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Swiss Game Ban Passes

03/19/2010|Matt "Steerpike" Sakey|News12
Home » Home » News » Swiss Game Ban Passes

You would not believe how many people – on a daily basis – assure me that videogames are no longer in serious jeopardy of being censored, content regulated, or banned outright.

Tell that to Australia. Or, if you prefer, you can now tell it to Switzerland, which today passed long-feared legislation allowing Parliament to ban games that require “cruel acts of violence against humans and humanlike creatures for game success.”

These are nations with free speech. First world nations with, like, schools and running water and stuff. We’re not talking about Venezuela (which has also banned violent games). I’ve never understood how so many people with skin in the game could blindly insist that the medium is safe when in truth it’s facing some of its darkest hours.

As for Switzerland, I’m reminded of a line Orson Welles delivers in The Third Man:

…in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

And chocolate, don’t forget chocolate.

03/22/2010 Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

About the author

Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

Tap-Repeatedly Overlord Steerpike is a games industry journalist and consultant. His earliest memories are of video games, and hopes his last memories will be of them as well. He’s a featured monthly columnist with the International Game Developers Association, and is internationally published in an assortment of dull e-Learning texts and less dull gaming publications. He also lectures on games at various universities.

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12 Responses to Swiss Game Ban Passes

  • Spike 03/19/2010

    I read the short article. 

    “…notes that the passing of the motions will simply kick off the process of designing the actual legal framework surrounding the two measures.”

    Who are the drooling, hand-rubbers who will get to decide what constitutes “cruel acts of violence”?  What is cruel?  What is violence?  What is cruel violence?  What is “humanlike”?  Do Feral Ghouls and Super Mutants qualify?  (Yep, I’m still at it.)

    Eye of the beholder, I suppose.  I’ve always hated censorship and its minions, considering them heartless, brainless humanlike creatures.  But that’s ok, because if this legislation makes it into law they will be protected.

  • Mat 03/19/2010

    I said this in the “Down Under” piece but, personally I just don’t feel comfortable with others dictating what content we can and can’t access. The idea that a group of stuffy old blokes in suits sat around a table – whom I have nothing in common or reason to associate with – are to tell me what I can and can’t play based around their ideas of censorship and violence.. it just doesn’t sit right.

    However, as I am not in Switzerland, I’m going to go and play God of War 3.

  • Hanamigi 03/19/2010

    Imported games’ sales will rise, let’s go make some money guys :3

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey 03/19/2010

    Mat, you are aware that there is head-ripping in God of War 3? I also hear that you can have THE SEX with a WOMAN in that game.

    You are not the class of person we welcome at Tap. You are hereby banned. Banned!

  • xtal 03/19/2010

    Wouldn’t the whole Greek thing be more realistic if you could also have THE SEX with a man, or many men? Or many manly men? I’ll stop.

    RE: The censorship thing ….. that’s balls. People who make these laws need to be sucked into a video game, Tron-style, and stomped on the head by Mario.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey 03/19/2010

    Xtal, you are hereby banned. Banned!

  • xtal 03/20/2010

    * hangs head *

  • Lewis B 03/20/2010

    Censorship makes me so angry I could happily fire bomb some politicians offices.  Lets just ban everything and anything we don’t understand.

  • xtal 03/20/2010

    It could really work both ways, you see. Does anyone actually understand bubblegum flavoured ice cream? No; so it would be banned for our lack of understanding.

    See, not all bad!

  • First Impressions: God of War III | Tap-Repeatedly.com 03/20/2010

    […] Swiss Game Ban Passes […]

  • Gregg B 03/22/2010

    That’s a great quote by the way. Hardship in any form is one hell of a creative force.

    If you keep banning people Matt, we’ll get some fantastic comments when they re-register.

  • kaythomas 03/28/2010

    As someone once said………This is deja vu all over again. 

    With our increasing members or readership (which I am so delighted to see) the average age on this board has shifted way down from what it was. I am at the upper end.

    So I suspect that there are a lot of you who are not familiar (after all you weren’t even alive) with the great controvery over comic book action heroes in the late 40’s and the 50’s.  These action comic book heroes (slam, bang, die) would corrupt our youth and turn them into violent people.  They had cogressional hearings about this. So here we go again.  Do things ever change?  I begin to think not.

    But here is a funny story that is somewhat related.  I went to the Met (Metropolitan Opera) at the Movies yesterday and saw Hamlet (an opera I had never heard of based on play I have probably read 20 times).  I discovered it is a terrific opera that should be performed more often.  But as my friend and I were walking out, someone behind us said….. This is the kind of thing that can make kids think you can just kill everyone.  Well, the irony of that statement is that there was not a kid in the theater.  Probably the lowest age in the theater was 40. So should we ban violent operas (and many of them are) so older people such as myself don’t run out and start killing people.

    Sometimes I am amused.  More often I am just bemused.  and often I think …..this just beyond belief.
    Kay Thomas

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