Greek game ban "more complex than appears"

YESTERDAY WE PUBLISHED an article about electronics games being banned in Greece. (See Greeks ban electronics games by mistake. Here's the postbag so far:

Letter One
It's more complicated than it appears.

On the illegal electronic slot machines around Greece have been lost fortunes from naive people, the problem was so big that we talking about many suicides around the country. Note that those machine were camouflaged Pacman games with remote control changeover and remote control win/lose abilities, real robbery. Due to the chasing from police the mafia around this games, convert the stores to Internet Cafe .

Imagine a table with a monitor no keyboard or mouse visible (hidden in a drawer) again remote controlled like the "Pacman" but with big buttons embedded on the table like on electronic slot machines, and of course special software so that you see Explorer one moment and "slot thief" the next.

As it was extremely difficult to find who is legal and who is not and as the frustration of the community was enormous due to 7 - 12 suicides per week the only fast solution was first cut everything and then ask questions since only five per cent of internet cafe looks like an internet cafe as we all know.

So Greeks are not so crazy, we talking about organized crime with gorillas and guns, selling protection, corrupted cops etc. remember wherever is smoke there is a fire.

So let us be patient. And believe me Aristotellis has nothing to do with slot machine robbery

Best regards
Lakis
Email address supplied

Letter Two
I would like to adress this e-mail to one of your staff who goes by the name Adamson Rust.

Mr.Rust, I think that the large quantity of rust in your head has severly inflicted your knowledge in history, if it did not, then you would remember if it were not for us Greeks then you would have slept quietly in your cave. You would not even know how to speak, if you think that my words are of pure hate against the American people, then you are wrong.

Maybe you did not attend the class of history in your childhood but that does not give you the right to mock a country who you and every other man in the world owes so much. If you think that I am completely wrong then you should know that I am free to discuss any matters and thoughts. I should though tell you about a book that speaks for persons in your situation, the book is called "The effects of masturbation in the human brain". Thank you for your time.

Isidoros Mezopoulos
Email address supplied

Letter Three
Hello, there, Please excuse my quick tempered compatriots:) I'd have to admit though that in some of the things that they are saying, they are right. First of all though, let's put things straight. No one will be arrested for playing tetris on his mobile or playing worms on-line from his home (or work ;)). Yes there is a very badly written law, that allows for generalizations and can be interpreted in many different ways.

The problem that Lakis points out, really existed but of course the number of suicides related to these slot machines, is about......2(in a year). We don't have to exaggerate in order to make our point my friend (btw Greece has the lowest suicide rate in Europe with only 5 per 100.000 in comparison with the 32 in Finland and 23 in UK...Who would like to die anyway, living in such a place? :-P)

Nevertheless, the scandal broke out when a known politician was found playing, and "selling" such kind of games. Of course the "over-sensitive" government and some law-makers that haven't probably ever played a nice adventure game or Civilization or even Doom on a computer, decided to ban all the games from being played in public:-) The funny thing is that in 2 weeks there is an international tournament of Quake in Greece which of course will be held in public, and next January the international tournament of Kick Off 2002 will take place in Greece as well (as long as the winner of the previous event was from there).

To sum up, in my country we have a saying: if the head hurts, you cut it. So that's what the government decided to do. Instead of taking some time and distinguishing between illegal betting and entertaining computer games, they stopped them all together.

I think there is no reason for both sides to get so angry about it. People have the power (fortunately we have democracy; even without a monarch to feed, it's still democracy ;-)) and can change all illogical laws and governments. Of course if we really want to make it political, majority is rarely sensible and usually acts as a mob; but I have faith that soon the issue will seize existing. Anyway, when I'll be in the government such problems will be treated with more sensitivity. Take care and keep up the good work

Nikolaos Gryspolakis
Email Address supplied

P.S. All references to our countries are for humouristic reasons only.