[-PSX-]

I live in the UK and know the full story. The 17 year old teenager (Warren LeBlanc) killed his 14 year old friend (Stefan Pakeerah) with a claw hammer and knife. Apparently the teenager had been obsessed with the 18 certificate (ill get to that in a moment) game "Manhunt". Now we all know what Manhunts about so im not going into that (if not look on GameSpot or IGN). Now the Daily Mail (being the Daily Mail) has become involved with this and together with Stefan's parents they are launching a campaign to rid the stores with games filled with gore and violence. Here is a small list:

Grand Theft Auto 3
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Manhunt
Hitman: Contracts (probably inclusive Hitman 2)
State Of Emergency
Doom Series
Unreal Tournament 2004
The Suffering
Soldier Of Fortune (I and II)

The first part of some of their research was to send two teenagers into stores to buy 18 certificate games. Unfortunatley they were spurred on by the fact that the teenagers had no problem buying them. Consequently to all this the fondly known 'Dixons' chain of stores including 'Dixons', 'Currys' and 'PC World' have now all removed Manhunt from shelves ac ross the country as has the leading videogame retailer 'Game' (fomerly 'Electronics Boutique') as a mark of respect. The problem is these teenagers should quite rightly not have been sold these games and should have had their IDs checked (if they had any). If parents choose to purchase an 18 or 16 certificate game for there child it is their responsibility to assure that the child is mature enough to be able to distinguish virtual reality from the reality. This is slightly overlapping Mourdors post so Ill leave you to refer to that.

Here are some of the headlines bound to drive people in a revolt over some plastic discs which are completley VIRTUAL:

IN YOUR HIGH STREET, A WORLD OF HORROR
DON'T LET CHILDREN SIMULATE MURDER
BAN THESE EVIL GAMES


And who mentioned free speech and freedom in the world? In countries of freedom we are being taken over by stupid, immature children who cannot see the extra word in Virtual Reality. Taking away our rights for what we would not mind seeing or hearing is not up to the people who prefer not to see it. It is their job however to stop people who cannot distinguish between these two different realities from seeing and hearing these things.

Why should we ban violent video games when violent films are tossed out one after the other every year by Hollywood producers. It is not the games faults that people cannot distinguish. But if the same happened from a film there couldn't be such a huge revolt could there because even more masses of money are involved in films that show violence, rape and everything under the sun which makes the whole argument, in my eyes, a complete and utter shambles by passing the blame onto a plastic cd or dvd.