Red Cross Wants Video Games To Obey Geneva Conventions
87 replies, posted
[quote]Things must have been pretty quiet at the 31st meeting of the International Committee of the Red Cross, because they had enough time to convene a panel on whether or not video games should be forced to follow the Geneva Conventions. Just so we're clear, I'm not talking about banning inhumane practices like forcing POWs to play Street Cleaning Simulator, they actually want to ban characters in video games from taking actions that would be in violation of international humanitarian law. Because god forbid fictional villains fail to follow international protocol while unleashing killer viruses or detonating nukes in major cities.
While the panel did not come to a definitive answer, and admitted that "how video games influence people is a hotly debated topic," they did have an "overall motivation and consensus to take action." It's ridiculous enough that we have people like Jack Thompson claiming violent video games make kids shoot each other; now we have the Red Cross blaming Modern Warfare for war crimes? Video games are fictional, the situations they depict are far beyond the norm, and we don't have a budding crop of Pol Pots playing their XBoxes now and preparing a new age of tortue and genocide once they become adults. There are actual, serious humanitarian violations going on worldwide. Let's not waste time on the digital ones.
Anyways, if first person shooters actually influenced soldier behavior, we'd see less torture and a lot more teabagging on the battlefield. And it's not like that's happening... Damn it Abu Ghraib, you ruin everything![/quote]
[url=http://www.ology.com/technology/red-cross-wants-video-games-obey-geneva-conventions]Source[/url]
[quote=Kotaku]Quoting the Red Cross:"While the Movement works vigorously to promote international humanitarian law worldwide, there is also an audience of approximately 600 million gamers who may be virtually violating IHL,"[/quote] No, an audience of approx. 600 million gamers are playing video games, not torturing people and destroying civilian buildings jesus fuck
[url=http://kotaku.com/5863817/war-crimes-in-video-games-draw-red-cross-scrutiny?autoplay]Source.[/url]
lol wut
might as well make movies and tv do the same
[editline]4th December 2011[/editline]
I mean it's not like video games are the ONLY outlet of media that has any violence whatsoever
[editline]f[/editline]
hey lets burn the books while we're at it
mmm I don't really trust geekology, particularly when it doesn't post some sort of source
yeah lets censor video games in particular, not movies like a boy and his dog where the world governments have destroyed most of humanity. thats not a war crime or anything.
Personally I would be more of for stressing that it's wrong, while allowing it.
Show the player the morals, but don't enforce them. Make the clearly good guys keep it, but stress that the ones who don't are not good.
Maxis are going to need to think of a workaround to solve the issue where a player can torture his sim to death by locking him inside four walls
Hostage down...
Fuck looks like I'll be answering to the terrorist teams war crimes charges.
HL2's revised plot: The combine never enslaved humanity, they lived peacefully together.
Absolutely fucking ridiculous. Hey, why don't we burn all books written about World War 2? Same fucking principle.
[QUOTE=ProWaffle;33563031]Absolutely fucking ridiculous. Hey, why don't we burn all books written about World War 2? Same fucking principle.[/QUOTE]
I think that thing is that the "protagonists" should follow them, and nobody expects the antagonists to do so.
Good old socom games, where as a seal it was sometimes beneficial to execute one of the hostages. Hehe
If video games majorly affected how people act, i'd be a murdering psychopath
Maybe lets leave the ingame rules for game developers to decide?
Thing is.
Humanitarian laws apply to humans. A virtual character in a computer game is not a physical human being thus surely it'd be void anyway.
If an AI shoots an innocent, imprison him.
[QUOTE=AceOfDivine;33563480]If an AI shoots an innocent, imprison him.[/QUOTE]
[img]http://www.deviantart.com/download/121901467/STOP_RIGHT_THERE_CRIMNAL_SCUM_by_Bedbug200.jpg[/img]
[editline]4th December 2011[/editline]
jokes aside, that's kind of retarded. It's a video game, and unless the goal of the game IS torturing innocents etc, it can show whatever the damn it wants. But that's my opinion
The way I see it, allow the breaks in the Geneva convention but make it very obvious that doing that IRL will get you in jail.
At the very least make it clear that it's better not to violate human rights. Though if you actually need to do that I'd say the problem lies in your local schools more than it does with games.
Pretty sure this can be considered censoring, you're forcing developers to follow this instead of letting them create what they want.
pixels can't feel pain
dragons and humans held a peace conference in windhelm, dovahkiin was tried for war crimes in winterhold
[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;33562988]Personally I would be more of for stressing that it's wrong, while allowing it.
Show the player the morals, but don't enforce them. Make the clearly good guys keep it, but stress that the ones who don't are not good.[/QUOTE]
Indeed, that's a good recipe for playing by the rules. Although player characters who are mavericks, renegades, or just downright assholes, may be tooled to say "what morals?", or there may be situations where the good guys are forced to abandon their morals for the greater good, or simply to survive.
Or just don't care about morals; it's only a game, an escape from reality like film or TV (only way more interactive), and if allowing players to live out morally-questionable fantasies in a game prevents them from enacting them IRL, so be it.
Keep to your international welfare distributions Red Cross, and we'll stick to what we do best; developing and playing entertaining interactive experiences.
[t]http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/File:Tf_soldier_geneva_contravention.png[/t]
Geneva Contravention
Kill 3 defenseless players after a single match has ended.
[url]http://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/7/7e/Soldier_no01.wav[/url]
[QUOTE=ironman17;33563740]Indeed, that's a good recipe for playing by the rules. Although player characters who are mavericks, renegades, or just downright assholes, may be tooled to say "what morals?", or there may be situations where the good guys are forced to abandon their morals for the greater good, or simply to survive..[/QUOTE]
For instance, Mass Effect. It's fairly obvious that being a nice guy makes you... well, a nice guy. You don't randomly flip the fuck out and start punching people, the peaceful solution is almost always the better one in the long run, and you don't start shooting until it's the only option. But doing the opposite of all those things makes you - while considerably cooler - a complete jerk who nobody but the psychos likes, and who many utterly despise and wish to imprison.
Just goes to show, there's a lot of things you can learn from games. Things you should have known to begin with, but apparently we live in an age where people need to be told a line of script does not feel pain.
Aliens don't have to obey puny human right rules.
Let's have all games implant a system like America's Army.
You shoot a civilian, you spend the next 5 hours in a virtual military prison :v:
[QUOTE=Scar;33563943]Let's have all games implant a system like America's Army.
You shoot a civilian, you spend the next 5 hours in a virtual military prison :v:[/QUOTE]
That is only if they can catch you. One man army ftw
I'm okay with this. I actually don't see any problem here.
[QUOTE=Mr.T;33564341]I'm okay with this. I actually don't see any problem here.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, video games should obey real life laws! No more GTA! No more Mafia! YEY!
Haha but real war doesn't even obey the geneva conventions
In other news, indie developer 'Introversion Games' disbanded, devs and players of 'DEFCON' jailed for crimes against peace.
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