Tories want to tackle violent games

Author: Joe Martin
Published: 28th August 2007

David Cameron is due to unveil a mini-manifesto outlining how to tackle crime via violent videogames.

The UK has, in my opinion, had a pretty good history of monitoring itself in regard to violent videogames. Yes, the BBFC were the first oppose Manhunt 2, but it also put a lot of thought into the matter beforehand.

It's also worth nothing that Manhunt 2, which is now appealing the BBFC was pretty deserving of the ban from what we've seen and was the first game to be banned since 1997.

Unfortunately, there's a large part of society which still considers videogames and real-life violence and crime to be inextricably linked. Even worse, some of those parts of society are in government.

Conservative Party leader David Cameron is due to unveil his own view on the matter shortly in a mini-manifesto which outlines how to deal with crime, part of which includes 'dealing with' violent videogames. Yeah, that old chestnut.

Speaking to the BBC, Cameron said there were a number of items which needed to be addressed in order to tackle the broader issues on crime, rather than the "one-dimensional appraoch" currently being taken by the Labour government, lead by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

"We are never going to deal with crime unless we look at the broader context and say 'Yes, tough laws, strong action on police, but also action to strengthen our society. And that includes, I think, videogames and things like that where we do need to think of the context in which people are growing up."

There are no further details available quite yet, but rest assured that we'll keep you up to date with any and all of the developments. In the mean time, why not pop into the forums and tell us what effect you think videogames have on crime statistics.