’t a great solution.
– Ryan
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Next step: novels, films, cartoons…
I’m from Venezuela, and we’re having a hard time preserving calm here between gamers and businessmen. We’re trying to contact the deputees to know how are they going to implement such law, and we will introduce a legal recourse to reconsider the law. Sadly, the definition of war videogame is way too broad and that could include a lot of games.
Oh boy… that’s just insane. When will people stop being idiots about stuff like this and realise that things like computer games have no affect on the human condition. We’ve barbaric since the dawn of time, it didn’t just suddenly happen because someone got hooked on Mario Cart.
I’m going to have to disagree, I think games have a big impact on the human condition.
I see video games as a social barometer; I don’t think they’re a cause or useful predictor of violent behavior, but observing which games are most popular at any given time can give insight into the society that produces them (if not the individual playing them).
In this view, the popularity of The Sims series is in part a reaction to the uncertainty of shifting roles within the traditional family structure — the game gives people a degree of control over a household and relationships that’s not possible in real life.
Conversely, Grand Theft Auto gives the player permission to act in transgressive ways, and its popularity may suggest a society in which people are too repressed in their ability to express rage and rebellion.
And the World War II games have two edges — they can reduce the conflict to a simplistic battle of good vs. evil, reflecting a discontent with the many moral ambiguities of modern life, or they can explore more deeply the nuanced ethical dilemmas of the war, reflecting a frustration with the contemporary tendency to oversimplify complex conflicts.
Banning violent video games is like smashing a barometer in hopes of preventing a thunderstorm.
I wonder if Venezuela will also ban the violent movies created by the Hugo Chavez fan club of Oliver Stone and Sean Penn?
It’s a plus for Venezuelan Game Smugglers. The prices will skyrocket.
Games are entertainment. Period.
At worst you can say that games/movies may help condition someone to violence, but then so does living in an area where day to day violence is common.