At the “Presseclub” on ARD on January 8, some German journalists spoke about what happened on New Year’s Eve in several cities in Germany: riots, attacks and general riots. Eva Quadbeck uses the age-old killer game debate as an explanation.
Who is the journalist?
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This is what the discussion is about: On New Year’s Eve 2023, riots broke out in various German cities. The two most frequently discussed are Berlin and Borna (Saxony).
In Berlin, 18 police officers are said to have been injured, one of them seriously, as the Tagesspiegel reports. According to the report, 15 firefighters were injured, one of whom had to be hospitalized.
In the capital, for example, attacks on firefighters with steel bars and firecrackers are said to have occurred. Families and children are also said to have been injured in fireworks attacks, and there is said to have been increased destruction of property and shops.
In Borna, on the other hand, 200 people are said to have walked through the city center, police officers and emergency services “attacked with firecrackers and rockets” and shouted “Sieg Heil” (via Berliner Morgenpost). There was also destruction here, such as damaged street signs.
The discussion got an odd twist on video games with violence and “realism” like Call of Duty is:
Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 Launch Trailer
“Young men sit in front of these games and murder”
Quadbeck says: In the discussion about New Year’s Eve in the press club on January 8, 2022, Hasnain Kazim, Eva Quadbeck, Jasper von Altenbockum and Ulrike Winkelmann talk about the reasons and explanations for the riots. The show can be viewed in the ARD media library.
The arguments of the discussants are usually very differentiated here. According to Kazim and Winkelmann, in the past discourse it happened that some people quickly came up with words like “foreigners” or “Nazis”.
According to the discussion, it cannot be denied that in Berlin most people with a migration background were attacked and that right-wing extremist terms were used in Borna. However, these are only parts of a larger picture. About halfway through the show, at 21:35, Eva Quadbeck interjects (via Twitter):
I would like to make an addition to the keyword disinhibition. Don’t forget what video games are being played. And with what realism people slaughter each other there. And without batting an eyelid, young men in particular sit in front of these games and kill and hunt others.
And the fact that sometimes you don’t see reality anymore when you’re standing on the street and then take action either against the police or against rescue workers, that can at least be an explanation. No apology but an explanation.
Where does the argument come from? The “killer game debate” has plagued gaming since at least the 2000s. Politicians in particular are always looking for a justification for violence among young people when it comes to violent video games. Recent studies have been showing for a while that video games tend to have the opposite effect.
Nevertheless, shooters in particular are still used as a scapegoat. In 2016, for example, the public channel funk took up the discussion again and blamed “killer games” for rampages:
Mecker Wednesday: The return of the killer game debate
Even US politicians, who blame video games for rampages, jumped on the discussion. Some politicians even go so far as to ban such games altogether.
Violence in video games was also one of the reasons why Olympia 2018 decided not to include e-sports. Quadbeck is now taking up this age-old discussion even in 2023.
In fact, gaming has long since become mainstream, and several studies have claimed that video games are actually beneficial for certain skills. Research is still in the process of determining concrete effects. We already spoke to 2 scientists about what actually accounts for the fascination with gaming:
We asked scientists: why do we play games? That is the answer