Censorship

So I've been thinking a lot lately about video games and the impact they have and potentially could have in the future. I've talked quite a bit in the past about my hopes for video games and interactive applications for the future, mainly in the form of education. While I'm very hopeful, video games still seem to have a lot to overcome before it seems as though they can prove themselves in the eyes of many. Video games have definitely begun to proliferate more of today's markets, but there still seems to be a negative stigma surrounding video games. Of course this debate has gone on for years, but we're starting to see some serious infringements on human rights as a direct result of video game stereotyping.

Sure in school we talked about governmental restrictions on video games, and the topic that came up most of the time was Germany's restrictions on blood and gore in video games. I've begun to hear more interesting reports coming from China and their fight against video games. There are actually video game addiction camps that children are being sent to, to "cure" them of video game addiction. While I'm not saying that there’s such a thing as video game addiction, things like "Shock Treatment" for video game addicts seems to go a little over the top in my opinion. Luckily for Chinese WoW addicts, this practice has stopped, but these camps are still being used and are potentially more brutal then ever. There has been the first reported death of a student enrolled in one of these camps to cure his video game addiction. According to the report the student was beaten to death by the camp supervisors, for running too slowly. While the camp claims “Our methods are tough but do not include torture or other methods that might damage a child’s health," post mortem reports of the boy's body finds that at one point the boy had been handcuffed.

China has gone further on their infringement of human rights by banning certain online games that "glamorizes gangs." Although I can't help but feel as though the individuals who might actually be in Chinese gangs, are more then likely not partaking in online gang warfare but I could be wrong. Even if your not a gamer you might think that some of these things may not effect you, but China has gone as far as threatening jail time for "dirty" text messages. So just in case you were wondering, big brother is most definitely reading your text messages and deciding on jail time depending on what language you might be using. Jail time might include up to five days for one text message or up to ten for three. This sort of thinking is extremely dangerous for not only the future of human rights but the way we perceive technology in the future. Just as we're beginning to see new and evolving emergent media, we also witness new forms of discrimination against it.

China isn't an isolated incident either, Germany is another country that has been well known for it's crack down on video games. With it's recent run of anti-game laws that are looking to get passed, game companies are feeling pressured to relocate out of Germany. I thought it was best put here...

"A ban on action games in Germany is concerning us because it is essentially like banning the German artists that create them.If the German creative community can’t effectively participate in one of the most important cultural mediums of our future, we will be forced to relocate to other countries.

The current political discussion will deprive German talent of its place on the global game development stage, and deprive German consumers of entertainment that is considered safe and fun around the world."

Companies like Crytek have an unstable future as a result of these new measures being set in place by the German government. Ironically enough Germany has become the top game market in Europe... This year's GDC Europe is even being held in Cologne, Germany, where game developers are speaking out to gamers attending the conference; asking them to help support petitions against these laws.

So I know I don't typically blog about these sorts of things, but I find a lot of this pretty troubling. Yet I guess I could be named a hypocrite for saying that I believe in the positive impacts of video games, and disregard what is being said about the negative impacts. For what it's worth I still believe in the human mind and subconscious, I don't believe that video games make us more prone to reenact what we do in the virtual environment. While I agree that there are plenty of irresponsible games out there, and irresponsible parents who let their children play them, I don't believe that video games make us more aggressive or violent then we already are. I don't really have much more to say on this topic right now, I just felt as like sharing some of this information for others to maybe start thinking about too. Maybe I'll have more to post on this later, but for now I'll let you draw your own conclusions... I've certainly been left wondering about the future.