Venezuela to ban violent video games

Venezuela to ban violent video games

CARACAS, Venezuela — At a video arcade in the center of Venezuela’s capital, the sound of tapping buttons and the rattle of virtual gunfire fills the room as young boys battle mercenaries and zombies on games such as "Target: Terror Gold" and "House of the Dead 2."

But in a few months this busy arcade will likely stand silent and empty, thanks to a new law here that would ban the sale and playing of violent video games and toys.

The law is an attempt to tackle the epidemic levels of violence that plague this South American country. Homicides have reached record levels in recent years. Caracas — with 2,710 murders, or 130 per 100,000 citizens in 2007 — has one of the highest homicide rates in the world.

The law was based on several studies in the United States and Japan that conclude violent video games increase aggressive tendencies in children, said National Assembly lawmaker Wilmer Iglesias of Fatherland For All, a party allied with President Hugo Chavez. (The assembly has approved the law but it may be altered before being signed by the president.)

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In addition to video games, toys that include any kind of weapon or that imitate the armed force or state security apparatus would be banned. Toys that don't promote a situation of war, but still "establish a type of game that stimulates aggression and violence" would also fall under the ban.

“We’re not saying that this law pretends to solve the problem of violence but we believe that there are great problems and their solution is complex, cultural and multifaceted, and if that is true we need to attack it from all points of view that can influence it,” Iglesias said.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/venezuela/091120/violent-video-game-ban

in all this violence also coincides with the "rise" of hugo chavez. Coincidence> maybe...maybe not.

Mongs

Let's see if it has any effect.

so I wonder if we ought to do the same thing here. She said she was only going to kill the undead, but I have my suspicions.