Games taken off shelves after Oslo killings

J_E

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-07-29-games-taken-off-shelves-after-oslo-killings

Here's just part of the article

A major Norwegian retailer has announced it is to remove 51 games from its shelves following the tragic killings in Oslo and Utøya last week.
As reported by VG247, the titles affected by Coop Norway's decision include Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and World of Warcraft – both of which gunman Anders Behring Breivik claimed to have played regularly.

,,,

Breivik killed over 70 people in a bomb attack and shooting spree last week, and injured many more. His 1500 page manifesto apparently stated that he viewed Modern Warfare 2 as a "training-simulation"

While I am not putting down the seriousness of the killings, I can't really see the point here. How are the games to blame for the murders that occured? It really goes to the nature-versus-nurture arguments. Does everyone who play Modern Warfare and Grand Theft Auto connect it with real life and re-enact events? Of course not. I almost expect Jack Thompson to be hopping all over this. I mean, if you ban the games, why not other offensive media, such as film and music?

Chuck Stone

Stupid imo.

Victor

They are being sensative to their customers emotions and those of the victims and families. I imagien they will be back in due course.

Potential-Monke

Hah, and good ole Smyths Toys in Waterford had the following games as the first things you see when you enter the store:

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Modern Warfare 2
Call of Duty: World at War
Call of Duty: Black Ops

I can see the headlines tomorrow:

SMYTHS TOYS IN LINK TO OSLO KILLER TRAINING!!!

UrbanSea

Are they going to ban all publication of information on wars aswell in the media? That's certainly more broadcast and accessible than some computer games.

Superbus

Could be less that the games were at fault and more that the games could cause offense to the families affected? (for whatever reason)

Either way totally unnecessary and as usual, not addressing the actual reason it happened.

amacachi

Why not just get rid of MMORPGs since that's what he used as a cover and then track everyone who plays FPSs?


Alternatively they could just not be complete retards.

Badgermonkey

Won't someone please think of the children etc.

Yakult

World
Of
Warcraft

amacachi

They could just try not being retards instead.

pablomakaveli

I'd be more than certain he's watched violent movies at somepoint in his life but i dont see them being taken off the shelves.

Also i know he's said that he used COD to train himself but anyone who uses that game to train themselves for war wont live very long.

Yakult

How can MW2 be a training simulator? Maybe by showing you how to reload a gun but that's it.

Like saying I can drive a car by just playing GTA.

Kylo Ren

Ban porn too. And kiwis. ****ing Kiwis.

Jesus Wept

Silly Norway.

J_E

Victor wrote: »

They are being sensative to their customers emotions and those of the victims and families. I imagien they will be back in due course.

To be fair, it would do a lot better to actually go down to the victims graves, pay tribute, and talk to the families, rather than lazily say "Okay, all these games are banned, sorted".

krudler

This is what caused the most uproar when MW2 was released

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvHvYZNtbQQ

rocket_108

Considering Breivik explicitly names a select number of games in his manifesto, it's not an unreasonable move to withdraw these particular games from the shelves imo.

While the games themselves are not to blame, the guy undoubtedly had what he was intending to do in the back of his mind as he got his killstreaks in cod. I can't help but see bad connotations there for the masses

ejmaztec

They should only sell them to people wearing "I'm not a psychotic nutter intent on world domination" t-shirts.

Badgermonkey

After Princess Di's death, Sky bleeped the word 'Paparazzo' from a scene in The Simpsons.

A photographer leans in over Flanders' fence, snaps a shot of Mr. Burns playing with Maggie in the back yard, to which he reacts 'Damn you paparazzo'.

K-9

Big over reaction to a total lunatics over reaction.

Give it a month or 2 and sense will prevail.

SuperInfinity

Potential-Monke wrote: »

Hah, and good ole Smyths Toys in Waterford had the following games as the first things you see when you enter the store:

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Modern Warfare 2
Call of Duty: World at War
Call of Duty: Black Ops

I can see the headlines tomorrow:

Umm... yeah, that wasn't amusing or clever in the slightest, just annoying, nothing like what Smyths would do as you know.... annoying especially due to the big font and bold you put on it.

Mr Trade In

He has spent years planning what he did,he bought a farm to cover up the chemicals and fertilisers he used to make the bombs,people in Norway will blame anything and everything they can to explain the actions of this madman.

Crazy Horse 6

I blame it all on pac-man. Going around eating things and ****. Fecking cannibal.

Gilligan.Mark

Yakult wrote: »

How can MW2 be a training simulator? Maybe by showing you how to reload a gun but that's it.

MW2 doesn't show you how to reload a gun. You press the "x" button and the game does the reloading. you dont learn anything. You train yourself to press a button, wow, that doesn't help in real life. (not trying to be a mocking to you Yakult, it more for others)

It's not a training simulator in any way shape or form. In real life there's so many aspects that you dont get in a game, you dont need to worry about long shots (elevation, distance, etc), recoil of a gun, bullet drop, wind etc.

I play MW2 and BF2 and loads of other war games and watch ever war movie i can, and i'm fine, . Why? because I am of sound mental mind. i was raise properly and learned the difference between right and wrong and TOLERANCE of another race or religion or what ever.

so I would like to give a giant F U to all the morons out there who blames video games for all the worlds problems. Sit with your god damn kids and raise them right or dont have kids. and if all else fails for the good of mankind, go out and earn yourself a Darwin Award.

orourkeda

Computers games Joe

aperture_nuig

By this logic I should get my full driving licence for getting the platinum trophy in Gran turismo 5. If they're going to treat video games as training simulators and people as mindless drones that are only capable of believing what they see on their screens, I can't see why we get all of the drawbacks and none of the benefits.

aperture_nuig

By this logic I should get my full driving licence for getting the platinum trophy in Gran turismo 5. If they're going to treat video games as training simulators and people as mindless drones that are only capable of believing what they see on their screens, I can't see why we get all of the drawbacks and none of the benefits.

Randomer.

They should ban all the music tv shows and movies he listed also so, and books too if he mentioned them.

Turpentine

The companies that make Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and World of Warcraft must be delighted with this publicity, albiet unwitting on their part and under tragic circumstances.

Knee-jerk morons always play into the hands of those they try to ban.

o1s1n

Randomer. wrote: »

They should ban all the music tv shows and movies he listed also so, and books too if he mentioned them.

I'm sure he used forks too. They probably thought him how to stab. Ban forks!!!

recylingbin

Victor wrote: »

They are being sensative to their customers emotions and those of the victims and families. I imagien they will be back in due course.

ooooooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrr...
retail chain seeks to accrue some positive marketing from death of innocents.
Otherwise why not just take them off the shelves and say nothing?

Turpentine

o1s1n wrote: »

I'm sure he used forks too. They probably thought him how to stab. Ban forks!!!

Forks don't stab people, nutjobs do.

From my cold dead dinner-eating-hands.

Le King

If they believe that these games are influencing these people into to going out on sprees then I'd like to see the proof. It's more likely he is simply nuts. Surely providing funding for better research into this area is required rather than taking a game off a shelf. Most likely, Norway will step up efforts to pass violating privacy laws quickly while the people grieve as per every other situation like this.

Chap was an absolute delusional nutter. This behavior could have potentially have been spotted at a younger age before manifesting to it's current level.

Craebear

****ing retarded.

raveni

More often than not the people who blame video games for this sort of thing don't play them themselves. I think it's largely people looking for something that sets the murderer apart from "normal" (normal to them) people, people don't like to think a killer could have been remotely normal or similiar to them so they look for things like this that set him apart from themselves. It's become nothing more than a trend to blame video games.

Turpentine

raveni wrote: »

More often than not the people who blame video games for this sort of thing don't play them themselves. I think it's largely people looking for something that sets the murderer apart from "normal" (normal to them) people, people don't like to think a killer could have been remotely normal or similiar to them so they look for things like this that set him apart from themselves. It's become nothing more than a trend to blame video games.

There's no empirical data that can conclusively link computer-games/music/film/any form of entertainment to these kind of atrocities, or can cite them as causation for the acts themselves.

These scumbags are always either result of plain insanity, or how they react to the way they were treated as children, or how they react to the way they think society perceives them.

Then, people that don't like or understand (

---

) try and use it as an excuse to blame (

---

).

Personally, I blame reality television. I've no proof, but I just plain don't like Simon Cowell, or having to hear how some "Celebrity" gave a horse a handjob for cash.

Tehachapi

They should ban computers also, he used a computer to make his manifesto documents and post on right-wing forums. Actually better ban typewriters and pen/paper also just to be sure. Yes. That'll do.

Turpentine

Tehachapi wrote: »

They should ban computers also, he used a computer to make his manifesto documents and post on right-wing forums. Actually better ban typewriters and pen/paper also just to be sure. Yes. That'll do.

Ssshhhh.

You'll have them banning **** next. That bloke is definitely a wanker.

Happyman42

Gilligan.Mark wrote: »

MW2 doesn't show you how to reload a gun. You press the "x" button and the game does the reloading. you dont learn anything. You train yourself to press a button, wow, that doesn't help in real life. (not trying to be a mocking to you Yakult, it more for others)

It's not a training simulator in any way shape or form. In real life there's so many aspects that you dont get in a game, you dont need to worry about long shots (elevation, distance, etc), recoil of a gun, bullet drop, wind etc.

I play MW2 and BF2 and loads of other war games and watch ever war movie i can, and i'm fine, . Why? because I am of sound mental mind. i was raise properly and learned the difference between right and wrong and TOLERANCE of another race or religion or what ever.

so I would like to give a giant F U to all the morons out there who blames video games for all the worlds problems. Sit with your god damn kids and raise them right or dont have kids. and if all else fails for the good of mankind, go out and earn yourself a Darwin Award.

........just put down the baby and give me the gun.......steady now.............steady........

wonderfulname

the titles affected by Coop Norway's decision include... World of Warcraft

Forget Call of Duty, that's understandable, I'm sure the Norwegian Joe Duffy was up in arms over it, but WoW? That's just bloody hilarious!

Sonics2k

wonderfulname wrote: »

Forget Call of Duty, that's understandable, I'm sure the Norwegian Joe Duffy was up in arms over it, but WoW? That's just bloody hilarious!

He was clearly pissed off about the latest patch changes!!


To tasteless?

Turpentine

wonderfulname wrote: »

Forget Call of Duty, that's understandable, I'm sure the Norwegian Joe Duffy was up in arms over it, but WoW? That's just bloody hilarious!

It'd at least be understandable if he had gone around dressed as a high elf or something. A ridiculous "moral" decision alright.

Good marketing decision though (and one not made by the producers of the game).

Tehachapi

Sonics2k wrote: »

He was clearly pissed off about the latest patch changes!!


To tasteless?

FFS, very tasteless. I'd never go Oslo as that.

Turpentine

Sonics2k wrote: »

To tasteless?

Are you asking me out?

Killer Pigeon

Let's face it. MW2 and World of Warcraft are on the two side of the same stupid monotonous coin when it come to games being released over the past couple of years.

I mean look, Call of Duty hasn't changed much since the first Modern Warfare game and MW3 looks like it's going to be the same old tripe again. After seeing some footage I could throw Battlefield 3 into the same category too.

I couldn't really care less if Norway decides to ban them to be honest. On the up-side, it might stop the male population becoming less productive and getting hooked on video games while their minds turn to mush.

LighterGuy

Last I heard GTA4 sold millions of copies. But yet there hasnt suddenly been millions of people stealing cars, running over or shooting people.

Turpentine

Killer Pigeon wrote: »

Let's face it. MW2 and World of Warcraft are on the two side of the same stupid monotonous coin when it come to games being released over the past couple of years.

I mean look, Call of Duty hasn't changed much since the first Modern Warfare game and MW3 looks like it's going to be the same old tripe again. After seeing some footage I could throw Battlefield 3 into the same category too.

I couldn't really care less if Norway decides to ban them to be honest. On the up-side, it might stop the male population becoming less productive and getting hooked on video games while their minds turn to mush.

In fairness I don't think turning the brains of their male population to mush is part of the agenda.

I do wonder if they have a ban on Child's Play 3. A similar ban cured Britain of all its psychos in 1992.

wonderfulname

Turpentine wrote: »

Good marketing decision though (and one not made by the producers of the game).

As bad as it makes the game look to outsiders, claims (however wrong they are) that CoD is of such high quality it can be used as a training simulation for real life situations is going to do the franchise wonders with their target audience.

On that point, the games are 18s already, surely better regulation of the market and informing parents that just because something is called a "game" doesn't mean you should buy it for your ten year old child makes more sense than ripping the things off the market?

Then again I never re-enacted the gameplay in Streets of Rage so maybe it doesn't even matter... now that I mention it hopping down a street sideways extending my arm and yelling kitchAW does sound like fun...

SuperInfinity

Killer Pigeon wrote: »

On the up-side, it might stop the male population becoming less productive and getting hooked on video games while their minds turn to mush.

Do you ever get an awful empty feeling...




in your head?

I can only imagine that this retailer is doing it for publicity, doing it because the games didn't sell well in their particular stores or didn't look so good to parents anyway (someone mentioned Smyths toys, perhaps these are a toy company for children?), or some other reason totally unrelated to the incident.

Equium

Placing the blame for atrocities such as those in Norway on games is ridiculous. People don't commit such acts because they've seen it on a TV monitor, but instead because they are just plain evil/insane. After all, I don't remember Hitler playing COD...

Turpentine

wonderfulname wrote: »

As bad as it makes the game look to outsiders, claims (however wrong they are) that CoD is of such high quality it can be used as a training simulation for real life situations is going to do the franchise wonders with their target audience.

On that point, the games are 18s already, surely better regulation of the market and informing parents that just because something is called a "game" doesn't mean you should buy it for your ten year old child makes more sense than ripping the things off the market?

Then again I never re-enacted the gameplay in Streets of Rage so maybe it doesn't even matter... now that I mention it hopping down a street sideways extending my arm and yelling kitchAW does sound like fun...

If something is banned it automatically piques interest.

The target audience is already receptive to such a game, and if they haven't played it already might decide to check it out.

Some of them might decide not to go postal.