British Prime Minister Worried About Virtual Stabbing

Prime Minister Gordon Brown wants to crack down on knife violence, even if it’s just in a videogame. Stabbings are apparently on the rise in the UK, and Mr. Brown wants game developers to tread carefully when mixing blades with fun. In a recent interview with British paper The Sun, Mr. Brown had this to say about our favorite pastime (gaming, not stabbing):

I am very worried about video and computer games. No one wants censorship or an interfering State. But the industry has some responsibility to society and needs to exercise that.

This comes after a recent deluge of stabbing deaths, leading the Prime Minister to impose a new Violent Crime Action Plan. Any knife-wielding individual found in a high-crime area will be prosecuted, regardless of their age.

There are boundaries you cannot cross — and one is this country’s zero tolerance on knives. It is neither cool, nor does it make you safer, to carry a knife

This leads me to wonder whether the UK’s knife problems are partly responsible for their stance on Manhunt 2. The game is brutal, no doubt, but there are many graphically violent games out there that they had no problem with, though the games don’t prominently feature knives.