The first, put forward by Evi Allemann, of the Socialist Party, wants to stop the manufacture, advertisement, importation and sale of any game that promotes as a means of advancement or “success” acts of violence against humans or “human-like” creatures. It passed by a margin of 19-12.
The second bill, put forward by the Christian Democratic Party’s Norbert Hochreutener, wants to restrict the sale of violent shooters to children. It passed by a margin of 27-1.
Just how many games will be affected is now up to the Swiss government, who must determine the criteria by which a game is deemed too violent.
Before you cry foul, please note that under Swiss law, any petition that can gather over 100,000 signatures must go to a national referendum. So if the government starts banning games willy-nilly, all it would take would be the signatures of 100,000 gamers (or, just as important, 100,000 opponents of government censorship) to have it publicly challenged.
Schweizer Ständerat stimmt für “Killerspiel”-Verbot [GamesMarkt]
Isaac Hendry
Monday, March 22, 2010 at 8:56 PMShit why can’t we have a law like that?
thyco
Monday, March 22, 2010 at 9:32 PMbecause nothing would ever get done.
Newguy
Monday, March 22, 2010 at 10:56 PMI was just thinking how awesome that is. Thyco has a point, however.
Anon
Monday, March 22, 2010 at 9:37 PMTo me it sounds like they’re attempting to ban games which associate violent acts against humans with success or reward. That sounds reasonable to me. So long as it doesn’t also ban games which penalize violent action merely for allowing it in the first place.
lcb
Monday, March 22, 2010 at 10:29 PMGod of War 3 – red orb rewards for them zombies.
Uncharted 2 – you get little medals “ninja”
Street Fighter – beat the poopies out of chunli to win
the list goes on resistance, hon, starcraft, l4d, tf2, halo etc…
They all reward violence with human like creatures (the point of the bill)in one way or another, or you need to be violent to succeed.
Isaac Hendry
Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 1:03 AMAssociate violent acts against humans… Sounds like every war game… Ever.
Thermal Ions
Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 3:10 AMSounds like it’s taking what we’ve got in Australia even further. Here if the game rewards certain behaviour including the use of drugs and graphic levels of violence against humans it can be refused classification. This seems to take it further to include “human like” which can be a very broad category and covers off a very large proportion of FPS / TPS / War games.
Maybe they’re feeling a bit obsolete with no world wars to remain neutral in, so feel the need to exercise their abstinence vicariously through war game censorship.
greg
Monday, March 22, 2010 at 9:39 PM“The first, put forward by Evi Allemann, of the Socialist Party”
right im not sure if its the same thing but
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialism
thyco
Monday, March 22, 2010 at 10:08 PMNazis and Socialism are two completely different idologies. In fact more peoplem compare Soicalists to Communists as the ideals are similar in some aspects.
Robert
Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 8:05 AMWhat is their definition of violence?
I mean Pac man ate pills and ghosts where these ghosts human?, Contra you killed humans, EVERY Call Of Duty game has you killing humans unless you consider German, Itallian an Japanese not human.
This is simply too broad and would be typically be used by some politician to promote him/herself to show they are fixing a problem.
Instead of using logic and leaving adults to decide what they want to view, some slime ball band wagon jumping politician comes up with this genius idea.
Cyttorak
Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 5:18 PMdamn that sucks for them, just as we get some progress in this department.
Needs A New Username
Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 6:53 PMThe 2nd is much more reasonable, i don’t think anyone would object to that, but the first is a license to ban anything they want
Gordon Mackenzie
Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 9:22 PMIs it just me or dose that first law “to stop the manufacture, advertisement, importation and sale of any game that promotes as a means of advancement or “success” acts of violence against humans or “human-like” creatures” pretty much destroy the video game industry removing effecting everything from Left for dead 2 right down to World of Warcraft (exp for killing human and/or human like creatures) right down to Mario cart? I shot Mario with a red shell, now I’m winning!
Also, had to read that guys name twice because the first time I read it as Evil Allemann.