Red Cross says War Games should be bound by the Geneva convention

[jimmy olsen]

I think it's far more important to crack down on kids for playing cops & robbers. They're not properly reading out suspects their Miranda rights! 

http://mashable.com/2011/12/02/geneva-conventions-video-games/

Should the Geneva Conventions Be Applied to Video Games?

5 days ago by Zachary Sniderman

Could playing video games make you a war criminal? The International Committee of the Red Cross is looking into whether realistic war video games should be bound by international laws such as the Geneva and Hague Conventions.

If the committee finds that the laws do apply, they could ask game studios to adhere to the laws or even petition governments to regulate war video games, Kotaku reported.

The Geneva Conventions are a series of treaties and protocols created after World War II to establish international law around the humanitarian treatment of victims of war. The conventions prevent, among other things, the use of torture, inhumane treatment, hostage-taking, and excessive violence.

The International Committee of the Red Cross upholds the Geneva conventions in all manner of armed conflict, but they recently gathered at the 31st International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in Geneva to discuss whether their mandate extends to virtual victims in video games.

The event harkened back to a 2007 study held by TRIAL, a Geneva-based organization that monitors and reports on international crimes. The study examined 19 games set in real-world war environments to see if the games adhered to international law and found that:

    "In computer and video games, violence is often shown and the players become 'virtually violent ... However, such games are not zones free of rules and ethics. It would be highly appreciated if games reproducing armed conflicts were to include the rules which apply to real armed conflicts. These rules and values are given by international humanitarian law and human rights law. They limit excessive violence and protect the human dignity of members of particularly vulnerable groups."

Anyone who has played a first-person shooter video game has seen some pretty grizzly digital action. Characters are blown up by rocket launchers, recently killed characters have full clips emptied into their bodies, civilians or unarmed combatants are shot and that's not even counting the sometimes brutal multiplayer arenas where its not uncommon for players to gloat over kills by shooting or even miming sexual acts.

Of course, it's just a video game. Those aren't real wars and those aren't real people being blown up or defiled. After beating a game, no player wants to then sit through a mock war trial for the civilian they accidentally shot in the first mission. These moments are, however, real concerns in modern warfare. The International Committee of the Red Cross, to the best of our knowledge, isn't trying to stop wholesale the violence that occurs in video games but rather to give those acts context by applying the very real international laws that govern modern combatants. It is less about curbing game violence and more about creating realistic (and ethical) conditions in war games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 or Battlefield 3.

International war laws wouldn't apply to every type of game. Sci-fi shooters such as the Halo series would be exempt since the Geneva Conventions don't apply to marauding aliens (yet). But the International Committee has some difficult questions to answer even if it can get war games to adopt the conventions. For example, how can they be so concerned about modern shooters but turn a blind eye to possible actions in open-world games such as Grand Theft Auto? (Critics of video game violence often use the GTA series as an example since it allows players the freedom to, for example, have sex with a prostitute and then kill her.)

An integral part of GTA is the criminal lifestyle and avoiding arrest. The criminal acts may sometimes be heinous but at least there is an in-game punishment system. First-person shooters are starting to implement similar controls. For example, killing a civilian in Modern Warfare 3 will force the player to restart a mission. "It would mean a wasted opportunity if the virtual space transmitted the illusion of impunity for unlimited violence in armed conflicts," the TRIAL study stated.

Where do you stand on video game violence? Would the conventions ruin your in-game fun or help the games become even more realistic? Sound off in the comments.

[fhdz]

This is a joke, right?

[jimmy olsen]

This is a joke, right?

No, not an onion article.

[jimmy olsen]

This is a joke, right?

Every time you clicked on "exterminate the natives" in EU3 you were committing genocide!

And that's not even talking about that time you tried that nuclear war game! It seems that some crimes are too heinous for even your black heart.

[fhdz]

 

[MadImmortalMan]

Real life is intruding on The Onion's market share.

[Ed Anger]

I wonder about those 1.6 million Soviet prisoners I've taken in War in the East. Are they in little tiny pixel POW camps? Have they been shot by my pixel SS units? Are those 'Labor Squads' in my units full of pixel Polish prisoners?

What about the occupation of Soviet cities? Are there pixel Eitzentruppen shooting  pixel commissars and pixel jews?

[fhdz]

THE COUGHING IN DEFCON HAUNTS MY DREAMS

[Ideologue]

Well, I'd like to put whoever came up with this zany scheme in a camp.

[Ed Anger]

Well, I'd like to put whoever came up with this zany scheme in a camp.

Where they shall receive your bag off 300 defective dum-dums.

[Ideologue]

If they work hard.

[Admiral Yi]

I've used AA guns as antipersonnel weapons.

[Ed Anger]

I've used AA guns as antipersonnel weapons.

Company of Heroes is great with the meat chopper and the Wirblewind.

CROSS MY LINE OF SIGHT? POW POW POW POW!

[Neil]

However, such games are not zones free of rules and ethics.

Wrong.

[Neil]

Rolling over people with tanks:  Good fun.