I'm continuing this little snippet of interest as it's something I can really get my teeth into. I believe that the majority of the British public are not as stupid as they seem, and when a team of video game producers, sometimes a hundred men and women strong, their efforts should be available to the public. And if the game is "brutal" or "violent", people will be intelligent enough to know whether it is suitable for the children, or themselves. Before you say it, I know that there are people too stupid to understand this, and those will be the ones who will copy a games example and bring on such acts as the murder of Stefan Pakeerah. However in this day and age people are more educated than ever, so restraining them is not the answer in my opinion.
However, I'm a reasonable man, and I will look at both sides of the argument. There is a tragic side to violent video games in isolated if heartbreaking cases, and it would be disrespectful of me not to look at them.
The man responsible for all this is Keith Vaz MP, Labour Member of Parliament for Leicester East. Vaz first brought up video game violence in 2007, following the death of Pakeerah.
"According to Giselle Pakeerah, the mother of Stefan Pakeerah, the young Leicester boy who was stabbed to death in a park in Leicester when aged only 14, the 17-year-old killer copied exact scenes from “Manhunt 1” to lure Stefan into the park and stab him 17 or 18 times with a knife."
I'd be a very bad person to argue with this. Stefan was innocently partygoing, and upon being lured into a park to be mugged by his older friend was stabbed to death. My heart goes out to Giselle: she's obviously very strong to get through this and should take pride in herself. If for a minute we take the 'Manhunt' out, there is obvious grounds for mental illness here, and the murderer is obviously very impressionable, so it's unfair to blame it wholly on the game, like Vaz was insinuating. However, I'm not a psychologist, and I don't want a Jan Moir case on my website.
In my opinion, Manhunt is a devilishly brutal game and I wouldn't buy it, however some people are into that sort of simulation, in that you harness the vast power of taking life, so they're free to buy it. And there we go: someone who is aware of the aspects of the game has chosen not to buy it on the grounds they find it morally objectable, yet has accepted that others may wish to. In a free country like this, if a few dozen grown members of the public develop a detailed, enjoyable and controversial game they should be celebrated for artistic triumph rather than quashed under rules. This murderer was obviously a member of the tiny, tiny minority of people who are impressionable, and no matter what it is, if there is some violence there is a chance that they could copy it. Nowadays, with everything there will be a risk factor.
- This toy contains small parts: children may choke.
- Speed kills.
- Smoking kills.
- This chewing gum may have a laxative effect.
The last one was silly I know, but it's a risk. Eventually, with the vast crusade of political correctness poisoning the nation this could be the government's main aim for 2019 (if you want more, check the front page of the Daily Express from time to time). There's no doubt that the murder of Pakeerah and several others brought on by video games are terrible, but the government is just highlighting it in the wrong way. The government being behind on technology has brought on thousands of deaths, the most notable example being asbestos. The first recorded death in the UK was in 1906, however asbestos was not phased out until the 1980s, and only completely banned in 1999 following the EU's outlawing of Chrysolite, the only form still legal at the time in Britain. 'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2' is if anything a deterrent to war; the bloody, depressing battles you are involved in throughout will probably only appeal to the top 0.01% of the hardest people in Britain. If the government still insist on having these games tones down, maybe they could just ask the producers to put a few extra warnings in, tell store clerks to advise parents on the content of the game or just move all the adult games to another area. I do believe in the age rating system, as a 6 year old having 'Grand Theft Auto IV' bought for him (like I saw just a few weeks ago) is plain wrong.
For me, this is much like the great cannabis debate (which when you look at the evidence is better for you than alcohol, cigarettes and some say caffeine) maybe this is an area which the government is too conservative to really look into for the social benefits, and should be left to public choice, so those who don't like it should adopt the traditional British attitude of "if you don't like it, ignore it" (or "if you can't beat them, join them": whichever is easier for you).
***EDIT*** It turns out that the Pakeerah case had no relation to video games, instead it was drug dealing. I'll leave the post as it is as I aimed to highlight the reaction by the government more than the event itself.
2 comments:
I've read about the supposed Manhunt-related murder before. I hate to quote Wikipedia but I have read the following on proper news sites (I just can't really be bothered to find the articles again):
"The police denied any such link between the game and the murder, citing drug-related robbery as the motive. The presiding judge also placed sole responsibility with Leblanc in his summing up after sentencing him to life. It was later discovered that Leblanc did not actually own the game, but Pakeerah did."
I don't think I have ever come across a case where a film or game was proven to actually be responsible for a murder, it's always media hype. I also note that interest in the game increased significantly after the media attention, so that had the opposite effect to what was intended really.
I saw a debate on TV yesterday about CoD 2, specifically the airport mission. It was obvious to me, from the way everyone misunderstood the context of the mission, that none of the people present had played the game or watched the mission in question being played in full. I personally think that if you haven't actually seen something, then you have no right to complain about it until you have and know what you're complaining about. That's partly because it's so easy to describe a scene and make it sound far worse than it really is.
Yeah, I sort of played MW2, and found that particular part of the game soul destroying. Call me old fashioned, but there is a bit of a difference between shooting unarmed civilians and shooting people who are trying to shoot you. The rest of the airport level was quite good, what with the amount of riot shielded cops meaning you needed a little more ingenuity than on other levels, but there was no need for that part of the game. It could very easily have been cut out, and just started with the bit where the Russians showed up. The point Peter was making was exactly that. It was unecessarily soul-destroying.
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