<COMMENT>Buzz's inbox</COMMENT>
<P>Ah, well if you really want a hard and fast rule on this one, Im gonna have to go with "the fault (if any) lies with the person who DIRECTLY allows the child to watch the content".
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<P>And no higher.
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<P>If we start blaming shop owners for selling stuff to adults who then show it to kids, we fail. You might as well stop shop owners from selling ANYTHING other than harmless plastic baby toys and pureed foodstuffs. Of course, if the shop owner sells directly to the kid, yay prosecution! In exactly the same way you might if a shop owner sold a ten year old a circular saw and a loaded howitzer (which would, incidentally, also be hilarious).
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<P>If we start blaming authors, we might as well give up on actually being a society, and just run around grunting and hitting each other with big sticks with nails in. A society where people are punished for having IDEAS is a really, really stupid society (kinda by definition, in fact).
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<P>Would lecturing children about 'just how lethal ordinary "low sodium table salt" can be' be helpful?
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<P>No, probably not.
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<P>Should we stop talking about it completely then? Because that would make biochemistry lectures on cardio-regulatory ion-transporter activity really kinda difficult.
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<P>People should almost always be permitted to share their ideas with the world, and should not be punished for those ideas reaching ears other than those of their target audience, unless they deliberately promoted those ideas directly to those ears themselves ("Tonight, children, I'm going to explain how to successfully get away with..rape!").
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<P>Yes, I said "almost", there will always be ideas that really SHOULDN'T be promoted (actually the rape example up there is one of them, but the mental image of someone teaching kids that was so amusing I couldn't help myself), but I can't mention most of those ideas without invoking Godwin's law and ruining an otherwise interesting topic.
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<P>And making violent videogames is not one of those things. "Madden's virtual rape simulator 2007" might well be, but "Generic eye-gouger 4" isn't.
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<P>In my book, at least. This is all opinion-based, after all.
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<P>As vavrek points out, sometimes you want a game with tons of consequence-free shooting, and that's also fine. But I don't think people should be denied the right to make games with gruesome deaths JUST BECAUSE they're gruesome. In fact, I find it worrying that nobody really worries about the consequence-free "low gore" games, despite the fact that there is often WAAAAY more actual killing in those.
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<P>Ultimately, as Jonas noted: it's not the 'lol realistic gore-death-kill' that I really want to see more of (I can live without organ-location-specific damage mapping...though that does give me ideas..). I want to see more consequences of the player's actions.
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<P>I want situations where the player sneaks up behind the dozy security guard (piano wire at the ready), garottes the poor schlub, and then drags the corpse away.
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<P>Then returns to the security desk and notes the little teddy with an attached note that says "so you don't get lonely, love L", and the various child's paintings of "My daddy at work" pinned around the place.*
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<P>And then maybe the player thinks "shit", and reloads, and sneaks by the guard instead. Or just feels like a bastard. And realises that killing people isn't a very nice thing.
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<P>*I have made myself feel sad just writing this. I am too soppy.
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<P>The Artist Formerly Known As Board Guest 1952161