A law introduced last year that would ban violent videogames and toys in Venezuela was enacted last Wednesday, according to various news sources.

Under the law, importers, producers, distributors or sellers of the banned toys and games could face fines and jail time ranging from two to five years. In a story dated March 3, Prensa Latina reported that the law had been passed.

The law, when initially proposed to Venezuela’s National Assembly, proposed that the country’s consumer protection society be granted full power in determining what games and toys were deemed violent, though no indication was given into what criteria might be used to judge the goods.

As it was drawn up, the law also featured provisions for teaching crime prevention classes in school, public campaigns to warn about the dangers of videogames. A government campaign to promote games that taught children “respect for an adversary” was also included, though no word on if this, or any, additional provisions were a part of the new law.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is apparently not a big fan of videogames as witnessed by an outburst earlier this year in which he labeled the PlayStation as “poison.” The ban on violent games and toys is apparently seen as a way to somehow combat crime and violence in the country.

An Overseas Security Advisory Council report on Venezuela had this to say about the country's level of violence:

The U.S. Department of State has rated Venezuela a critical threat country for crime.  The capital city of Caracas has been named murder capital of the world by many experts and that violence extends to the entire country.  Murder, kidnappings, armed robberies, carjackings and residential break-ins occur with impunity and perpetrators are rarely brought to justice.

While officially banned, handguns are readily available and a common sight throughout Venezuela.  Armed robberies occur in broad daylight including areas frequented by tourists.

|Via SlashDot and Cheater 87|

A pair of researchers with opposite takes on interpreting and analyzing research related to violence and videogames are once again engaged in the scrutinization of each other’s work.

The latest findings of Iowa State University’s Craig Anderson and his team are the subject of an article in the Washington Post. Unfortunately, actual details from the study are scarce in the Post article, other than the research led Anderson to attribute playing violent videogames to increases in “violent thinking, attitudes and behaviors among players.”

Fortunately, another source provides some insight into the research, which will appear in the March 2010 issue of the Psychological Bulletin. Anderson and his team analyzed 130 existing research reports, comprised of over 130,000 subjects, using meta-analytic procedures, which is described as “the statistical methods used to analyze and combine results from previous, related literature.”

The research concluded that:

…violent video game effects are significant in both Eastern and Western cultures, in males and females, and in all age groups.

Anderson, who indicated that this may be his last study on the subject, because of its “definitive findings” added:

From a public policy standpoint, it's time to get off the question of, 'Are there real and serious effects?' That's been answered and answered repeatedly. It's now time to move on to a more constructive question like, 'How do we make it easier for parents -- within the limits of culture, society and law -- to provide a healthier childhood for their kids?

Well, hold your horses there Dr. Anderson. Texas A&M International University researchers Christopher Ferguson and John Kilburn issued their own research paper challenging Anderson’s findings. The paper is entitled Much Ado About Nothing: The Misestimation and Overinterpretation of Violent Video Game. Effects in Eastern and Western Nations: Comment on Anderson et al.

The paper claims that Anderson’s study “included many studies that do not relate well to serious aggression, an apparently biased sample of unpublished studies, and a 'best practices' analysis that appears unreliable and does not consider the impact of unstandardized aggression measures on the inflation of effect size estimates.”

“One very basic piece of information” that Anderson’s research neglected to report, according to Ferguson and Kilburn, is “as VVGs [violent videogames] have become more popular in the United States and elsewhere, violent crime rates among youths and adults in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Japan, and most other industrialized nations have plummeted to lows not seen since the 1960s.”

Ferguson and Kilburn offer the following summation:

Psychology, too often, has lost its ability to put the weak (if any) effects found for VVGs on aggression into a proper perspective. In doing so, it does more to misinform than inform public debates on this issue.

Just a note: Anderson’s study apparently used a Ferguson and Kilburn-authored analyses to contrast their own.

Thanks Adam!

An Australian TV report on violent games and their impact on the country’s youth uses a quote from a psychologist to claim that the link between violent videogames and youth crime is greater than the connection between smoking and lung cancer.

The Ten News report details recent violent crimes—the slashing of a “young customers” throat at a Kings Cross, Sydney chicken shack and a bouncer who had his face slashed in Melbourne in one “of a string of weapon attacks,” and then attempts to link a perceived rise in violence to games, stating  that, “Psychologist say the explosion in youth crime is inextricably linked to violent videogames and other media.

Next to appear, Dr. Wayne Warburton from the Council on Children and the Media, who apparently came up with the lung cancer comparison, as he stated, “It’s much greater that the effect of smoking and lung cancer. There’s a study showing that the average child sees in a childhood, 16,000 murders and 200,000 act of violence."

The Council is calling for an information packet to be mailed to every household in Australia.

Reporter Matt Doran then cites  unknown “experts” as saying that the game industry has much to account for, then attempts to lay some of the blame on “Modern Warfare: Call of Duty 2,” a title in which “gamers plot terror attacks against civilians.”

Wrapping up, Doran quotes “psychologists” as saying that “regular exposure to games like these actually rewires a child’s brain, making them more amenable to violence.” He then alludes to a conference on youth violence taking place in Sydney “later this month,” which will feature “the world’s leading researchers.” He added, “Tougher classifications for violent media will be top of the agenda.”

The Council on Children and Media has a section on its website dealing with the R18 Discussion Paper, which it claims came about as “a relentless push by gamers and the industry.” They are against the addition of an R18+ rating category for games and run down their opposition here.

Among their points:

The gaming industry and gamers make much of the supposedly maturing and gender-balanced population who play video games. So what? One can say the same thing about many populations, such as car drivers and alcohol users, without this being an argument for, in effect, making drinking or car driving more easily available to minors.

 
Thanks Graham and Jamie!

The University of Alabama professor who stands accused of killing three of her peers last Friday is now, of course, linked with a popular role-playing game.

The Boston Herald, citing a source, claims that suspected shooter Amy Bishop was a fan of Dungeons & Dragons and actually met her husband at Northeastern University through an on-campus D&D club. The source told the paper that “They [Bishop and her husband] even acted this crap out.”

Bishop’s husband, James Anderson, described the pair’s immersion in D&D as a “passing interest.” He added, “It was a social thing more than anything else. It’s not the crazy group people think they are.”

The Herald reached deep down to offer the following insight into the topic of D&D and its potential influence on players:

Some experts have cited the D&D backgrounds of people who were later involved in violent crimes, while others say it just a game.

Another Herald piece paints Bishop as slightly unhinged, detailing an incident in 2002 at an International House of Pancakes where Bishop allegedly punched another woman in the face for taking the restaurant’s last child booster seat.


Thanks E.Zachary Knight via the Shoutbox!

A mother asking her son to stop playing World of Warcraft caused a Swan to turn into an ugly duckling, sparking a family battle that involved four generations.

The Herald Tribune carries word of James Swan (pictured), a 27-yeard old Manatee County, Florida resident who was drinking and playing WOW last week. As Swan grew more boisterous in the course of playing, his mother, Hazel Summerall, attempted to get Swan to shut off the game. Summerall placed a hand on Swan’s shoulder, at which point he grabbed her by the hair and threw her on a bed.

Swan then threw his own son onto the bed, causing Summerall to rush for the phone to dial 911. Swan ripped the phone off its mooring, smashed his own head into the wall for effect and then turned his attention back to his mother, choking her. At this point Swan’s grandfather intervened, grabbing a handgun and, following a brief struggle, fired once, wounding Swan in the head.

Swan was apparently wounded only superficially and refused treatment before being arrested.


|Via Wow.com|

An Australian youth worker is blaming videogames for what he claims is a growing problem of kids carrying knives.

Following the in-school stabbing death of a 12-year old boy at the hands of a 13-year old in Brisbane, Les Twentyman, an advocate for young homeless people, was asked to speak before a government inquiry into the matter.

According to ABC, Twentyman blamed games for desensitizing children to violence, in turn making them more likely to carry, and to eventually use, knives.

Twentyman continued:

Normally they'd have a fight and people might ring around them, and it would be one-on-one, and when one [child fell] to the ground it would be over.

But today that is not the case because of the amount of violent entertainment that these young people are absorbing. They lose sight of reality and become desensitized…

Twentyman sees knife-carrying children as a potential  epidemic, citing a young girl who told him that carrying a knife was as common as carrying a mobile phone.

While there were 19 reported knife incidents at Victoria schools in 2009, up from 11 in 2008, Education Minister Bronwyn Pike denied Twentyman’s claims of a growing cutlery problem, saying, “Yes, there was a slight increase, but these figures do go up and down a bit, but there hasn't really been an overall trend of increase.”

This story is eerily similar to one from 2008, in which a wave of UK stabbings was also attempted to be linked with violent media.


Thanks Ryan!

Canadian website Canoe has doubled up on videogame violence stories posted to its site in recent days.

First up is a story with the banner “Man Wounded in Xbox Dispute,” which details the shooting of a 27-year old Winnipeg man by his 16-year old brother. While “it was unclear whether the dispute was over the possession of a video game or if it broke out while the pair was playing a video game,” videogames were central enough to the crime that they were utilized in the headline.

The shooting victim, thankfully, was upgraded to stable condition in the hours following the incident.

Canoe also took the time to produce a slideshow entitled “Video Games Linked With Crime,” which dredges up fifteen game-related or influenced crimes, including a supposed trend among graffiti artists to replicate Tetris patterns in their illegal works.


Thanks Allen and Trencher!

Image via Wooster Collective

Spencer Halpin’s Moral Kombat, the 2007 documentary that focuses on the subject of violence in videogames, can be viewed for free in its entirety on Babelgum.

In examining its controversial topic, the film talks with a slew of game industry people, politicians and critics, including Dr. David Walsh, Jack Thompson, Lorne Lanning, American McGee, Joe Lieberman, Henry Jenkins and Doug Lowenstein.

The film will be free to watch online for 30 days.

In making the documentary, a variety of cutting-edge technology was employed, some of which is detailed in an article on Apple.com.

Disclosure: Spencer Halpin is ECA President Hal Halpin’s brother. GamePolitics is a publication of the ECA.

The heartbreaking story of a nine-year old Texas boy committing suicide at school led a Clinical Psychologist to attempt to pin part of the blame for kids acting out in ways outside of the norm on violent videogames.

The fourth-grader in question was a student at Stewart Creek Elementary School. He asked a nurse to use the restroom, locked himself inside and tragically hung himself. In a CNN video report on the story, Clinical Psychologist Dr. Brenda Wade was brought in for commentary.

The doctor cited two factors for why children are acting out in ways “never imagined possible”. The first was that there is now “more instability” in families, because of external stresses and the economy.

The second factor? Violent videogames of course.

Dr. Wade stated:

The other factor is that younger and younger children are exposed to very violent videogames with content that I would shudder to have an adult watch on a regular basis.

We just covered, a couple days ago, the story that children are watching as much as 52 hours a week of TV and sitting in front of a screen. A lot of that content is not uplifting and it’s not teaching our children how to handle problems and feelings.

These statements came moments after the Doctor cautioned that we “don’t want to blame and cast dispersions” at what role the boy’s family may have played in the tragedy.

Dr. Wade bills herself as a nationally syndicated talk show host and best selling author (as seen on Oprah). Visitors to her website are also offered a free love lesson.

Thanks Sean!

Following an argument over the best strategies to utilize in FIFA 2009, an Italian teenager stabbed his father in the neck with a 15-inch knife.

16-year old Mario (no last name given) cut his 46-year old father Fabrizio in the family home after the discussion over tactics resulted in the patriarch shutting off the television. Mario then retrieved a clean knife from the kitchen, stabbed his father, and returned to the kitchen to clean the knife in front of his mother reports Reuters.

The mother didn’t know anything was amiss until Fabrizio, who survived the attack staggered into the kitchen bleeding.

FIFA 2009 was given to the boy as a birthday present just a few days earlier. His mother said, “…we bought him FIFA 2009 because we didn’t want him playing violent games.”

As noted by submitter Allen (thanks!), it isn’t about if the games are violent or not, it’s about the person playing them.

Anti-game crusaders may have a new (and unlikely) ally—porn star Ron Jeremy.

The subject of videogames cropped up in a debate at the Consumer Electronics Show between Jeremy and anti-pornography activist Craig Gross reports PCMag. The inclusion came as Jeremy was attempting to infer that the porn industry is in business only to serve adults over the age of 18 years old.

He stated:

We don't want kids to watch porn. Though if they do, he added, there are far worse influences out there — like video games.

 

[Studies have] found that violent video games are much bigger a negative influence on kids

Gross and Jeremy did manage to agree, however, that it’s up to parents to keep explicit or non-age related material out of the hands of their kids.

GP: Having a hard time (no pun intended) here believing that Ron has read all the relevant studies. This incident just illustrates (laughably) how much of a scapegoat videogames have become for social ills. Perhaps a new pro-videogame crusade could be launched under the banner "At Least It's Not Porn," or Frumpy Middle-Aged Mom and Ron can team up to promote the evils of games.

Gamers are always hearing about the connection between videogames and violence. Unfortunately, a police report from Los Angeles has shown a direct connection in an odd sort of way.

R&B singer Teddy Riley, a member of the group Blackstreet, has been accused of swinging a Rock Band guitar at his two daughters, according to the celebrity site TMZ. Taja Riley, the 18-year-old daughter, has been granted a temporary restraining order against her father, forcing him to stay 100 yards or more away from her.

TMZ's report adds:

In the documents, filed in L.A. County Superior Court, Taja claims at one point Teddy, "lifted a Rock Band guitar and threatened to kill person(s) w/ it."

Taja claims she suffered several injuries in the alleged altercation -- including "bashes to temple, contusion on face" and "pain in knee."

The incident occured at the Riley home in Los Angeles on Dec. 23.

A comic book writer has opined that he is interested in seeing more realistic violence in videogames, but he isn't sure if the gaming public is ready for it.

Landry Walker, a writer who writes "Batman: the Brave and the Bold" and has also written for "The Incredibles," was watching a friend play Batman: Arkham Asylum and was a bit incensed that his friend was not phased when Batman got shot. His thought was that because he was Batman, he was not supposed to get shot, despite the body armor.

According to an editorial he posted on Elder-Geek.com, he is concerned that bullets in games don't phase people. If you get shot at in real life, you'd panic:

I’ve been shot at a couple of times. I don’t mean I was sitting at the TV waving a controller around so a little pixel person could dodge cyborg powered armor piercing poison tipped bullets. Nope. These were just bullets from a simple and boring hand gun. In each instance, the bullets missed. Lucky me. Because there were no handy first aid packs or carefully planted green herbs lying around waiting. If I had been shot, I expect it would have been amazingly unlike a video game. Assuming the bullet did not inflict irreparable harm to my body, the experience of actually being shot (let’s assume a grazing strike to the shoulder) would have likely done irreparable harm to the cleanliness of my pants. Yes. I realize the imaginary bullet hit my imaginary shoulder. You do the obvious math on how that correlates to the un-cleanliness of my pants.

He goal is to get more of an emotional response as a gamer:

I don’t want any of this out of some overbearing concern that we as a society are allowing ourselves to become numb to the grim realities of blah blah blah. Nope. I want a game that recreates that insane rush of endorphins and adrenaline or whatever it is after hearing a simple bullet crack past your ear. That’s what games should be. So real that I just have to put down the controller for a minute because some part of my lizard brain is shaking in disbelief over the scenario I somehow managed to survive.

GP: Do you get enough realism in your videogames? Do you get an adrenaline rush when the bullets start to fly? Personally, when I'm going up against a live player, I must admit my heart races faster and my actions get a bit more frantic. I don't get that playing against the AI.

A National Campaign to Stop Violence initiative seems to indicate that a good portion of middle school students think that violent media impacts real-world youth violence.

The program, called Do the Write Thing, prompted 6th, 7th and 8th students to document how violence affected their daily lives and how the issue could be addressed.

“Analysis” of the essays determined that 31% rated violent entertainment—including television, videogames, movies and music—were a “significant catalyst” for violence in their age group. Gang violence (27%), drugs (24%) and bullying (21%) were additional factors cited.

Peter Jensen, M.D., Chairman of the New York City Do the Write Thing program and Mayo Clinic Co-chair of the Division of Child Psychiatry and Psychology, offered:

The significance of this study is that it is not parents, educators or social scientists decrying violence in the entertainment industry, it is the young people themselves who are speaking out about the negative impact the violent content has on them.

Authorities in Beauvais, France believe they have prevented a possible school shooting by a 13-year old “computer games enthusiast."

A TimesOnline story details the unfolding events under the unfortunate headline “Computer Games Fan ‘Planned School Massacre.’” Suspicion was initially raised when the boy, named Bastien, left extra early for school, eventually leading his parents to a blog post of his that read: “This is my last message because Tuesday November 17, 2009 will be the last day of my life. Sorry to leave you..."  Police were alerted and sealed off the boy’s school, Saint-Esprit. The teen apparently saw police at the school and avoided it, ditched a shotgun and 25 cartridges in a field along the way. He was found later at a cyber-café.

A friend of Bastien said that, “He always wanted to go into the Army. He loved battles. He was passionate about history, warriors. He played video games up to one or two in the morning...” Other buddies told reporters that Bastien was a World of Warcraft player.

Even the Mayor of Allone, Christian Sadowski, painted Bastien as a gamer, saying that he knew the boy was a fan of computer games, adding, “Many young people end up finding it difficult to tell the difference between dream and reality. He played his little fantasy on the net and then carried it out.”

The boy was anxious about an upcoming parent-teacher conference as a result of receiving less-than-stellar grades.

GP: Glad they caught him obviously, but the secondary focus on games in this article is gratuitous as is usually the case.  But as we, and Lorne Lanning, know, this is how the mainstream media rolls. At least they didn’t call WOW a “murder simulator.”

Update: GP reader Soldat_Louis rounded up and translated a handful of other stories and media outlets that played up the videogame link:

• "Considered as a good student coming from a normal family, the middle school boy, a video game adept, (...)" (Le Point)

• "According to a police source, 'bad grades could be the cause of the murderous intentions' of the student, a video game adept."  (France-Soir)

• "It's on his blog that the student, a video game fan, has published his intention to make a name of himself (...)" (Le Télégramme)

• "The kid is considered as a good student. He comes from a normal family. He is a video game adept and maintains his own blog. (...) [The attempted shooting] revives the memory of [the Winnenden shooting]. Perpetrated by  Tim Kretschmer, 17-years-old, also a video game adept, (...)" (La Dépêche)


Soldat_Louis also pointed us towards (and again translated the relevant part) a debate over “How to protect your children against the dangers of the Internet” that took place on French radio station RTL this morning.

Véronique Fima of the Action Innocence nonprofit group apparently came to the defense of games and gamers in the debate, while noting that in the case of the Beauvais story, the Internet played a positive role and assisted in stopping any violence.

On the point of videogames, she stated, “First of all, I wouldn't want them to be incriminated in the first place (...) rather than knowing that he was a video game aficionado, I would like us to ask the question : what was the deep discomfort that made this child act that way (...) All children and teenagers all play video games, yet they're not all mass murderers."

The co-CEO of Quantic Dream has taken the media to task over its presentation of violence in video games, saying that many things are taken out of context, leading to controversy.

Guillaume de Fondaumiere, in a video interview with French game site Digital Games (translated by Benzaie), said that mass media has an important role in forming public opinion, but problems arise when some media "are taking small portions of video game footages out their contexts." 

He said that video games are a form of expression and that violence can be found in any form of expression. He disagrees with the notion that violent games make a person violent:

"Playing a violent game won't turn you into a psycho, a murderer or a serial killer. Most studies show that very clearly on the contrary violent games allow players to express themselves. It's like an outlet for them in a way. All these violent actions that are said to have been inspired by playing violent video games are nothing but the expressions of issues unrelated to video games."

De Fondaumiere, who is past president of the French National Video Game Association,  said that video games are this generation's form of media that is being targeted for its violence, alluding to the fact that books, movies and music have all had their time when that form of expression was criticized on a regular basis.

He did say that violence in games has its limits:

"Violence must not be glorified. When you are talking to designers of the games we talked about, they'll tell you it's not what they had in mind. Sometimes they'll tell you that they wanted to give players total freedom. That players can totally decide to be violent or not and that in fact, by using violence in the game, usually they will be penalized."

Quantic Dream is developing Heavy Rain for the PS3.

In response to a violent in-school incident that took place in Germany last week, a school principal has created the term “killergame,” and is attempting to implement a plan that would try and keep students from playing such games altogether.

A school in Ansbach, Germany was the location of the attack, in which an 18-year old male student reportedly injured nine classmates with a variety of weapons, including an axe, knives and Molotov cocktails. While games were not mentioned in the original news coverage of the rampage, Negative Gamer found and translated an article in which Brad Denning, Principal of the Schramberg Second School, touched on plans for making the educational facility “killergame free.”

Denning, courtesy of Negative Gamer's translation, stated:

Even if there isn’t a monocausally relation between excessive playing of games, leading to acts of violence, it still provides a twisted frame of reference of solutions for their problems and hardships, that they learn – and may transfer to the real world under certain circumstances.

Two stories on the Salisbury Post website detail the unfortunate shooting death of a 20-year old man Salisbury, North Carolina man at the hands of his younger brother.

While one of the stories details the incident under the headline “Brother Charged After Fatal Shooting,” a second story, time stamped with the exact same information as the first, runs down the story under the headline “Fatal Shooting May Be Related to Video Game.”

While “hanging out and playing video games,” 19-year old Bobby Jonathan Chambers apparently put a gun to his brother’s head. He removed the clip, but failed to realize that a bullet still resided in the chamber and shot Elbert Leon Chambers III fatally. Both Chambers men had been arrested and convicted previously for “various felonies.”

The second article states within:

Police believe a Salisbury teen fatally shot his brother while mimicking actions on a video game.

A few comments on the article take the reporter to task for linking the shooting to video games, given that the brothers were on a police list of known gang members.

Thanks to GamePolitics reader L. Ray for pointing us to this story.

Dr. Christopher Ferguson (left) of Texas A&M International University dropped GamePolitics a line this morning to say that he has published a new study with some interesting findings about media violence.

Ferguson's new work (co-authored by Claudia San Miguel and Richard Hartley) appears in the Journal of Pediatrics and maintains that youth violence is linked to depression and peer delinquency, not consumption of violent media. Ferguson summarized his findings in an e-mail to GP:

We examined multiple risk factors for violence in a sample of 603 mostly Hispanic youth... We assessed results across seven separate measures of youth violence and serious youth aggression, including the Child Behavior Checklist aggression and rule-breaking scales as reported by both children and their parents, involvement in violent and non-violent criminal behaviors and bullying behaviors against peers. 

 

We found that depressed mood and association with delinquent peers were the strongest and most consistent risk factors for youth violence across outcome measures.  Parents' use of verbal cruelty in domestic relationships and the child's antisocial personality traits were also reasonably strong predictors of violent behavior.  By contrast video game violence exposure and television violence exposure were not found to be predictors of youth violence. 

Shadow Culture Secretary Ed Vaizey (left), a consistent supporter of the UK's video game industry, said this week that the British Government was too focused on the video game violence issue and not paying enough attention to helping the industry grow.

Develop reports that Vaizey made his comments while registering for the new London Games Conference, which will be held in October. The Conservative Member of Parliament said:

I’m delighted to be speaking to the London Games Conference. The games sector is one of the most successful creative industries in the UK, but it has been forgotten by Government.

While Canada and France aggressively compete to attract talent, all our politicians can talk about is video games violence.

Yet games should be a dream for a politician – it recruits people qualified in difficult subjects, like maths and computer science; it’s regional; and it’s successful and world-beating. Government backing should be a no-brainer.

The Associated Press is reporting that eight teen gamers in Singapore joined a suicide pact last month. However, after watching two of their number leap from a ninth floor window, the rest backed out.

The teens were reportedly fans of a video game called Slayers.

Citing a report Singapore's New Paper, the AP writes:

According to a police investigation, 16-year-old Ku Witaya, a self-proclaimed Taoist medium, convinced his younger brother and six other boys that they had to die to become `slayers' who would kill demons in a World War III.

While we are not familiar with Slayers, a Wikipedia entry seems to indicate that games in the series are quite old:

Slayers is a series of over 50 light novels... Slayers is a Dungeons & Dragons inspired narrative...

Several Slayers role playing games have been released in Japan. Slayers was released by Banpresto on Super Famicom on June 24, 1994. Another game entitled Slayers was released for NEC PC-9801. Slayers Royal was released by Kadokawa Shoten for Sega Saturn on July 25, 1997. and by ESP Software for PlayStation on June 25, 1998. A sequel, Slayers Royal 2 was released on Sega Saturn by ESP Software on September 03, 1998 and on PlayStation on July 11, 1999. Slayers Wonderful [screenshot at left] was published by Banpresto for Sony Playstation on October 22, 1998...

There is more info in the Straits Times.

New research indicates that in-game advertisement which feature violent elements may be more memorable to players than nonviolent ads.

MIT's Technology Review reports on the study conducted in part at the University of Luxemburg

[Researchers] developed a simple racing game called AdRacer... A player drives around a virtual course and scores points by hitting targets along the way--as she drives, unobtrusive graphical ads are displayed as billboard graphics... while a camera records her eye movements. After playing, each player's ability to recall of brands shown on the side of the road was tested.

 

Those who played a violent version of the game, where the goal was to run down pedestrians, resulting in a blood-splattered screen, demonstrated significantly better recall of advertised brands than those who played the regular version...

Of course, while violent ads may increase the player's memory of the product, they could also be a public relations disaster in the making. Technology Review notes that University of Luxemburg researchers have also found that ad violence can lessen a gamer's opinion of a brand.

GP: The screenshot at left is from the University of Luxemburg's AdRacer.

The Federal Communications Commission will evaluate the potential for a single content rating system that would span various forms of media, including video games, movies, TV and music.

Bloomberg reports that the FCC will study the issue at the direction of Congress:

The FCC action follows congressional queries into whether children are harmed by inappropriate content, such as sex, violence and obscenity. Senators want to know whether revisions are needed to the law to protect children, said Senator Jay Rockefeller...

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski told Congress in July he was “hopeful that the evolving media landscape” will enhance parents’ power “to pick and choose” what their child sees and hears.

Not surprisingly, game publishers lobbying group ESA is opposed to the idea. Kotaku has comment from ESA VP RichTaylor:

The ESA appreciates the FCC and its important role. However, the ESRB rating system is considered by parents, family advocates, the Federal Trade Commission, and elected officials as the gold standard in providing caregivers with the information they need to make the right choices for their families. Universal ratings will, in the end, only serve to confuse consumers, violate the Constitution's first amendment, and are a solution in search of a problem.

The wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is back in the video game news thanks to her involvement with an obscure firm by the name of Magnitude Gaming. Although we were unable to locate a website, Magnitude is described by the Daily Mail as "one of a new breed of companies which manage semi-professional teams in the growing ‘e-sport’ world."

According to the Daily Mail, Blair, an attorney by profession, and her 23-year old son Nicky have accepted positions on the board of the fledgling company.

So why is this an issue? The Daily Mail sees hypocrisy in Blair's involvement with a firm connected - at least peripherally - to violent video games, given that she previously signed on to a report linking violent games to a wave of stabbings in the UK:

The company has run a team playing the Counter-Strike combat game... There have been claims that perpetrators of massacres in the US and Germany have been fans of the game.

Only last year, Mrs Blair... chaired a major inquiry into the growth of knife and gun crime on Britain’s streets which acknowledged the ‘dire consequences on some young people’ of the video games and films they watched.

The resulting report stated: ‘The broader cultural context in which young people live – the music they listen to, the films they watch, the video games and sports they play – are important in articulating values, defining what is 'cool' and fashionable, and legitimising social norms.’

Magnitude founder Gabriel Moraes, who is Nicky Blair's housemate, issued a statement on the flap:

Magnitude has never been involved with games containing any kind of street violence. We had one game involving soldiers in military combat but it had a rating of 18-plus and was a team game. We stopped involvement with that game some months ago.

While Venezuela has been the (unwilling) setting for at least one violent video game (Mercenaries 2: World in Flames), lawmakers there are moving ahead with plans to ban violent games and toys.

The effort, reports Reuters, is aimed at reducing an unprecedented wave of crime and violence. According to Reuters, dozens of people are murdered in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas every week.

A measure detailing the proposed ban passed Venezuela's National Assembly this week. In order to become law, the game ban bill would need to be voted on a second time and then signed into law by President Hugo Chavez.

If passed, the video game ban would not be the first time that the Venezuelan government has targeted a form of media in response to social issues. In 2008 the government banned The Simpsons as unsuitable for children.

A 17 year old student detonated two pipe bombs in a San Mateo, California high school on Monday before being subdued by faculty members.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the boy was wearing a bulletproof vest and was armed with an additional eight pipe bombs, a two-foot long sword and a chainsaw. Police said that the student planned to set off the bombs and then attack survivors with the other weapons.

Gadget blog Gizmodo wonders whether there may have been a video game connection: 

If you're wondering why this is on Gizmodo—and you guys always do—it's because those weapons inherently remind me of movie and video game weapons. I'm not trying to say that video games cause violence or don't cause violence, but what I'm saying is that when a 17 year old man-child thinks he can corner his classmates while dual wielding a chainsaw and a sword probably played a lot of doom and zelda and didn't do very well in gym class, so would get tired very quickly.

A second report by the SF Chronicle describes the boy as a "techno wizard." His mother thought the bomb-making components were being used to build model rockets.

As noted by Joystiq, the ESRB is currently listing the upcoming PC version of Manhunt 2 with an Adults Only (AO) rating.

GamePolitics readers will likely recall that the console versions of Manhunt 2 generated a major controversy in the summer of 2007 when the game was banned in Britain and tagged with an AO here in the States. Rockstar subsequently released a toned-down version that earned an M (17+) rating for the U.S. market.

That was a critical milestone, because the Big Three console makers won't license AO-rated games for their systems, which makes it tough for a publisher to earn a return on its investment. That's why you don't see any AO-rated console games. While the open architecture of the PC negates licensing concerns, an AO-rated Manhunt 2 would still get thumbs-down from major retailers like GameStop and Wal-Mart.

That means that Rockstar is either planning a digital distribution campaign for Manhunt 2 or that it will edit the PC version - as it did with the console editions - to earn an M from the ESRB. Of course, there is a third scenario: Rockstar could ship an M-rated version to retailers while distributing an AO-rated version online.

We wonder how Valve might react to handling an AO game if its Steam service, which currently distributes Rockstar's GTA IV online, is under consideration as a potential digital distribution source for Manhunt 2.

In the UK, 25 years worth of government enforcement of content ratings for video games and films has been found to lack the required legal basis.

As reported by politics.co.uk, the Maggie Thatcher regime failed to notify the European Commission regarding the 1984 Video Recordings Act, thus invalidating the law.

In the UK, unlike the United States, content ratings have the force of law and those who sell adult-rated games or movies to minors can be charged with an offense. The oversight was discovered recently by the British government's Department for Culture Media and Sport.

A representative of the UK's Entertainment Retailers Association expressed amazement at the news:

This is extraordinary. For 25 years retailers have been faithfully administering the system and now this happens.

Meanhwile, Liberal Democrat Don Foster seized the opportunity to criticize Conservative Party leader David Cameron:

This must be a massive embarrassment to the Tories, especially as David Cameron was the special advisor to the Home Secretary in 1993 when the law was amended.

However, Conservative Jeremy Hunt pointed the finger of blame back at the Labor Government:

Much of the problem would have been avoided if they had sorted out the classification of video games earlier, as we and many others in the industry have been urging them to do.

Game publishers lobbying group ELSPA has counseled its members to proceed normally and offered to help the government fix the mistake. As reported by gamesindustry.biz, ELSPA boss Michael Rawlinson said:

The discovery that the Video Recordings Act is not enforceable is obviously very surprising. In the interest of child safety it is essential that this loophole is closed as soon as possible.

In this respect the videogames industry will do all it can to support and assist the government to that effect. ELSPA will therefore advise our members to continue to forward games to be rated as per the current agreement while the legal issues are being resolved.

Theoretically, at least, unscrupulous sellers have a 90-day window to peddle adult content to children. It will take the government at least that long to push through a revision to the VRA.

In recent times, Germany has become Ground Zero in the debate over video game violence.

Consider that the German Parliament is expected to consider a total ban on the production and distribution of violent games next month. Meanwhile, top-tier developer Crytek (Far Cry, Crysis) has threatened to relocate out of the country if the ban becomes law.

In the latest development, EA exec Gerhard Florin (left) has called for Germany to drop its USK content rating system in favor of the PEGI system, which is widely in use in other European nations. Said Florin:

What we're doing here [with USK rating] is censorship. And no one complains. When we talk about games here it's about violence or their alleged addictiveness, and not about their cultural status. The few good studios are asking themselves why they should stay here anyway.

USK boss Marek Brunner took issue with Florin's criticism:

It's hard when half-truths are being used. They say the USK does this wrong, the USK does that bad and why doesn't this get a rating?

Brunner noted that other government bodies influence the type of game content which can be sold, including the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons and the criminal courts.

Via: gamesindustry.biz

UGO reports that Playlogic's upcoming Fairytale Fights has an achievement to kill 1,000 kid characters.

Sounds like a public relations nightmare in the making. It's hard to believe that anyone smart enough to design video games could be that dumb.

From the UGO story:

Fairytale Fights may be the first game that not only features the innocent murder of children, but also an achievement to reward it.

After speaking with Playlogic last week, it sounds like the achievement's on the chopping block waiting for the axe to fall, but the children and the you killing them parts, those will definitely be served in the final dish...

Playlogic producer Poria Torkan told UGO that the company does have some concerns about the achievement. The game is scheduled to release on PS3 and Xbox 360. We wonder if Sony and MS will have concerns about licensing it with the dead kids achievement.