The debate over violent video games has been rekindled in Germany after a recent school shooting left students and teachers hospitalized. 18-year-old Sebastian Bosse returned to his secondary school in the town of Emsdetten yesterday and opened fire, terrifying the school and wounding several people (none have died) before taking his own life. He wore a trench coat and a gas mask, and carried smoke bombs and pipe bombs. He was also known to play video games for hours, leading several politicians to call for a ban.

Christa Stewens, the Family Minister for the state of Bavaria, said in a (http://www.stmas.bayern.de/cgi-bin/pm.pl?PM=0611-565.htm) statement (German) that the federal government should now ban both offline "killer" games like paintball and video games like Doom 3 and Counter-Strike. Der Spiegel (http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,449814,00.html) reports that Wolfgang Bosbach, a conservative parliamentary leader, said, "If it's true that the 18-year-old perpetrator intensively played so-called killer games, it's finally time for parliament to take action."

The call for a ban echoes a similar call made in the aftermath of an earlier shooting in Erfurt back in 2002. Stewens issued a similar (http://www.stmas.bayern.de/familie/pk020517c.htm) statement condemning violent media (German) in the days after that shooting, too, but didn't get far with her campaign.

What's fascinating about the drive to ban video games is that Bosse's decision to take his own life this way had so little to do with gaming. It had to do with alienation, despair, and hatred. How do we know that? He left a note.

Der Spiegel quotes from messages left on Bosse's website, messages that say things like, "If you realize you'll never find happiness in your life and the reasons for this pile up day by day, the only option you have is to disappear from this life. The only thing I learned intensively at school was that I'm a loser." In 2004 he told anyone who wanted to read it that "fear is slowly turning to rage. I am consuming all this rage and will let it all out at some point to take revenge on all the arseholes who wrecked my life! For those who haven't understood it exactly: Yes, this is about a shooting."

Without getting into the issue of whether video games should be more tightly regulated or whether they stimulate violent thoughts and behavior, it's clear from his notes that Bosse's problems weren't simply a result of playing too much Doom. Jumping to the conclusion that violent video games should be banned altogether (the German video game trade association points out that Counter-Strike was already restricted to those aged 18+), and that games such as paintball and lasertag should also be outlawed, is hardly the solution to a complex problem.

After all, if media and gaming is to blame for such behavior, what are we to make of two men who robbed the house and slaughtered a family in 1950s Kansas (the murder was the subject of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood)? Games might be a factor, but they're only one among many. Violence is a sad staple of human existence, and has been forever. What happened in Emsdetten was a tragedy, and one that hopefully gets people to think about the effects on their own lives of the media that they consume. But attempting to stop alienated and hopeless people from harming themselves and others by outlawing Counter-Strike and paintball is unlikely to work.

The political clime in Germany with respect to games is ridiculous, as is most of the polemic discussion about violent games. However, I have to say that I hate how undifferentiated the discussion is even on the side of the people I generally agree with. There is a pretty fundamental difference between violence in 'passive' media such as films and novels and the violence in games, in that the player is the perpetrator in the latter. Doesn't automatically mean that the effect is stronger, but at the very least it warrants looking at more closely. Pulling the trigger yourself (even if it's on virtual people only) is likely to be processed differently by the brain than watching someone else doing it.

In the end, it boils down to this for me: people who are basically on the same side as myself hurt their argument by being just as polemic and undifferentiated as the other side. Which, quite frankly, sucks. With friends like these...

I'd be more concerned about how damn easy it is to get hold of firearms in Germany, to be honest.

Angry violent gamers (assuming said people are a statistical threat) without guns are far less harmful.
Angry violent people (who are angry and violent without any game involvement) with access to guns are still just as dangerous.

I know which one I'd like controlled/banned.

Essentially, it seems churlish to restrict an entire genre of gaming, one enjoyed by many many people, in order to reduce "inexplicable school shooting" incidents from a small number to a slightly smaller number, especially when improving restrictions on..things used to SHOOT PEOPLE would be smarter.