German group tries to hold a public game-burning and fails

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**Anung Un Rama**

I've alreay written so much about this stuff on my blog and elsewhere on the web over the last few days, so I'll just give you to news posts to sum it up:

The Escapist

The escapist wrote:
A German group calling itself Aktionbundnis Amoklauf Winnenden is calling on people to turn in their violent videogames as part of the Families Against Killer Games event, taking place this Saturday night in Stuttgart.

Formed by families of the victims of the school shooting in Winnenden, Germany, earlier this year, the Action Alliance is one of several groups in the country seeking to link that incident, and violent youth behavior in general, to violent videogames. An effort by the German government to ban violent games outright ran aground this summer, so the Action Alliance has gone to Plan B: If you can't ban 'em, burn 'em.

Or at the very least, collect them up in one convenient location, presumably for safe disposal later. Thus, the group is holding the "Familien gegen Killerspiele" event on October 17, inviting everyone to come to the State Opera House in Stuttgart, where they can toss their violent videogames into a big bin. People who throw away a game will be entered into a draw for a jersey signed by the German national soccer team.

I'm not going to make the obvious joke about what happened the last time Germany tried something like this but according to GamePolitics there is an interesting connection to the country's Nazi past: The stylized image of a person throwing a videogame into the trash used in promotional material for the event is a modified version of one used to encourage citizens to do away with the swastika, using a game disc in place of the infamous Nazi symbol.

And this is how it ended.

**Anung Un Rama**

Horst wrote:you know, its funny, after I turned 21, I really stopped caring if things were banned to younger people, and started to see why they should be banned from younger people.

Funny how things work, these days

It's not that easy. Around here, games get toned down quite often, just so that they can actually get the official 18+ label. If a game doesn't get that label it's only a matter of time till it gets indiziert and after that it's not that easy to get your hands on it. Also, there is no (legal) way to access downloadable content or whole online games which didn't get the official 18+ label.

H.B.M.C. wrote:Germany is a country so afraid of its own shadow that it wants to ban people being angry and all forms of violence, fake or otherwise.

It's pathetic.

I wouldn't have said it so harshly, but you got a pretty good point there.

**Anung Un Rama**

Not quite right. The violence was not toned down, but neither Mercenaries nor assignment Ada is in the German version. Though I think that was because Capcol failed to deliver the full version for rating and so only the version withouht the bonus games got one.

There are a lot of other example though:

- everything in Half-Life 2 bleeds green. Blood splatters on the walls and floor in Ravenholm are black.
- There is now blood or gore in TF2. If you blow up someone, they explode into a shower of gears and rubber duckies.
- No blood or flying limbs in Fallout 3.
- Ragdoll-physics get cut almost every time.

**Anung Un Rama**

Cheese Elemental wrote:Ah, thanks for the clarification. However...

Anung Un Rama wrote:
- There is no blood or gore in TF2. If you blow up someone, they explode into a shower of gears and rubber duckies.

God fething dammit Germany.

**Anung Un Rama**

To make one thing clear. I played the British version of Fallout.