Friday 4 July 2008

CensorShip Information

Many video games tend to be based on concerns that children will be harmed by exposure to games with violent speech and images. Many parents and communitys fear that children who watch the make-believe world of video games will copy the games’ violence in the real world.However, the U.S. Supreme Court has made a content that stops alot of violence which is protected by the First Amendment. Sexual and violent content in video games is reflected in ratings done by the Entertainment Software Rating.The ratings are intended to give consumers information about content and degree of maturity of users.
Over the last few years, governments around the world have been firing shots across the Video Game Industry, seeking to lower the graphic and violent content found in current interactive games. Groups battle cries of ' protect the children' as their permanent justification for censorship of violent videos.

"Children like violent and high stress games". a study said by Dr. Jeanne Funk, published in the Journal of 'India Pediatrics', found that about 7th and 8th grade student games involving violence, 29% preferred sports games (which also have some violent content). only 2% preferred educational games. For the past several years, video game manufacturers have chosen to create better graphics and violence, while extraordinary technological advances have made them even more realistic. Some games also feature full motion video footage of real actors as opposed to artificial characters. In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, a player can have sex with a prostitute and then get his money back by beating her to death with his fists or with a baseball bat, action that can be controlled by the PlayStation controller, or she can be shot, with spurting blood and painful sound effects.

Reasons for and against (censorship of video games)

Censorship of video games

Reasons for:
· We need to protect our children against the exposer to violence.
· Computer games like GTA could be responsible for the rise in knife crime due the fact that it shows too much knife crime.
· Lots of scientific studies show that people can become more violent if they see violent media.


censorship is needed so that young children are not exposed to content that could harm them or be damaging.In 1990's there was a famous case in which the child Jamie Bulger was murdered by two young boys who had apparently copied the video nasty film 'childs play three' this lead to tougher censorship laws.

Reasons against:
· Don’t we need freedom of speech?
· Surely we can make up our own minds on what we should watch
· Use’s and gratifications theory