Doc Holliday wrote:Does a game alone create tomorrow's racist/muderer/sociopath? Nope - but it can reinforce a person's values if it forms a significant enough part of their social education during the final part of their most formative years.
I agree with this 100% - but I think we're extrapolating different things from it.
In the BBFC's statement, they quite clearly take a similar line to you - at least, that's how I took their reference to the game presenting an "unjustifiable" risk of harm to both adults and
minors. My problem with this is these repeated references to things like "formative years" - there must be loads of films which you wouldn't want a 10-year old to watch, and most parents don't have too much difficulty in policing their kids' viewing habits. But the BBFC statement about
Manhunt 2 appears to contradict this, and basically say "we can't trust people not to let their kids play this game". My argument to that would be "why bother with ratings at all, if they don't achieve anything?".
Because of course, the truth is, ratings DO achieve something - certainly in the case of movies: they prevent immediate access to those too young to watch them. I'm not saying that kids don't eventually get their hands on these movies, but it is made difficult for them, which is all one can hope to achieve - the rest is up to those in charge of the kids.
I have huge difficulty in relating any random act of violence I see or read about in the paper to a movie or videogame. There were something like 7 teen murders in the UK last weekend, and I'd be willing to bet hard cash that the kids responsible were more influenced by hip-hop lyrics than videogames. And yet, we haven't heard calls to step up enforcement of the "Parental Advisory" warning labels. Again, for me so much of this comes back to parenting - banning a videogame/movie/album on the grounds of its content sounds like a classic case of shutting the stable door after the horse has well and truly bolted, which leaves me with the feeling that it will ultimately achieve nothing. It's legislating against what people MIGHT do, instead of trying to create a situation which encourages people to simply behave better.
Another big problem is that, while I might respect all of
your reasons for feeling the way you do, I think there's a fair amount of evidence to suggest that this line of thinking can lead to wild generalisations in the mainstream press. That kid who shot up his college in Virginia a couple of months back - he was obsessed with
Oldboy, right? There were calls for
Oldboy to be banned in the wake of that tragedy. For me, the thought process which would lead someone to say the
Manhunt 2 ban was a good idea, is just a precursor to the type of thinking which sees people blaming
Oldboy for Virginia, or blaming
Rambo for Hungerford, as also happened at the time, I believe.
In closing, I will say "guns don't kill people, rappers do. I seen it in a documentary on BBC2"
Doc wrote:Shit. I'm turning into "Victorian Dad". You did this to me, Papa - YOU!
Excellent - maybe I'll finally have someone to accompany me when I go reaping bloody justice on the strumpets of the night....
so I can't do a full-on reply just now...but I will come back to this in the next 24 hours. You - as ever - make a compelling case.