The thing about government officials anywhere who want to ban video games on the grounds of them being a bad influence on children is that these people are often clueless about video games.
Case in point: our own government. The Ministry of Education and Culture yesterday released a list of 15 video games that were deemed “dangerous” for children:
1.World of Warcraft
2. Call of Duty
3.Point Blank
4.Cross Fire
5.War Rock
6.Counter Strike
7.Mortal Kombat
8.Future Cop
9.Carmageddon
10.Shelshock
11.Raising Force
12.Atlantica
13.Conflict Vietnam
14.Bully
15.Grand Theft Auto.
Hang on, what year is the ministry living in? Some of these games are ancient! We remember playing Carmageddon in the original Sony PlayStation and Mortal Kombat on the now antique SNES. We can easily name dozens more video games that are unsuitable for children in the past year alone (but we won’t, because we don’t want to make it easy for the government to ban said games).
It’s all well and good for the ministry to flag these games as inappropriate for children (because they are) as a precaution for parents. But then, the Ministry of Communications and Information (Kominfo) today announced that they would ban the 15 games listed above if they get an official recommendation from the Education Ministry.
“After that (the recommendation) we will process the ban [of the games],” said Ismail Cawidu, head of Kominfo’s Public Relations and Information Center, as quoted by Detik today.
There has been no word so far from the Education Ministry regarding that official recommendation. We can only hope that they don’t issue it as there’ll be a lot of upset adults – the intended audience for these games – who won’t be able to play their beloved games just because the government doesn’t realize that video games already come with age ratings on the box to tell parents whether they are appropriate for kids or not.
