I Need Opinions Here

While browsing one of my favorite websites, I found this article. The article states that two Swiss Human Rights Groups ran a study that "attempted to determine if the acts gamers engage in while they play violent titles would "lead to violations of rules of international law, in particular International Humanitarian Law (IHL), basic norms of International Human Rights Law (IHRL), or International Criminal Law (ICL)."" Yes, I know that might sound confusing to most people, so I reccomend reading the article.

Basically, these groups had people play through several action games while lawyers watched them to "try to find actions in games that in real life would violate rules and regulations that govern armed conflict". Sound stupid to you? If not, then read it again. These people are trying to enforce real-life rules into the fictional worlds of video games.

Wait, is that a burning building in the background? How dare they!

I found a sentence from the article that I find hilarious, simply because it is so contradictory. "The organizations said the study is not intended to "prohibit the games, to make them less violent or to turn them into IHL or IHRL training tools." Instead, the groups want to work with developers to ensure that in the future, their games observe real-life human-rights laws." Does anyone else find that funny? They're not trying to prohibit the games, but want them to adhere to a set of rules that are only applicable in real life. To me, that sounds exactly like prohibiting, especially when you find out that they want game developers to take out things that make certain games enjoyable. To quote the groups: "civilians or protected objects such as churches or mosques can be attacked with impunity, in scenes portraying interrogations it is possible to torture, degrade or treat the prisoner inhumanely without being sanctioned for it and extrajudicial executions are simulated".

To me, this is all some of the most ridiculous hogwash I've read in a long time. Video games, and the worlds they encompass (however similar to this one), are works of fiction and must remain as such. There is no reason that a work of fiction should be following any set rules of the real life world. If video game developers want to make it possible to blow up a church in a video game, then they have every right to make it possible.



The thing about this article that irks me the most? The fact that they are trying to enforce human rights on video games. Last time I checked, the characters in a video game were nothing more than a complex set of 1s and 0s, not actual humans, and therefor, lie outside the rules of the real world.



But, what about the rest of you? Do you think we've reached a point in the world where works of fiction have to be governed by the laws of real life? If we're going to do it to video games, why not do it to books? What about movies? Share what you think in the comments.