Norway store cans 51 brands after Oslo, Utøya murders

Don’t worry, Nors people will get shooting games from Amazon, just pay it and send it.. no goverment bullshit involves….

I think they´re overreacting.

Also, how can one train for something like that in World of Warcraft? MW2 isn’t that strange if you look at the airport mission, but Warcraft? Come on…

Breivik open his fucking mouth about “i train it on COD”
And the game got the blame… same thing pull all guns(whatever they have) and become a gunfree country like The Netherlands.. most no-brainers(goverment) blame the guns, but guns don’t kill people, people kill people….

another example 9/11 when Muslim attack US by dropping the planes in the building…

Bush never said ” OOOH WE HAVE TO BOOT ALL MUSLIM OUT OF THE COUNTRY” because of the terrorist act….

Night Crawler, the thing about that is, we Americans are too lazy to “boot all of the Muslims out of the country” and it’s against the Geneva conventions. But I’m pretty sure that there aren’t international restrictions about laws on video games. Also Muslim EXTREMISTS attacked the US, not Muslims.

I’m just going to repost my two cents from over on the Carmack thread:

You know, there’s a second group lacking any kind of critical thinking or serious interest in discussing the topic of violence and video games other than politicians. And that’s gamers. The discourse is equally fucked up on either side of the fence and it’s just as idiotic to claim that games can’t have any connection to violent behaviour as it is to claim that games make sane and balanced people go bonkers.

Games have become a fully-fledged (well, at least to some extent) medium with its own expressive and creative potential and, just like other media, they have the ability to affect people on an emotional level. So, rather than categorically deny even the remotest possibility of any connection between violent games and violent behaviour, why not lead a serious discussion and dissect the medium in question. There’s certainly no reason to believe that somebody in their right mind with a balanced social and personal life will suddenly start shooting people. But is it so unthinkable that a cornered, marginalized individual with radical views and trouble to fit into the societal order could be negatively influenced by a game?

No! It’s not unthinkable! Just as it isn not unthinkable that a book, magazine, alcohol, drugs, and countless other factors could contribute, as a small part of a huge puzzle, admittely, to the radicalisation of such a person.

So grow a pair and try to take some responsibility for the medium you adore. No one says all gamers are potential killers (and if they do, they should well be disregarded and banned from the public debate on this matter. But for the sake of games as an adult, expressive and powerful medium, let’s at least allow for a discussion to take place. That won’t happen as long as the (admittedly blunt and ignorant at times) criticism in the media is just (equally bluntly) dismissed and derided by players.

So stand up and take some responsibility for this medium. Talk to people and explain to them what the difference is between violence in film, games and literature. Don’t just dismiss their fears, but take them seriously and ask yourself about the difference between protagonist-identification in film and player-control in games. Games have grown up (again, to a certain extent) and will continue getting more complex and tackling more complex subjects. In a similar vain to literature, film and numerous other media then, games have obtained responsibility and players should follow in taking this responsibility seriously.

No time to proofread this, so pardon the occasional spelling mistake.

You think they’re overreacting?! So if my daughter kicks my son, I’m supposed to throw out every martial arts film I own?

I wonder.. will Norway also place a (at least temporary) ban on the bible as well?

It seems he does more to justify his actions through his extremist religious beliefs in his manifesto than anything else. Anyone can tell you that fps games involve increasingly realistic graphics and situations where you aim to shoot people or creatures. This could qualify them as minor training and strategy programs for any gun based activity.

In the same regard a game like “Final Fight” could be a hand to hand combat training program teaching players to properly engage large groups of enemies with weapons found in your immediate environment.. right? Then why haven’t we seen the random “Mike Haggar” (PC from Final Fight) impersonator juiced up on steroids walking around the New York subways clubbing entire stations to a bloody pulp with a lead pipe?

You likely never will unless the “Mike Haggar” in question is a religious nutjob looking to enact some of that “Old Testament Learnin’” that God so lovingly bestows on his children in those great stories of morality we have all come to know and cherish as the “Divine Word”. To someone indoctrinated so fully and vehemently into a religion any act of violence can be justified if it can help spread (force) their religion to others. As much as religion has tried to re-write history, and even the governing laws of the reality we live in, we are in an age of information now. It is apparent, to any who really care to see, what the real cause of this atrocity is.

Don’t let side-shows like this distract you. <3

@54, ever heard about extreme christian??? well, there are NONE!!! but they read from the same book!!! for the christian called the bible and for the Muslim called Koran…

Extreme pricks makes there own fantasy rules, they modified the books because it sells better….

National Guard will clean it up, but budget death line is Tuesday, no budget no money!!!

54 quotes “it’s against the Geneva conventions.”, you TELL THAT TO AN AFRICAN DICTATORS??? about genocide ya own people, you know what those dictators gonna say?? “FUCK YOU”… dictators don’t give a shit about “geneva Conventions”, they are to busy counting the money and deposit on Cuban banks…

Screw religion. Sure it’s always nice to have something to believe in after death but it shouldn’t effect our day to day lives.

@58 Really? Consider banning Nietzsche too, Hitler was inspired by his crazy stuff. The more power you have the easier it is to exploit.

Quran is an extension of the Bible, which in turn was based off jewish texts.

Rule #1 of VG247: Don’t try and have reasonable discourse with lunatics.

@58: “ever heard about extreme christian??? well, there are NONE!!!”

Well… WRONG! Now go and study up on history.

Extreme Christians? Christianity probably has the most extremists in the world.

@61 That is rule #1 of Internet

Keep it sensible in here, please. No bigotry on this site.

@TheWulf:

Oh boy, really?

First of all:

Gamers? What are gamers nowadays? It’s the guy left and right to you. Thanks to Wii and MMO’s like WoW, everybody is a gamer. The games that this psycho mentioned are complete main-stream. We aren’t the social-awkward-type anymore, that’s an image that’s being reinforced by the media, who’s mostly interested in getting the most views.

I’m from Germany, and had to laugh when they listed a few facts about the psychopath, one of them was “Played regularly killer-games like World of Warcraft”.

Do you play videogames? If you do, then you’re a “gamer”. But you still seem to think that most gamers are this fictional anti-social-living-in-the-basement-type. While science shows the complete opposite. I bet you play videogames regularly (otherwise you wouldn’t be here) but if someone would ask you if you’re a gamer, you’d deny it.

Encyclopedia Dramatica is written by 4channers. 4chan has a rep of being a paradise for misanthropes. Should have done your homework instead of making stuff-up.

And as i said before, since most people are gamers nowadays; your comment makes little sense.

“Due to the violent (and even racist and sexist, on occasion) nature of videogames, we DO have problems in our little subculture.”

You can find that in every media, but we gamers have to sit down and talk about it. Why are Gamers the only ones who have to listen to this “take responsibility” shit? All while Hollywood produces the next 10 SAW films. They don’t talk about that, nor do they take responsibility for it. Nor should they. People want to see this films, that’s why they exist. There have been thousands upon thousands of studies that show games in a positive light, but you choose to ignore it, like some FOX-News viewer.

That’s a problem of society, not videogames.

“Misanthropy isn’t a stranger to many gamers”

Gamers = Everyone. Live with it. You’re actually saying Misanthropy isn’t a stranger to many people. And i disagree with you. You seem to only see the negative things in the world and that’s your problem. If you’d open your eyes for the positive thinks and read into the negative news more than just the headline, you’d see that we’re far off from Misanthropy.

You mention Dragon Age 2, which just shows again that you didn’t do your homework. Just because SOME guy is a homophobe, suddenly all “Gamers” are misanthropes to you? There were two discussion btw. one guy didn’t like it and another gay guy didn’t like how the character was hitting on you. If you’d read some of the comments on the boards you’d have seen how many people disagree with it.

“There’s just this… encouragement in our subculture for youth to BE hateful”

Encouragement? How? Where? I have yet to see something like this in videogames. Watch Glenn Beck if you want to know what “encouragement to be hateful” means.

“We encourage it. And moreover we seem to offer shelter for crazy, hateful people. I mean, I know people complain about how other subcultures have sickos but so do we. And we encourage it. We tell them that they’ll be safe here. White supremacist? It doesn’t matter, we’re all gamers, right? We just like to kill guys. And this is something that really needs to be examined by us gamers because it seems like we lack an ethical code.”

Speak for yourself. I don’t play with racists, nor do i encourage it.

Lets say you find out that one of the people you meet online is a racist, some white supremacist, then what?

+1 YoungZero

Words like sexism and racism are being devalued every day by self-righteous indignants, who feel they have the right to take on the hardships and struggles of anybody they choose, rather than letting those people speak for themselves, about the issues that matter to them.

I’m so sick of listening to male gamers whining about sexism. What about letting female gamers speak, instead? Or would that challenge the male ego too much?

People are so horny to be insulted these days, all the time, and they’ll use any excuse. If a woman chooses to take her clothes off to earn some good money at a club, then the sirens go off, and the torches and pitchforks come out. If she chooses to cover herself up in religious garments, then an equal ammount of sirens go off, and the pitchforks and torches are brought out all the same.

Which says a lot about peoples backwards, idiotic morality, which is usually about anything other than actual liberty or social equality – And more about wanting the world to function after their own restrictive dogmas, with no room for people to be, or think differently.

It’s not about rights for people of other ethnicities, sexualities or genders, it’s about the herd and its need to define everything for everybody else.

Of course, the more gaming embeds itself in our culture, the more it’ll be subjected to those moralistic masturbators. Just like everything else.

Man, all the stupid discussions and arguments here.

How about this:

1. Media do affect people, but clearly Anders did not choose to kill those people ’cause he had killed people in a game. Clearly, he wanted to make a point and get attention, which he succeeded with.

2. Wtf are you guys on about, sexism and racism amongst gamers? You speak of gamers as we’re a race, while we’re not. It doesn’t matter if you’re a gamer or if you’re a “normal person” (wierd expression?), you can still be a racist/sexist.
Also, why can’t I, if I choose to, be a racist/sexist? As long as I don’t screw someone over, I do have the right to think or do whatever I want.
You can’t take away my rights just ’cause you think it’s wrong to be a racist, if I firmly believe that (sorry about this) black people are worth less than me. Then I am allowed to believe that, if not then we take away everything that we’re fighting for.

Ofc if I go beat a person with a different skincolor than myself that’s a complete different thing, however this should not be treated as “racism” either, if you can’t prove that the reason for the crime was due to my racist beliefs.

Let’s say it like this:

A white guy physically assaults a black guy for having taken his bar seat. Now, why should this (as in most cases) be treated as a hate-crime?
Please do answer this.

3.

It’s now 06.00 in the morning and I shouldn’t sit up trying to argue/discuss thigns on the internet. I always tend to do this late at night / in the morning.

*Shakes fist* Damn you internet!