Atkinson Says You Don't Need to Impale People

[Irridium]

Atkinson: "I accept that 98%, 99% of gamers will tell the difference between fantasy and reality, but the 1% to 2% could go on to be motivated by these games to commit horrible acts of violence."

So it is with movies and books as well. I read a particularly violent and gory book once, I believe he knows of it, and will surely find that it should be banned.

...It's called The Bible.

I pretty sure there's a substantial amount of evidence that this book has motivated some readers to commit horrible acts of violence. Unlike Video Games.

Indeed. The Crusades alone account for between 1-5 MILLION deaths. Witch hunts between 1400-1800 CE resulted in about 55,000 deaths. The list goes on and on.

Not to mention the childrens crusade which caused lots of children to be sold into slavery.

 

[HT_Black]

He is even worse than Jack Tompson....

Sigh...At least ol' Jack had a somewhat admirable motivation.

 

[Internet Kraken]

At this point I think Atkinson is well aware that a large number of people disagree with him. He just doesn't care. He is a bitter old man that wants to keep abusing his power for as long as possible.

 

[KaiRai]

He is even worse than Jack Tompson....

He's like Jack Thompson after somebody gave him frontal lobe damage with a baseball bat.

His serious comment is "1 or 2% may kill from it"?
And I suppose he wants to ban my car because 10%-ish like to speed in their cars? What a nobhead.

 

[VonVirgo]

"This is a question of a small number of very zealous gamers trying to impose their will on society..."

Yes, how dare gamers enforce their out-dated opinions on people, that's Atkinson's job; If everyone else was doing it then he'd be out of a job, and we wouldn't want that now would we?

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Doesn't the Australian ratings board have something in their classification code that says something about adults being able to expose themselves to whatever they want? I could've sworn I read that when doing research on the subject for a recent project.

 

[ProfessorLayton]

Atkinson: "I accept that 98%, 99% of gamers will tell the difference between fantasy and reality, but the 1% to 2% could go on to be motivated by these games to commit horrible acts of violence."

So it is with movies and books as well. I read a particularly violent and gory book once, I believe he knows of it, and will surely find that it should be banned.

...It's called The Bible.

I pretty sure there's a substantial amount of evidence that this book has motivated some readers to commit horrible acts of violence. Unlike Video Games.

Indeed. The Crusades alone account for between 1-5 MILLION deaths. Witch hunts between 1400-1800 CE resulted in about 55,000 deaths. The list goes on and on.

Not to mention the childrens crusade which caused lots of children to be sold into slavery.

It seems like you two completely missed the point of what he was trying to say. For one thing, the Crusades were because of the pope, not because of the Bible and the pope basically told lies to everyone telling them that Jesus was misquoted and that it's ok to go around killing people as long as they're not Christian. Just because the pope told a lie doesn't mean that's what the Bible says.

What he was saying is that the stories in the Bible are actually some of the most violent stories you will ever hear. If you sit down and actually read some of the stories, you might just be a little offended at the terrible things done. Like maybe throwing Christians into a pit of lions unarmed to watch them get eaten in front of an audience just because they were Christian for the pure fun of it. Imagine doing this in a game. Committing a hate crime like that for an audience of people. That game would be all over the news faster than I don't know what.

 

[Mrsoupcup]

He is even worse than Jack Tompson....

Sigh...At least ol' Jack had a somewhat admirable motivation.

Jack was at leats polite and didn't bash gamers (Too often) but this guy is just a real piece of work. In a way I agree with Jack, see when I was young my friend who was only 8 years old owned almost all of the GTA titles. How? Because his parents were no informed of the ratings. I think parents should be educated but not tricked into beliving that games will turn your kid into the next Lee Harvey Oswald. Honestly this affects freedom to, If I have the right to chose my Porn at my age, then fuck I want to chose my entertainment too! Sure the Government can fuck with are choice of games all they want, but the moment Porn or Guns get banned they crossed some line....

 

[Talendra]

You can watch the video here http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2009/12/10/2768026.htm

There is also a quite interesting radio interview here http://www.abc.net.au/rn/nationalinterest/stories/2009/2749224.htm

I found it rather interesting how when he responded he specifically said "What I want". Sure sounds to me like he is just imposing his view on everyone, not the view of the public he is supposed to represent to me...

ABC is by far my favourite for news lately.

 

[Kimjira19]

Atkinson: "I accept that 98%, 99% of gamers will tell the difference between fantasy and reality, but the 1% to 2% could go on to be motivated by these games to commit horrible acts of violence."

So it is with movies and books as well. I read a particularly violent and gory book once, I believe he knows of it, and will surely find that it should be banned.

...It's called The Bible.

I pretty sure there's a substantial amount of evidence that this book has motivated some readers to commit horrible acts of violence. Unlike Video Games.

Indeed. The Crusades alone account for between 1-5 MILLION deaths. Witch hunts between 1400-1800 CE resulted in about 55,000 deaths. The list goes on and on.

Not to mention the childrens crusade which caused lots of children to be sold into slavery.

The Spanish Inquisition: 32,000 dead
The French War of Religion (1562-1598): between 2 and 4 million dead
The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648): between 3 and 8 million

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

First: We were recently informed that the number of gamers worldwide is broke the 1 Billion mark, meaning that he's effectively tarring a large number of the population as people who are susceptible to this.

Wait, what?!? A billion gamers?! Ok, 300-500 million I could accept, but this seems very high. Do you have a source?

There was a recent Escapist article on it. Source [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.160475].

And 1% of that means that 10 thousand million gamers are mass murderers. Ok...

Let's say that 10 people who have played games have gone onto become serial killers. Hell, let's throw out reality and say 100.

That's 1 ten millionth of gamers.

Let's have a think about cars.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported in 2005 that there were "13.2 million motor vehicles, including motor cycles, registered in Australia at 31 March 2003."

There are currently about 1700 road deaths each year in Australia, and over ten times as many serious road injuries (currently the annual rate of serious injury is approximately 22 000)

So, statistically: 0.000128787879% of car owners are murderers. (13,000 times as many as gamers)
and 160,000 times more likely to commit serious injury.

Now, that's going by the base statistics of 100 gamers becoming murderers; but does this shape up with reality? How many people do we know for certain have been playing games and the games incited them to kill?

We could possibly count Columbine as 2...uh...let's say there's another 3 we don't know about.

That makes it 20 times less likely than we first thought of...so owning a car is 260,000 times more likely to turn you into a killer than playing games constantly.

While you're pondering over that Mr. Atkinson, even if you are right and of the 20 million people in Australia, they follow the idea that 1 in 7 are gamers. (There's about 6.6 billion people in the world, 1 billion are gamers)

That means that you're blocking the wills, not only of the 3 million gamers in Australia (TBF, maybe half of those are old enough to use 15+ games: say 1.5 million), but of the other individuals Attorney Generals who HAVE said it's a good idea.

That's not protecting the public, that's fascism.

 

[CompanionCube]

Until video games get out of a minority, then there will always be a Jack Thompson or an Atkinson.

 

[Klagermeister]

A Jack Thompson mimic? You know what that means...

Spoiler: Effective as both a last and first resort

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

As always, Atikinson is full of shit.

 

[Grampy_bone]

1-2% of the people who play violent games commit violent crime? I wonder where that statistic came from (I suspect around the anus area).

If this number of MW2 players committed such crimes we would have what, 50,000-100,000+ violent gun-based killing sprees around the world? Hmmm.

 

[Wraithsight]

Yeah it brings up the point I'm most annoyed about, namely that one Michael Atkinson is the only Attorney General to Vito the law. Last time I checked we lived in a democracy, which means one person shouldn't have that kind of power.

 

[The Sorrow]

I vote we air-drop Fedor Emelianenko into Australia. He should solve the problem in a matter of hours.

 

[machineiv]

>The answer to that is: yes, sometimes you do.

Why?

I'm curious. Why do you have to enact crime fantasies? What makes you have to commit atrocious, violent acts in a game?

(Mind you, I'm not advocating censorship. I'm just curious why you feel violence to be something that's necessary.)

 

[Aesir23]

Why hasn't this guy been kicked out of office yet?