Do violent video games like Quake, Postal, and Carmageddon corrupt the morals of gamers and endorse public violence? While the British government may say yes, a group of anti-censorship activists in London is saying no, and asking the general public to see for themselves. A promotional event at a London cybercafe on Thursday is inviting curious would-be gamers to play controversial games and decide for themselves whether they should be censored.
"[There] is a growing move to blur the distinction between games and reality and argue that we are all automata that need to be carefully controlled 'for our own good,'" explains Chris Ellison, co-founder of the group Internet Freedom. "However violent games might be, people should be free to play and say whatever they want."
Internet Freedom, an activist group devoted to censorship issues in new media, was founded in September 1996 as a reaction to Scotland Yard's attempt to ban 133 controversial Usenet groups. Over a year later, Internet Freedom has launched information campaigns challenging issues like PICS ratings systems, the removal of a Basque revolution page from its ISP, and condemning groups like Internet Watch that patrol for online pedophilia and "illegal material." Currently, the group's hot button issue is rating schemes - one of those being the British Board of Film Censorship's classification of videogame violence.
British media have recently turned condemning eyes on controversial games, with arguments being voiced on TV news shows such as Newsnight that the board should take a stronger role in preventing these kinds of games from being released to the public, just as hyperviolent movies like Natural Born Killers have been banned from video release. In reaction to this media scare, Internet Freedom is inviting the general public to the London cybercafe Cyberia on Thursday to play games like Quake and Carmageddon, and see for themselves just what all the fuss is about. As Ellison explains, the event is intended to convince people that there's no need to let the censorship board and the media decide what's too violent for them to see.
In Britain, makers of violent videogames are supposed to pay the board to classify them before general release. Although board spokeswoman Anna Kemble calls it a "voluntary" system, those controversial games need to come through the board before they can be legally sold. In several cases, games that were "particularly nasty or gory" have had to be tamed down in order to become "acceptable" for general release.
Before the UK release of the hyperviolent racing game Carmageddon, for example, game producer Interplay was requested by the board to change the color of spilled blood from red to green, and make the human victims look less human and more zombie-like. The British distributor of the controversial game Postal also imposed similar restrictions before releasing the game, telling the creators that if the game was going to make it past the board it would have to take out the screaming female voices and remove segments where the protagonist blows away a marching band, and an anti-game-violence protest.
Kemble says there have been no complaints from the gaming industry about the restrictions; after all, British censoring is no harsher than it is in countries like Germany, and the same restrictions apply across other visual media in the UK. But US developers certainly aren't happy about the uproar over their games in the UK. Postal's creator, Vince Desi, called the UK version a "neutralized" version of the game.
As Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software, explains, "I am a strong proponent of free speech, so I don't have much tolerance for book (movie, game, etc.) burners. People have the right to censor themselves by not buying the game if they find the violence (or anything else) offensive."
And Internet Freedom believes that at least the online British population is in agreement, too. A recent online debate discussed a decision by Virgin Internet to ban a tasteless and violent game called Dunblane Massacre from its service. Of those who joined the debate, 69 percent voted in favor of being able to judge the game for themselves.
"There is a growing trend for third parties to set themselves up as moral arbiters to decide what it is acceptable for us to say or play," says Ellison. "Our major role in this is to expose these attempts to give censorship a moral gloss. Let people judge for themselves."
