A German group calling itself Aktionbundnis Amoklauf Winnenden is calling on people to turn in their violent videogames as part of the Families Against Killer Games event, taking place this Saturday night in Stuttgart.
Formed by families of the victims of the school shooting in Winnenden, Germany, earlier this year, the Action Alliance is one of several groups in the country seeking to link that incident, and violent youth behavior in general, to violent videogames. An effort by the German government to ban violent games outright ran aground this summer, so the Action Alliance has gone to Plan B: If you can’t ban ’em, burn ’em.
Or at the very least, collect them up in one convenient location, presumably for safe disposal later. Thus, the group is holding the “Familien gegen Killerspiele” event on October 17, inviting everyone to come to the State Opera House in Stuttgart, where they can toss their violent videogames into a big bin. People who throw away a game will be entered into a draw for a jersey signed by the German national soccer team.
I’m not going to make the obvious joke about what happened the last time Germany tried something like this but according to GamePolitics there is an interesting connection to the country’s Nazi past: The stylized image of a person throwing a videogame into the trash used in promotional material for the event is a modified version of one used to encourage citizens to do away with the swastika, using a game disc in place of the infamous Nazi symbol.
