If you thought politicians blaming video games for all of society’s woes was bad in America, take a good look at Germany. Germany is one of several European countries promoting a Europe-wide banning of all violent video games - including, it seems, titles such as Star Trek and Lord of the Rings. Worse yet, there seems to be a great deal of support for this across Europe. This law will enact prison sentences! on anyone found in possession of a game that they do not approve of.
A recent story from Germany serves as the perfect example of how German authorities treat video games. Two fifteen year olds, who apparently used the aliases Reno and Sephiroth, stabbed a couple to death in their own home, holding their daughter hostage at knife-point for an hour before giving themselves up. Naturally (if you’ve played the game and recognize the names), the two had played Final Fantasy 7 - a copy was found on their computer.
Now in Germany Final Fantasy 7 is being referred to as “Killerspiele”, which translates to “killer game”, and the entire incident is being used as fuel to promote public outrage, which in turn gathers them support, and keeps them in office. Same as America, in that regard, it seems.
But really, what do we have? Two crazy kids kill two people. Not over a game, not even because of a game. They just owned the game, and used nicknames from it. Now, Final Fantasy 7 sold how many copies? As I recall at the time it was one of the best-selling games ever. 2.3 million copies in the first three days in Japan - 500,000 copies in the first three weeks in North America, and between the console and PC releases after all this time, world-wide it’s probably sold (and I’m being conservative here, because I can’t find the actual statistics) more than five or six million copies. But because of this one incident, Germany wants Final Fantasy 7 - and any other video game with violence towards human characters in it, of course, to be outlawed.
But wait! Clearly they are overlooking other, more sinister sources of violence. After all, if a product which clearly produced two murderers, even if it took five million tries to do so, can be banned, shouldn’t they be taking a more active stance against similarly deadly products?
I’m no expert on German traffic, but surely they have fatal car accidents there. In fact, probably at a much higher rate than a deadly two in five million. The conclusion is obvious: putting people behind a wheel turns them into a reckless, maniacal killing force! Perhaps they should consider banning cars.
But really, when you think about it, it wasn’t Final Fantasy 7 that inspired them to kill. They just owned it. So perhaps we should look at a far more serious threat facing the German people.
Clothes.
Yes, as everyone knows, the vast majority of murderers wear clothes. Obviously, clothes are an insipid mind-altering force wreaking havoc on society, and must be immediately banned. For the children.
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Genius.
I’m going to have another story about Germany in the next say or so.