Another tragic school yard slaying a la columbine occurred a couple of days ago here in Germany.

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The report was barely announced and politician are once again calling for the complete ban on ego shooters. Is this another knee jerk reaction from those trying to protect the population from themselves or does this reaction have merit?

Computer graphics have evolved over the years however game play in principle has not. The player invariably carries a weapon and has to shoot something, a game concept that has carried over from real life kids pretending to shoot each other while playing Cowboys and Indians in their backyard.

When I was playing Rambo on my C=64 all those years ago, my machine gun touting alter ego was represented by barely discernible brown blob of pixels blasting his way up the screen, fast forward to 2006 and I can feast my eyes on the wonderful rendering of my workmates alter ego slumping together after heaving his head blasted on to the wall he was cowering behind just seconds earlier, before I fragged his ass.

Rambo - This Game was banned in the 80's in Germany for being to violent.

Counter Strike source - buy it in any PC-Games store in germany.

Now we are all sane adults who grew up playing computer games, computer games with shit graphics. We are all able to discern what is real and what is fiction we are not psychos and we appreciate the nice rendering and realism in modern computer games.

However that is not the point, the point is that young people and kids are playing these games, and while I do not believe that playing a computer game will make someone a psychotic killer, I do think that the realism of computer games has a desensitising affect towards violence especially on children and young adults. That is is the real danger.

Looking back on my teenage years the game Rambo, Green Baret etc. on the C=64 were all banned for being to violent, however we still managed to acquire these games and played them regularly and that was pre-internet, so a ban will only serve to hurt game sales with no influence on the access of these games to the population .

The focus needs to be put on motivating parents to spend more time with their kids. If your teenage son is running around the woods dressed in full army camouflage carrying a real gun and blowing shit up with real selfmade bombs, the least of your worries is him playing Counter-Strike.