http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... tacks.html

Vaz has form - he's done more for violent video games than their publishers ever did (Bully, Manhunt 1+2)

Ppl will ignore him, it's a damn 18 game and all he could harp on about was "protecting kids". If anything, they need protection from parents who obviously can't read if they think buying an 18 game for their kids is ok.

Hang on, he doesn't like the video game, but he's more than prepared to send REAL PEOPLE to die? Interesting conscience you've got there, Keith.

I saw the headline, and thought: well, yes. Modern warfare is violent - given the machinery employed by all sides. We’ll have more proof travelling through Wootton Basset today. Then I realised it was about a computer game.

Thing is - if the computer game shows warfare to be a violent, bloody mess with morals and scruple all tangled up, then what right have we to complain as real warfare is a violent, bloody mess with morals and scruples all tangled up.

We are constantly shown British soldiers mortaring and shelling some hill in the distance, and this makes for good TV. What we don’t get to see is what happens at the other end when the shell or bullet finds its target. We have to be very aware of the consequences of such actions, and if a computer game does that job, then so be it.

I think no one can complain about computer games depicting war being overly violent. Ever.

Well put Paul

The particular section which has caused the controversy - which shows the player effectively 'taking part' (it's autopiloted but you don't have to actually pull the trigger if you don't want to) - is of a terrorist attack on a crowded public airport terminal. You can see recorded footage of it here. While I appreciate games have as much right to portray things for 'dramatic impact' as any other medium, I do find it rather gratuitous. The only function if it in dramatic terms seems to be to affirm how much the antagonists in the game are violent, ruthless and frankly evil. That could be more or less taken as read given the rest of the plot.

I don't think the game is excessively violent or sensationalist - it's one of the more 'realistic' games in the genre if anything - however I do wonder if the particular sequence in question was put there largely to be a touchstone for controversy and gain a bit of extra publicity. This does not depict war in any sense - it depicts an act of terrorism against innocent civilians.

Having said all that, the game does give you the option to skip it and is very clear about the nature of what it is about to portray. From the records of the parliamentary exchange between Vaz and a member of the relevant ministry, it seems the government has taken a fairly reasonable view of it all.

Jon

Nasty, but I stand by my previous comments. I am sure that somewhere we have operatives deep inside various shady organisations who have to go along with those they are infiltrating. It can’t be an easy assignment. I think this shows the potential (if not extreme) grimness of such a situation. They do it to us. We do it to them. I believe that this is how war happens.

I don’t know the full context of this scene though - does the player have to go along with this? Are there consequences for not opening fire and generally joining in? If there was some moral decision the player had to make, and there being consequences based on the decision, then I could understand what I am looking at.

On the face of it, it’s depicting nothing new - games have always had the massacre of innocents. The Grand Theft Auto games have been down that road often. Lara Croft butchers wildlife as if it was going out of fashion. As have many others.

I think the problems people are having with this are:
a) The context - this is not historical or so far in fantasy or SciFi to allow a disconnect from the player. It’s clearly playing into current events.
b) Reality - a few 8-bit pixels getting vaped is very different to the carnage portrayed here. People suffering and dying in that way. Blood on the floor. It is getting far, far easier to make any kind of scene realistic.

The cynic in me also feels that the generated hooha is about the need to keep the civilian population somewhat in the dark over what the Good Guys do in the field of battle, and that there are political motivations of try to keep this kind of imagery under cover. It will impact on future recruitment.

That's what the fuss is about? Yes there might be a bit of blood on the floor, but I don't see it spraying up the walls or people's guts everywhere.

Jesus wept, I've done worse in Grand Theft Auto FFS. I've torn Storm Trooper's limbs off using the Force. I felt so horrible I wanted to cry, oh wait, no I didn't, because it's not real.

What's next, are we going to ban films that portray violence? Saw, Schindler's List, United 93, Zulu?

No, of course not. Why? Because the idiots in power had films around when they were young, so they're OK. Computer games are new and therefore must be evil.

And let's not forget that it's an 18 rated game anyway!

The game was given an 18 rating purely because of this scene.

Maybe if the game does show war to be anything other than the clinical computer game it is portrayed as on the news then perhaps it should be given a "U" cert and given away for free worldwide.

Vaz always was an opportunist to55er anyway.

Now, y'see, that... that doesn't really help. Are you really saying it's OK to show innocent people being murdered provided it doesn't reach a certain level of brutality or realism?


Well no, it's not. But that doesn't mean it can't be distasteful. The world is more granular than 'evil/not evil'. You have to look at why they've done it, for example.


The one that immediately sprang to mind was the killing of James Caan's character in Godfather 2. That was at least as bloody as any individual death in the sequence I linked to, although it was only one person not dozens. And it was a very important part of the dramatic thread of the film. Violence can be gratuitous without being explicit and the issue I have with the sequence is that it may be gratuitous, not that it's excessively violent of itself. Context is everything, as they say.


Keith Vaz seems to think so. Thankfully he seems to be in the minority. And the government seems to be thinking 'video games may be evil but they also bring in a whopping great pile of taxes'.

Jon

I ask you, where does it end?

Is Lego Star Wars OK because I'm only dicing lego bricks?

Should inFamous be banned because I might seek out a "Ray Sphere" and then electrocute Keith Vaz and the Labour government?

Should Destruction Derby be released, or Need for Speed? Heavens, we don't want illegal racing to be encouraged?

Tony Hawk's?

I don't need the government telling me what's acceptable in a computer game, if I think it's over the top I won't buy it.

I don't see anyone calling for the Hellraiser films to be banned, and they (along with the Saw films) are the most horrific things I have ever witnessed - and that includes every game I have ever played.

Yip:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Scappaticci

If he hadn't been involved in some seriously nasty sh1t he'd have had the same things done to him, and the information collected would have been that much weaker...

How about raising MW2 availability? I've had a few friends on Facebook saying everywhere they've tried has been sold out.