TIGSource Forums

Hello everyone,

I'm not much of an active poster here, but I do read the forums from time to time. I'm a videogame developer from Venezuela. I'm posting this here because I'm interested that everyone knows what's happening here.

The dominant party in the National Assembly is trying to enact a law that forbids the fabrication, selling, rent and use of war toys and videogames throughout all the country.

It also fines stores that sell these kind of videogames and toys with fees from 12,000 to 127,000 USD, and the forfeiting of the articles and its subsequent destruction. It also mandates that elementary and high schools implement classes about the dangers of war toys and videogames, and similar campaings in mass media.

This law has only been approved in its first discussion, which means that is not valid yet. It would be necessary to have a second discussion and then enact the law by the President. But because of the dominant position this party has in the country, and their unusual high speed in approving new laws lately, we feel that the time will be really short before this law passes.

I have translated the entirety of the law to English: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcpw33cv_82dfqbtbgj (the original PDF in Spanish is available here http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/582383/ley-prohibicion-videojuegos-completa.pdf) so non-Spanish speaking people can read it and form their opinion. You might find that the redaction is a bit contrived, but I believe that the wording in Spanish is similar.

There is a small community of developers here in Venezuela, but we do like what we do, and we want to tell as many people as we can about this grave situation of censorship that these guys want to have, and might affect other cultural expressions too.

Thank you for your time, I'd like to know your opinions regarding this issue.

It's time to move.  :facepalm:

Seriously though, if this could go through, going online won't necessarily help.  I recommend rallying the people that support you and showing the government exactly how much this means to you (public demonstration or what-have-you.)

(Of course, I can't remember if Venezuela is one of those countries where you get gunned down in the street for voicing an opinion.)

After some research on the Googles, I have determined that your country is both safe and beautiful.   Get those petitions a-rolling!

Could we avoid the political discussions?
About the law: is it for all videogames or just war videogames?

Sure, let's avoid the political discussion.  So this law that your politicians are trying to pass?  Any more--

Oh wait.  I guess we're done here.  :P

I still stand by what I said.  Rather than getting the support of a few online indies that live in different countries, you gotta get support on your home turf.  We can bitch about it, but it's not like we can send letters to your political administration and actually do anything that matters.

@moi:  The link describes the basis and breadth of that law thoroughly, albeit in kinda screwy English.

Had a cursory glance at the english translation, and I am interested in this


I would love to see these studies and the methods used to come to these conclusions, as far as I am aware there has been no conclusive evidence linking violent video games to real life violence... there is just the fact that some individuals are more inclined to seek violent material and enact in violent actions.

Sounds to me the law wants to make it so that only educational toys and 'games' are available to the children in the country, basically trying to get the child to learn in school and in play.
The old saying goes ' All work and no play ...' rings true here I believe, children need a outlet for aggresion and this is done via play and imagination... I hate to imagine what it would be like if a child is raised in a manner that only allows education and lacks the facility to release aggression, when that child hits the teen years.
Years of pent up aggression plus hormone induced inbalances.... teenager from hell.

Oh my, as a fellow Latin American, and a personal hater of your current government in Venezuela 8aka that hugo Chavez motherfcker), I find quite sad that this witch hunitng on "violent" videogames mayb be the norm over there. How much until chavez gets a perfect headshot from a fanatic videogamer?

Yes, lets refrain from political discussion on the issue.

This law is planned to be introduced. End of discussion.

Well, I'm not really pro-war myself, and I haven't played a war game in years, so I personally wouldn't really care :whome:

Whil i agree we shouldn't bash the goverment as a whole for the issue, ou can't totally refrain from political commentary when this is a law being passed in a country that has clearly intended to ban every possible product emerging from capitalists countries.

And your end of discussion statement seems a terribly apathetic stance on the issue. It's totally careless with our possible Venezolan developers, whose freedom of expression and recreation (on a field we as a gaming playing/dev site we are supposed to condone and enforce) is being supressed.


The issue is that it involves every game of violent nature, nut just war related ones. So I'd dare to say even half your games would be legally banned there.

you haven't read any of my other posts and don't have a working sarcasm detector. do you?

ps. I'm advocating relentless mocking and criticism.

@Aquin: My objective is not to rally any of you, but raising awareness of the situation we're having here.

@cactus The definition of a violent game in the project seems to be fuzzy at best. You might find that some of the games you have made (e.g. Xoldiers) might be illegal here because of its theme. I could be facing the same situation, making a game and trying not to bother the government.

We're making a petition to talk to the deputies in the Assembly to educate them about the rating system other countries have implemented and shift the discussion away from prohibition to regulation.

I can't tell apart assholes shitfaces who fail to use avatars. Also, my sarcasm detector is fine, your sacrasm isn't. That said, let's bash Hugo Chavez together.

chiguire: it does sound like a veay reasonable proposition. let's hope it works as intended.

...whatever

There was a law a couple of years back, in Greece, that made all video-games illegal. You couldn't even play Minesweeper legally.

Beyond the obvious -- muffling the right to personal expression--, the law suffered two main drawbacks, that eventually led to its redaction:
The law was practically unenforceable: When you're asking your police force to shut down internet cafes cause some teenagers are playing Counter-Strike, real crime goes by unnoticed.
And on the other hand, business owners become really pro-active when their sales are plummeting and they receive fines for BS reasons.

The law was a knee-jerk reaction to an electronic gambling scandal. Anyone knowledgeable of the situation would have advised otherwise, but between panic, vote frenzy and general public ignorance, the law was passed silently and swiftly.

It was enforced for a few months and some businesses were fined, even brought on charges. Although the law was clearly unconstitutional, the judges were too chickenshit to leave the law unenforced (although within their power and most importantly their duty).
After a few months, pressure from the EU and businesses pulled the law down, the fines were returned and charges dropped.

Hopefully, the law won't pass in your country, as it makes even less sense. If it does, smart money says history will repeat itself.


Apart from that, I wouldn't want anyone's freedom to play MGS4 revoked, for any reason  :).

That would count the majority of your games I believe...

I have no real issues with war replica toys being banned anywhere, but yeah, I'm a bit more precious about computer games :)

Actually, I'm taking general Psychology right now, and a rather vague experiment done has proved that watching violent TV increases aggressiveness (which I expect translates over to video games).

There are several problems with the experiment, though. For one, it involves showing children material that isn't rated appropriately for them (IE, ten year olds and R/PG13 shows), which is more an indication that poor parenting causes increased aggressiveness. Also, while a link between violence in video games and aggressiveness may exist, the link between violence in video games and crime is far more tenuous and maybe even inverted.

This basically means that the whole "videogames and violence" debate is mostly just a method of scapegoating used by senators and such, in order to garner support by condemning "bad" things. It's an action that (almost) universally increases your popularity.

I read an interesting article in The Economist that showed this phenomenon happening with sex offender laws. In most states, Pedophiles are listed in the same category as, say, people who had consented underage sex. The laws concerning them are even sillier, prohibiting such things as living within a certain distance of schools, public pools, and other civic centers. It's all because politicians can make easy points by blaming scapegoats that people on all parts of the political spectrum can hate.

It doesn't help that 50% of the AAA "mainstream" games nowadays are fascist simulators where you play as the righteous american soldier invading 3rd world countries and overthrowing the evil dictators in the name of freedom and democracy. Also I seem to have noticed more and more of these games taking place in venezuela (or a very similar imaginary country). And there is absolutely no consideration for the other political point of view , so yeah I can understand that Chavez would want to restrict these games, I would do the same tbh.

It would be stupid if all games were banned, although I as a player wouldn't regret those "tactical urban warfare" games.
But if all videogames came to be banned, take it as an opportunity. Remember the prohibition? that's when moonshiners got rich beyond their dreams.

Well... I can't say much... but in case they bring through this law somehow...

wouldn't this be cool as hell?

Gaming would totally become the UNDERGROUND - thing.

Like... young people hiding in underground black markets for videogames... and secret arcades that get raided by the police all the time.
People would stick GameGear-cartridges up their butt and smuggle them home. Grafiti with game motives all over the city walls - the entire map of Castlevania: SOTN tattooed to people's backs - gamerilla warfare!

would be pretty sick, wouldn't it?


BaronCid

Oh jesus. If it happens like that, then I am all for banning videogames. I mean, fuck yeah, gamerilla warfare.

ATTN VENEZUELA: LET THE FUCKING GOVT TO PROHIBIT VIDEOGAMES

The question of the thread then becomes:

Which games would you become a martyr for?

There seems to be a lot of "I doesn't affect me, so I don't give a shit." going on here. This is a very bad thing, that we would only care about a problem if it directly affected us. It's the main reason so much shit in the world keeps going unchecked, because nobody anywhere else gives a shit and does anything about it, unless they start being affected at a later date or see an oportunity to get something good out of 'helping'.

I find that behaviour somewhat despicable, personally. At least -feel- for the people whose rights and freedoms are being violated, even if you don't plan on doing anything about it.

Yeah, I think the comments about it being 'cool' are kind of in poor taste.

Sadly I don't know if there is anything we can do to help in this situation, other than offer our sympathies.

You can't reasonably expect people to feel upset whenever any of 7 billion people's rights are violated or suppressed.
Feelings evolved to knit a social circle, and are largely ineffective beyond that. Conversely, they can largely be ignored for anything else.

Note that having feelings over a situation and a sense of justice over it are distinct. And opinions on matters across the planet aren't a litmus test for callousness, any way you split it.

Independent game developers ladies and gentlemen. Always sticking up for freedom of expression.

Actually, re: the argument about videogames causing violence: They really do not. There is a lot of misinformation about this, and a lot of it honestly comes from the people sensationalizing scientific studies. Now, there have been studies which show videogames cause aggression, but you have to realize several things here: Aggression in the way psychologists (the people doing the studies) mean it does not always mean violence; it may translate to more ambition or aggression in studies or any sort of thing in that respect - in this case it might even be a positive increase in the player.

As far as I know there are NO reputable studies that show violence is due to playing violent videogames, despite what Jack Thompson may claim.

The whole world wide run on Videogames is pretty much a repeat of how folks treated Books if not religious, certain types of Music, Movies and what not when they first appeared. It's always the same arguments too. Some pretty far fetched argument about those things having a bad and detrimental influence on kids, causing asocial non-conformist behavior. If history is a good teacher, and it usually isn't since we keep on repeating bullshit on an annual basis, this phenomena is going away when the next big thing appears.

Yes but history has also shown that if left unchecked it can cripple an industry for decades afterwards (American comics)

This is a very good point. I refer people to the term "zealous".

I think its a shame with what is happening with video game censorship in various countries. I've noticed in recent years that in society there are more and more people who have an apathetic attitude.

The thing is change is sometimes more easier to achieve than many people realize.
A few years back a local piece of bushland a street away from where I live was going to be turned into a housing development. So I wrote a letter in to the local newspaper sure enough it got published. And the next thing I know a large part of the bushland got declared a park. I'm sure some others in my local area wrote a letter too.

The thing is if people do not speak up the problem whatever it is cannot be resolved properly.

You know, I think American comics were crippled partly because of this, but mostly because American comics were completely stupid. I mean, comics in early years literally had stories like this: "Will Superman save Lois from the talking nazi gorilla and his hordes of zombies?" Of course he will, he's Superman, he even has the power of SUPERKNITTING! And a horse that flies! And magic hypno-glasses! How is anyone supposed to take such a thing seriously? It taints the reputation of said medium for many years (or forever).

Games have the capacity to be much more than that, as do comics, but it's less the image of being violent or unrefined that will doom them (novels were once banned for those same reasons) but the image that they are immature, unintelligent... stupid. When the biggest blockbuster titles are things like Halo -- which is simplistic storytelling at its worst -- and Gears of War -- which has dialog so bad it makes the listener feel less intelligent just for hearing it -- what are people to think? Many movies are like that, yes, but there also are many successful films which do not treat the viewer as if he is a moron. When this is widespread in the gaming industry, it will be here to stay. And if games were accepted in a large proportion of the populace, then surely there would be more of an uproar when people try to ban them or censor them. If a country decided, one day, to ban books, many, many people would care. When a country tries to ban games, noone cares -- just like they would not care if comic books were banned.

Has moi ever actually released a game? Just curious, cause I'm not even sure if he's a developer.

Also, I like the idea of creating a greater sense of respect for games by creating more games worthy of respect and making them popular. Sucks that it's hard to compete with Halo and Gears;

We should show something like this to Chavez
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGuhX5AmjuA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGuhX5AmjuA)

Maybe then a new bar will be set as to what is violent and what isnt. I mean, what does that government consider non violent?

Incidentally, if i recalll correctly (and i do) Counter Strike and Everquest were banned in Brazil a couple of years ago:
http://kotaku.com/346800/brazilian-government-bans-counter+strike-everquest-fun (http://kotaku.com/346800/brazilian-government-bans-counter+strike-everquest-fun)




I endorse this "gamerilla" concept, except for the gamegear cartridges part. It will be better if it's you who takes care of the smuggling side of things.

I thought we wanted to be an art-form.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_films (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_films) Obviously this is being done for political reasons. Keep doing what you're doing man.

Some people refuse to believe people can tell the difference between fantasy and reality

This isn't really the case, the Comics Code, a governing body invented by the American Comic industry cocked up American comics. It was a completely bullshit voluntary way to prevent government backed laws. It ended up killing off a lot of comic companies that weren't willing to play ball with the bigger comic companies. As Scott McCloud described it "the list of requirements a film needs to receive a G rating was doubled, and there were no other acceptable ratings!"
This made sure that comics were only for children, because retailers wouldn't carry comics that weren't authorized. This lasted until the eighties, when comics found the balls they lost in the 50's and started trying to add adult situations(I think this term needs more use).