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B.C. Officially Proposes Video Game Regulations
CitizenC writes: "The British Columbia Attorney General has now officially proposed
legislation for a government sponsored classification system for video and
PC games. Stomped spoke with a spokesperson with the Attorney General's
office today for more infomation about the proposed regulations; read the report here." Basically, the proposed system (only proposed, note) would require video games be rated, much like movies are. Phwew! At least this is Canada! Nothing like this could ever affect us down here in the land of the free, home of -- Oh wait. Yes, it could.
That's all well and good, but for every child who would react similarly to how you did, there would be a child who would go back to smoking and drinking, even if they initially found it distasteful.
There's reasons besides moral ones why we don't give children ready access to smokes and booze: they're much harder on a child's growing body then they are on an adults. Pr0n's a different story, in that it's not directly harmful. The argument could be made, I suppose, that it's mentally damaging, but that's left up for the psych majors to decide.
Are the citizens of British Columbia blind or stupid? Every video game already comes with a rating on the front, and on the back actually lists the reasoning for that rating, breaking it down into sex, violence, gore, drug use, and whatever else parents may not like. Video games have had these ratings for five years now. The government getting involved is, at best, a total waste of money.
Of course, that would not further the career the politician pushing for this, who apparently is so bad at what he does that he cannot find a better vehicle for his political advancement.
This is just going to result in games that are edited and sanitzed not because the players want it, not because the game makers want it that way, but to satisfy some OUTSIDE THIRD PARTY that thinks that's the way it ought to be.
Arcades that are not licensed as "adult establishments" (which is, oh I don't know, NO ARCADES) will not be able to put out the NC17/X/UltraViolence video games. If no one buys them, game makers won't make them.
This is the same with movies. Robocop was originally rated NC17 (for excessive violence), so the studio EDITS it down to an R because many local zoning ordinances prohibit theaters from even showing NC17 films. Ditto Basic Instinct, and other films.
This also results in two home versions. The "movie" version.... and IF there's demand (hmmm, stifiling creativity here?)... and "unrated" release.
Why are we jumping through these hoops? Again, it's for OUTSIDE THIRD PARTIES who, beyond rating it, will never see the movie or video game ever agian.
Something is really fucked up here. And I see no "problem" that needs to be solved with new restrictions. Games are games. Reality is reality. The rating boards need to figure this out and quit trying to correleate one with the other.
Actually, I think the methods for determining a rating will probably be pretty simple. I don't think they are going to spend the time trying to look at every different possibility. They will play the game, work out how much blood, sex, violence, whatever that the game has and then try and slot it into a general category.
While I agree that parenting is a much bigger influence than any video game, movie, or TV show, children can become desensitized toward violence through repeated exposure. No, video games do not turn kids into rapist/killers, but I believe they are a factor in the development of aggressive tendencies in children. For that reason, I would support a fair, accurate, and reasonable rating system for parents to use.
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
I'm glad that (for the most part) we have a voluntary code in the UK; some games do go for official ratings by the same committee that rates films (the BBFC) but most don't. The problem with rating interactive product is that you've got to see everything that might be considered controversial. Not much of an issue with your Resident Evil/Onimusha type game thats practically on rails, but something like Black & White or The Sims where the game is highly non-linear you could cause a million different things to happen, each of which might need reviewing for suitability.
Mind you, the fact that its a tradition of older brothers to do evil things with their little sisters Barbie dolls doesn't seem to have made them get banned either, so who knows...
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I like ratings. They help you choose what you want to see, or what your kids want to see. My big problem with the US system is that the ratings are fairly useless for this purpose.
In Australia, we don't have a perfect system (far from it), but one thing that I like is the consumer advice label. Rather than just give an overall rating (G, PG, M, MA, R), they actually give you, on the movie poster, video cover, TV guide or broadcast the programme, the reasons why it got that rating.
Reasons can include violence, nudity, sex, coarse language, drug use, horror or a particularly useful category called "adult themes". Adult themes are topics which kids may need parental guidance or help in understanding, like mental illness, marital breakup, the supernatural and so on. I love this, because I can envisage an age which my daughter will reach where I won't have a problem with, say, nudity (it's just the human body in its natural state) or coarse language (there's plenty of that around in the wider world), but I'd like to sit with her if she sees a portrayal of hate groups, or people with mental illnesses. I think that would be more confusing for a 10 year old, and need "parental guidance" more, than depictions of sex.
So, IMO, these ratings on video games will do as much good as the other North American ratings on TV programmes or films: hardly any good at all. How about some real information instead?
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As a single parent, I definitely see how such a rating system would help me out. I would no longer have to monitor every video game my children played -- I could just check the rating! This saves my valuable time and prevents my children from seeing things they shouldn't have to see, or participating in violence or sex-driven games that could twist their values. I know I don't want my children to grow up to become killers or rapists!!
Know someone who is stealing cable? Report them!
I'm basically libertarian in most of my viewpoints. I believe that adults(not children) should have the freedom to choose, die, drink, smoke, do drugs, etc. I don't believe these freedoms should be granted to minors. Rating video games is not the end of the world people. We have ratings for movies here in the USA and many of you would consider this ok.
There are better things kids could be doing anyway. With age, comes maturity and more responsibility. We don't let minors drink, smoke, or watch porn. Why should graphically violent games be any different. If parents want to buy those games for their children, then they have the right to do so. If a parent wants to rent an "R" rated movie for their teenage son, then they have that right. All that was suggested here is a rating system, not the end of game consoles as we know it.
What is wrong with marking a disgustingly violent game like Soldiers of Fortune as such?
Read the article.
It isn't marked "disgustingly violent", it's marked "Adults Only". Now, I may not like SoF -- either the game or the gimmick -- but I hardly think that it should be for Adults Only. Frankly I don't see SoF as being any worse than the exploding humans in Doom, and Doom didn't damage my brain when I played it at age 15.
It's not like those who will buy the game anyway couldn't
According to the article, a special license will be required to sell M and AO games. M games will have to be in a separate section, and AO games will have to be in a separate room. Running through all the game stores I can remember, I can't think of any that have a separate room -- and thus they couldn't sell SoF.
No, there is nothing wrong with identifying the content of the game. To restrict games you don't like is censorship, even if you aren't explicitly banning them.
The enemies of Democracy are
I see the self-imposed rating system that game developers use in America as only that: a break before the storm. Government regulation is, in my mind, going to be inevitable. At least as long as the tenuous (if even extant) link between social violence and violence in entertainment is perpetuated by media.
But would it really be such a bad thing? I'm not going to raise my hand in favor of censorship, but I have to wonder about what the results might be. Being controversial for the sake of increased visibility will never go away...and it isn't really too much a problem (as far as gamer's are concerned) if there is good gameplay to back it up. BUT...anyone remember "Postal?" It didn't have the gameplay and it was visible solely because it contained controversial content.
Ultimately good games sell because they are fun, not because they are offensive. Smart developers, like those guys at Konami, realize that you can have edgy, intelligent content without being needlessly offensive. To that end, Metal Gear Solid is a truly masterful work.
What is happening in British Columbia is nothing new. Germany, for example, has extremely restrictive content control. It doesn't really hurt developers too much because the majority of the market is in America and Japan (at least for Japanese developers, American developers have had difficulty entering the Japanese market).
Should developers be worried? Yes. We ARE worried. But there seems to be little we can do directly, other than to act responsibly and keep rehashing the arguments we've made time and again.
My own thoughts are that parents aren't going to magically start being responsible for their children. Kids are going to continue to get material their parents think they shouldn't and the government will act on it. They will act as they have in the past: instead of education or some true method of solvency they will seek to make the material more difficult to acquire. Instead of engendering the missing responsibility, they will release a patch for the problem.
Oh and...yes...the company I work for and the game I am helping program and design will have a lot of edgy semi-adult content, but the game is also full of gameplay. We won't be selling DNF on the merits of controversy, but on the merits of gameplay and fun.
Heh...somehow I don't think it is going to be possible to convince the geezers in DC what we, as gamers, find to be fun and acceptable.
But don't take my word for it. I listen to black metal and watch hentai. I'm probably not the best person to judge morality or defend the values of my industry. ;)
Here's my sig that doesn't have carriage returns:
Brandon Reinhart
As a co-owner and server admin for digitaladdiction.net (ya, the site looks ugly. I'm working on it), I am openly wondering how they will look upon game servers. Will our site (and game servers) require 'Adults only' signs? Will we have to regulate who connects to our game servers? Christ, we have the #1 rated CounterStrike server, along with a couple q2 servers, and I would not look forward to doing 'Age verifications' in order to let people play. As you can tell by our Addicted Users Page (which is hidden right now - I'm working on it), we *do* have a few players who are under the age of 18 (hell, a good 40% of our players are under 18), and I would not look forward to telling them to play elsewhere...........
Feed The Need[goatse.cx]
Robocop was originally rated NC17
The version of Robocop that you speak of was originally shown at theaters with an R rating, then the MPAA (after the fact) changed their minds and threatned the film with an X rating if the scenes where Murphy's hand is blown off and the scene with the E.D. 209 blasting the shit out of that executive were not toned down.
As I remember the NC17 rating did not exist in the late 1980's when Robocop came out.
Something is really fucked up here. And I see no "problem" that needs to be solved with new restrictions. Games are games. Reality is reality. The rating boards need to figure this out and quit trying to correleate one with the other.
What I would like to see replace ratings is a list of questionable material in a movie. Instead of "This movie has been rated 'R' by the MPAA" I'd like to see "This film contains depictions of violent acts including murder, rape, assault and battery as well as extortion, drug usage, and music piracy."
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
""... getting ready to try to sue the video game industry out of existance." What crap! As usual, overreacting to reasonable people trying to protect the innocent."
Overreacting? In this age of using the courts as a national lottery? Come on. The tobacco industry (which I won't defend) was selling a legal product that carried government mandated warning labels for over 25 years.
And government (thru taxation) makes far more money per pack of cigarettes sold than do the tobacco companies...
Yet that didn't stop the government and every whorehouse lawfirm from trying to sue them on the basis that people were too stupid to know that smoking is BAD for you.
Anyone who wasn't aware of that fact and has lived in the USA in the last 25 years is a candidate for the Darwin Awards.
It's just a matter of time before a "concerned" group of hysterical Soccermoms becomes the front for a suit against the game industry. Mark my words and this date. It WILL happen.
Eventually, every industry that produces anything that could conceivably harm ANYONE if misused, even IF there are warning labels WILL be sued unless this practice is stopped with meaningful lawsuit reform. The result? Economic collapse, the complete demise of creativity an innovation, poverty, starvation, and a LOT of dead lawyers when the revolution comes.
Maybe that scenario IS a bit exteme, but it's becoming more and more likely, as this new trend for governments and special interests to sue industry continues. And it WILL continue, and will continue to be expended to other industries (like video game makers), as it's already been proven a great new method of taxation. New taxes never go away.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
I'm sorry, but does anyone else notice that timothy has been complaining about everything he can at every opportunity? Especially Microsoft, but everything in general.
HELLO. Movie Ratings aren't a bad thing! Why are ratings on video games a bad thing? Responsible parents will like a system like this because their kids will obviously want to play games, and parents usually have no clue as to their content.
Have you looked at the video game rating system we have here in the states? It's pretty nice. It comes with a Letter rating, as well as a summery of items contained in the game that contributed to that rating. I, as a 21 year old gamer, even find this system useful for myself. It takes less than an inch of package space, and doesn't affect game play whatsoever.
SO WHY THE HELL ARE YOU COMPLAINING? I mean, Christ! It's not like they're storming into your house, pointing a semi-automatic weapon at your head, and READING the ratings to you. It's a fucking tiny little label on the packaging!
Get a Grip! Seriously. Complaining about stuff doesn't make you a "Cool Kid", it just makes you irritating. Especially when it's over trivial shit like this.
If it was a large-scale violation of basic rights, I can see complaining. If it was a move by the industry to stifle the consumers, or force their hand, then I can see bitching. But complaining about a fucking rating system? Jesus Christ, you need a hobby.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
What I find wierd are those shows that *do* show breasts, but they still result to the old tricks sometimes - the same person on scene could be full frontal naked, and then a camera change later she's standing so a metal bar exactly obscures her chest. It makes me wonder what they're thinking..
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ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Danny (my own Australian censorship pages).
I have written over 900 book reviews
I agree, but one thing I want to be sure of is your definition of children (a vague word in our language). If "children" means "pre-teens", then I'll say "yes, I agree completely". Otherwise, I'll say "it's too late".
Seriously. If the "child" you're referring to is 15 years old, and playing a video game causes them to develop violent tendencies, then something has already gone seriously wrong in their development.
Regardless, a rating system by itself is good. Restricting the higher-rated games is censorship.
The enemies of Democracy are
Look, there are similar ratings on movies, OK? I know that those ratings are totally s****ed up in the US (like, you can show as much blood, gore and violence as you wish as long nobody says 'fuck' and you can't see a bloody inch of a tit), but that the system is s***ed up in the US doesn't mean it is s***ed up everywhere. Have you seen `The baby of Macon' by Peter Greeneway? Would you let just any kid wander into the movie theatre to watch this movie? You could give countless examples like that.
I am the last person to think that games are the cause of violence and various killings in the US. Not taking care about ones children definitely is. Obviously, a kid playing Quake with his parent, who will take the kid after the game to talk it over and explain a few things is better off then a kid playing day and night Civilisation III, because his parents don't give shit about him. But, you see, making a classification of games is for the parents who care. If the parents don't nothing will help. When I was a kid, I had no technical problems getting my hands on anything which was forbidden: from matches in my early years to XXX and violent videos a little later.
Best regards,
January
I'm all for classification.
Classification keeps "concerned parents" and the like happy, while reducing the need for censorship.
As an adult year old, I can see films that are not suitable for a twelve year old. If it weren't for the system enforcing this, all films unsuitable for a 12 year old would have to be banned -- not good news.
In the UK, some films are denied an 18 certificate -- this I have a problem with. As an adult I feel I have the right to view whatever I like, and I would like to see the 18 certificate as some sort of "catch all", the default in the switch statement that is the British Board of Film Classification... and things are gradually moving in that direction, with films like Ai No Corrida and The Excorcist finally being granted video certificates.
--
Meahwhile I do NOT believe that Doom caused Columbine, I believe that it is common sense not to give an 18 rated movie to an 8 year old. AFAIK young children are quite impressionable, and they will try to find role models; giving them violent/unsuitable ones is a bad idea. For people who are more mature; those in their mid to late teens, such material is most probably fine.
A rating system for games probably isn't such a bad idea in a way, since it would prevent kids from obtaining unsuitable material.
NOTE: I am not saying that violent movies and games are bad (although they may be unnecessary in some cases), I am saying that it is a bad idea to give such material to a young child. This is what a rating system can prevent.
Imagine this scenario:
- Government imposes mandatory rating system. All video games must have a Tipper sticker with one of a number of labels like "O" for occult, "S" for sex, and "V" for violence.
- A viscious right wing faction gets "elected" and appoints rabid conservative Cristians to the censorship board that decides which games get which labels. Now any video game that goes contrary to the beliefs of the bigoted Christians gets the scarlet letter.
- The government pressures retailers into not carrying any video games with the scarlet letter. Note that this wouldn't take legislation, just the threat of legislation.
- All of a sudden, we have censorship! You can no longer buy controversial or non-Christian video games!
Now, I know this may sound far-fetched to some, but guess what; it's already happened! That's right, the US has a scarlet letter system for records, although it's not mandated by law. But it still has a chilling effect on record production. The two largest music retailers here (K-Mart and Wal-Mart) refuse to carry any album with a Tipper sticker, so kids in places where those two retailers are the only places to buy music are only exposed to drivel like N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys.Then there's the unofficial censorship that goes on behind the scenes. Many bands are forced by their label to change or eliminate songs to avoid getting a Tipper sticker. This distorts the message of controversial bands, and will do the same for video games.
Don't let the PMRC-types ruin the creativity of the video game industry. Parents need to take more responsibility for their children instead of abdicating said responsibility in favor of limits on freedom.
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
Perhaps raising a child better would prevent any problem, but if the child does not get properly raised, the importance of those video games comes to the foreground all of a sudden.
:)
Don't underestimate the power of subliminal (this includes obvious) messages and how prone kids are to their influence. I've never heard of kids shooting up their schools before... did parenting get worse all of a sudden? No, it's always been pretty bad in general.
Just lately lack of good parenting has much worse consequences... violent films and games are part of it..... arguing that they're not is like arguing that pollution isn't making us sick because the evidence is inconclusive.... who cares that we don't know 100%.. the point is that we have good reason to believe that violent games/films have a strong influence on young people.. That should be enough to do something.. If you wanted conclusive evidence on every parenting practice, I don't think you'd ever get to actually doing any parenting... it's a heuristic.
Janimal
It's just a question of who censors what.
....state run TV. There is quite a bit of contrast in how the Land of the Free shudders in prude puritanical fear at the sight of nipples, while the laid-back Aussies appoint govt. censors and casually walk past pictures of bared breasts in malls and public places.
Compare movie ratings in the US and Australia. In the US, it's done by the film industry. In Australia, it's done by the govt. There's a huge difference between the two.
More important than the censorship itself is who controls it. If it's the industry itself, there's a built-in balance. An industry will tend to censor itself as little as possible (for obvious reasons). A govt. will try to censor as much as possible (for obvious reasons). There's also the philosophical question of the state controlling the citizenry's right to free expression.
The Aussies have a govt. body with the rather Orwellian name of The Office of Film and Literature Classification . It censors games as well (I'm not sure if they come under film or literature, though "Move every zig for great justice" is memorable prose indeed). Ignore the cute kangaroo and try looking up some names. A search on "quake" reveals that Quake (the game) is MA15+ rated for "high level violence", whereas Earthquake Girls (the movie) is rated X. Of course, books are rated too, and in some cases, prohibited. Games in arcades have big ratings signs posted. There was a news item a couple of years ago of the New Zealand govt. having difficulty rating video games because govt. bureaucrats were having difficulty going past the first few levels in violent games. The very image of buttoned-up, middle-aged officials getting paid to struggle through "Toxic Waste Dump" makes you wonder if society has better ways of spending tax dollars. Canada, you are next.
There are some ironies, however. I've lived in both Australia and the US. Inspite of Australia having a govt. censor, you can see breasts on TV all the time, even at 9 PM, and (irony of ironies) even on a news program re. censorship on
You can see movie posters with tits on full display. Sex and the City, which largely gets its high ratings on US cable from the shock that Americans feel at the sight of yuppie women baring breasts on a TV show and saying "fuck" several times, is regularly shown on open public broadcast in Australia. You can see breasts on the front pages of newspapers sometimes, lying there in a newstand stack as children walk past them to buy candies. Oddly, such obscenities haven't resulted in higher crime or moral turpitude.
OTOH, the problem with govt. censorship is just that - it's govt. censorship. They can ban movies if they don't feel the public should watch it. God forbid they should come across the old Mega TF mod that lets you shoot your opponent's head off and kick it around like a football....
w/m
"How the hell are adults rights being hurt by a ratings system so long as nothing is censored, just rated?"
For one thing, in this case it's the GOVERNMENT reviewing and rating movies. This means the GOVERNMENT has the power to rate something according to the bureaucrat's own biases and that rating might FORCE the game maker to change the game to get into the chain stores, just as movies get censored or not carried at Blockbuster.
That's censorship. By government. It's a slippery slope you DONT want to slide down.
"2) The point isn't that this relieves the responsibility of the parents to raise their kids, but why make their jobs harder?"
I don't have kids. It's not my responsibility to raise yours. It's also not my problem, but YOURS to keep your kids out of things you don't want them to have and see.
You seem to be suggesting that we censor everything not fit for children from public places, and from public MARKETPLACES. Can you not see how dangerous this is? Children will spend much more of their lives as ADULTS, and you're talking about depriving them of liberty.
Why don't YOU as a parent take responsibility and spend the TIME with your kids to know what they are watching, what video games they are playing, etc. Kids under 16 shouldn't be given money and allowed to run loose in the mall ANYWAY to buy whatever the hell they want UNSUPERVISED.
I hate to break it to you, but being a parent is a tough job that demands long hours and lots of attention. If you weren't prepared for that, maybe you should have used responsible birth control?
"Should kids be allowed to buy guns since any decent parent wouldn't let their kid go into a gun shop?"
This is a totally different issue. Children are not adults, and should not have adult responsibility, and owning a firearm is about as adult as it gets.
Not to say that it is a bad idea to introduce kids to firearms (it is a great idea to teach them responsible ways to handle weapons), but it should be done in a supervised manner.
"Same goes for drivers license, alcohol, tobacco, and lots of other things kids aren't allowed to do."
There is a reason for this: the minimum legal age limits of 18/21. YOU as a parent are responsible for the kids until they reach the age of 18.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Sort of.
Most video rental stores did have a seperate room or at least section for pr0n and "Faces of Death" type stuff. At least they did when I was a kid, most rental places now are part of a chain like Blockbuster or Rogers and they don't even cary stuff like that. If you want to get pr0n movies you usually have to go to stores that only cary adult movies, indepenantly owned video places have prety much vanished.
This sounds like it's going a little farther though, I would love to hear the screams if Blockbuster had to have a seperate room for R rated movies.
I was kind of surprised when I saw this on the news tonight. I never really thought of Canada, and especially BC as a place where this was likely to happen first. We don't really seem to have quite the same tendency to get into the whole "Save the Children" hysteria as you hear comming out of the States every so often.
I don't really disagree with a ratings system but I really don't see the need to legislate to this level of graularity. If I had a 8 year old child, I would not be pleased to see them playing Quake or Resident Evil, or watching violent movies. However I would probably consider this my resposibility rather than the government's.
I don't have a whole lot of faith in the way these systems make their decisions either. I have always found it rather silly that you can watch Die Hard on TV at 3pm on Saturday with all the swearing changed or muted and very little else changed. I would much rather have a small child hear someone say "shit" or see a naked boobie than have them watch 30 terrorists get shot every five minutes.
The problem is not "Explicit Lyrics" but other language-related problem: grammar. Already the technologically challenged citizens of Canada are left in bewildered incomprehension of the burgeoning tech jargon that shows no sign of abating. But the hell of technology acronym and jargon is now being inflamed and by a fiery mix of bad spelling and grammar into a conflagration of epic porportions. This duality further confuses the masses of people, as their lack of understanding of the underlying technology is further compounded by the grammatical incorrectness of its expression. According to Aryan Wind, spokesperson for the Campaign for Purity of Canadian English (CPCE),
this may lead to insecurity as they perceived their lack of comprehension of not just the technology but the language structure to reflect on an inferior intellect. Aryan fears that long term exposure to this phenomenon can causing lasting psychological damage.
Aryan singled out computer games as the major cause of the language depredations that exist in Canada today. "Computer games are the means in which these abhorrations of languages reaches the common masses," Aryan said. "Furthermore, computer games are specifically targeted at a generation at its most impressionable: our children, our future." Aryan noted that the recent advances of the Internet have further spread the problem, making the problem much more difficult to stem. "Already, these so-called 'h4xx0rs' speaks as if they are from a different planet." Aryan insisted that, "if left unregulated this problem fester and further alienate between Canadian citizens already fractured by the English/French divide."
Most Canadians apparently support the move. "We have a very good following among parents and educators," according to Aryan. "All your base are belong to us."
Last year, the result came out. A quite waaay off-the target diver licensing scheme which penalizes the individual diver rather than the real culprit: the diving industry (it's just like if car dealers were not only giving driving lessons, but also hand-out the drivers licenses. Do you think that many people would flunk their driving test???)...
--
I quite don't understand why people make such a big deal out of all this taken that most support the movie ratings. If one thinks about what's ahead of us in the near future, VR worlds of carnage, terror, sex and all the same stuff that nowadays make the movies rated, it should be trivial that they're gonna rate the games, too.
Moreover, what computer games will offer in the very near future, if not already, will be far deeper experience than movies, given the liberty of one's own actions and the sense that he's actually living in it rather than just watching it, while on the same also getting all the role model effect from others and from the game itself same as with movies.
Thus it's fairly pointless to argue against rating games without on the same arguing against movie ratings aswell. The gap between the depth of experience in movies and with computer games is already narrow enough to rule out most of the arguments that are solely against rating computer games.
Wether movies/games should be rated at all is another issue...
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
'R' rated movies or 'explicit lyrics' CDs never stopped anyone from seeing them, anymore than an 'extreme violence' sticker on a game would.
In fact we all know that these things can gave the opposite effect than that intended. What game ratings would do, which seems like a *good* thing, would be to allow parents to have some control on what they give their kids as presents, or even to have a clue what the stuff lying around in their room is.
"On one hand, they say that parents shouldn't allow their kids to watch certain material. It's the parents' own fault and responsibility, etc. However, on the other hand, you see them talking about how kids should have an increasing world view. How they should be allowed to access the internet unfiltered or unrestricted because of the holes in the ratings software."
The point is, if you don't want your kids seeing certain things on the Internet, then you shouldn't be allowing them to USE it without your supervision.
Same attitude I was talking about in my original post: You want ME to take responsibility for censoring for YOUR kids because YOU don't want to take the time to do it yourself!
"Personally, I think that if games spent as much time extolling the downsides of violence as they did the virtues of it (ie; through funeral sequences or cutscenes of regret or maybe even someone watching in horror as someone dies) then maybe we wouldn't need this kind of thing. The reason for this type of legislation shouldn't be to ban violence or hide it from children, it should be an attempt to make sure that the audience is presented with the consequences of theirs and others violent actions in the game"
Again, this is YOUR responsibility. If you don't want your kids playing violent video games, then it's up to YOU to read the reviews, and to control whether they buy it or not.
If you want a game like that, write the game companies. Get people who want the same thing to write too. And then when they come out with it, BUY IT. If it succeeds in the marketplace, there will be more like it.
However, you seem to be wanting to use the power and might of the government to FORCE this down the throats of the industry by denying access to the markets to those who don't go along with what you want. This is the effect government mandated and controlled ratings would have.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
From the article:
" All retailers would have to have a special license to sell "M" and "AO" rated games. "M" rated games must be put in a special section of a video game store while "AO" rated games would be put in a separate room. "
Is this a double standard, or do you differ from the UK and US where video shops aren't required to put their 18/R rated titles in a whole different room? Surely, as long as the boxes are suitably labelled and have no offensive artwork on them there is no need for this.
Or does the mere presence of Soldier Of Fortune a couple of boxes away from Pikachu somehow contaminate the hideous bundle of yellow fluff?
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Though it is somewhat silly, it makes sense.
Traditionally, this is about broadcast rights, using PUBLIC airwaves. THey are saying that if you want to use canadian airwaves, you can't simply be rebroadcasting foreign stuff, you have to have local content. THAT is fair to the people, who own the airwaves ultimately.
Canadian broadcasters can compete because, originally, they are the only ones who COULD reach canadians... and if you think US broadcasters are not similarly regulated, think again.
From someone who lived most of his life up until recently in BC, kudos. You hit it right on the nail.
Vancouver is beautiful. The downtown east-side has a severe drug abuse problem. So lets' spend money censoring video games!
The B.C. Government is on crack. This is simply not something that taxpayer money should be spent on, period. No enforcement. Parents should know what their kids are up to, period.
Basically, the proposed system (only proposed, note) would require video games be rated, much like movies are.
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
Where exactly is the problem with this scheme? What is wrong with marking a disgustingly violent game like Soldiers of Fortune as such?
It's not like those who will buy the game anyway couldn't, and letting parents know what kind of content is to be expected in a game is certainly a perfectly justified proposition.
However, I'm wondering how they are going to go about checking out all possible game situations, looking for violence. They's need awfully good gamers to be able to process the quantities of Quake clone being published these days.
Maybe they're hiring?
/* in its mouth... */
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
/* in its mouth... */
--Larry Wall in stab.c from perl
Where does a 10-12 year old get $60 CDN to buy videogames? From their parents. The problem here is simple: Do Some Research dont mindlessly spend your money on whatever your kid is crying out for today. If you are caving into the requests of a 12 year old to buy the latest VideoGame - BUT - you havnt any idea what it contains; you deserve what you get.
Its ridiculous for adults to carelessly buy anything their child requests - not only are you teaching them to be mindless ConsumoTrons(TM)(C)(R) - but you are demonstrating your own lack of character.
If you arent capable of going to a website, reading a magazine, reading the back of a box, going to a video-game-center, speaking to other adults, speaking with the older Video-Game-Fan you surely know, asking the shop owners etc etc in order to decide for yourself - then, again, you get what you deserve.
Im tired of the State empowering themselves (or worse the Capitalists) to control what *I* am capable of buying/viewing/reading/owning/using simply because the world is populated with irresponsible sheeple. The whole idea stinks - absurd. Why not demand personal responsibility instead of adding layer upon layer of idiotic legislation. Isnt ANYONE responsible for their actions anymore?
Is this a reason to get upset?
Ratings are nothing new really. And they are very usefull for those parents that do want to consider non-violence in the upbringing of their kids. By giving ratings, you simply give a choice. What's wrong with that?
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
I was part of the protest when this issue first got raised. Someone (YES, A SINGLE PERSON) called the Attorney General's office to complain about Soldier of Fortune. Now I particularly dislike SOF, but I felt I needed to speak out. I spoke to the mainstream press, along with the actual organizer of the event. The organizer, Iambe, a columnist for UF, amongst other things, spoke to the attorney general's office, and they promised they'd be sane about it. It looks like they took what we told them to do (just implement ESRB), and perverted it in the usual Canadian government way , IE, try to ban or tax or "license" things it deems objectionable. My biggest complaint about BC is the extreme lengths the government will go to be "Politically Correct". At least they didn't try to institute their own review board like their first idea. Man. Such idiocy.
-- Perl Hack, Web Hack, SQL Hack, Guitar Hack
I support the idea of a ratings system for video games. With all the talk now about how parents aren't paying enough attention to their kids, I think it's important to provide some tools for parents to supervise. Granted, something like filterware which doesn't work and actually hinders more than it helps is a high profile example of a flaming failure, but I think this would be better. Many parents trust their kids to the ratings system, and I hear relatively few complaints in that area except by kids who aren't old enough to see R movies (I was one of them too ;-)
This system would help parents decide what to let their kids buy, while still letting that college student check out Soldier of Fortune. What's so wrong with that? If we're going to be casting blame on bad parenting, then shouldn't we help the parents to be good parents without hindering free speech? Remember, a mother can still buy the latest Playboy DVD for their son if they want to, the ratings won't hinder their video game buying abilities any more than it will their movie buying abilities. It'll just help them make better choices.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
1. Ratings
In British Columbia, they rate they don't censor. Are you an adult? You can watch any movie or play any game you like. Uncensored.
2. Radio & TV being unAmerican
96% of Canadians have cable TV. Every cable subscriber has all US TV networks, CNN, CNBC, the lot.
Most Canadians can receive US TV and radio over the air anyways.
Why, pray tell, would the CRTC (the Canadian equivilent of the FCC) license Canadian broadcasters who don't show anything from their own country? What a waste of a publicly-owned resource.
TV & Radio must broadcast a huge, colossal, unimaginable amount of Canadian material. How much? 30 per cent. Big flipping deal. I don't know how the US music and tv industries could survive with a mere 70% of the Canadian broadcast spectrum.
As for movies, the person was mistaken. There are no quotas for movies in Canada. We just run them uncensored, regardless of where they are from. (They are, however, rated.)
3. Drugs?
Vancouver has several Amsterdam-style cafes. Come on by.
4. Censoring Porn/Illegialities crossing borders
They do this in the US too. You can create all the porn, cracking info, etc. you like. But if you send it across a border, the Man gets involved.
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they make as they fly by
This reminds me of the hoopla regarding those "Explicit Lyrics" stickers added to albums. When they first came out ('86 or so), the stickers actually added to the appeal of purchasing the album, since, if you were a teen, you were "dangerous" for having such "edgy" material in your possession. Now, after approx. 15 years of having these stickers, nobody pays attention to them. Think these new ratings will follow the same cycle?
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
Vancouverite here.
The only dominant retailer of computer games here in BC is Electronics Boutique. They specialize in console games, computer games and... toys, surprisingly. At my local store, almost 1/4 of the floor is covered with action figures and yes, pikachus. There is the standard seperation of video games such as the new from the old, but no system that seems to be influenced by an accredited rating system. I can buy plenty of games that are rated for Mature Audiences and they won't bother carding me (i'm under 18).
Truthfully, I don't think any of this will materialize. Censorship was never really a hot issue in this province... like, to my knowledge, libraries use filtering software on their own accord.
--
Karma: -1,257,423
if you can't beat 'em might as well join 'em
There is a problem with your proposed system, though. Industry, if left to their own means, would only implemement a ratings system that would increase sales. Stores would carry whichever games sell the best, ignoring the ratings unless they increased sales.
So you'd end up with some small, unadvertised, and cryptic code on the box that only the kids knew about, designed to entice them into buying more games.
I'm not a big fan of government intervention, but I'm less of a fan of unrestricted industry.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
It's called a Responsible Parent.
/., no politician ever got (re)elected by telling his contituents they were bad parents. So it's little wonder the government is willing to waste resources so disgustingly, just to pamper parents' need to escape their responsibility: the parents are the voters, after all, and generally choose their own leisure over expending effort at parenting. The reason DOOM and such games are blamed for Columbines is because few parents would blame themselves. I place the blame nowhere else.
This system sits down and reviews the content BEFORE the child accesses it. The system then accesses an internal database of classifications ratings, also called "judgement", to determine whether the content is suitable for the child's consumption. The parent then stands by while the child plays the game / watches the movie / whatever and answers questions and provides guidance. THIS is an effective Ratings System; a parent that cares for its child and keeps a careful eye on their development.
DOOM is not responsible for Columbine and similar tragedies. The modern belief that institutionalized child care and upbringing is somehow effective is at fault. Children spend their early years in "day care" centers where they're usually just plopped down in front of a TV with no one to talk to, nothing to learn, and no one to love them. Then they go home to be ignored or even beaten by their parents, more and more of whom are having children younger and younger and are thus incompetents at the tough job parenting is. In their high school years, when they're most confused and trying to chart a tough course between learning to be good or evil, is when their parents are still not there for them and not interested in spending time with them. These children need their parents to BE there for them and notice when they're hurting, and they're not.
But, as someone once pointed out to me on
Feels like an episode of "Sick Sad World". =/
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
The mayor of Indianapolis has been working for something similar to this, as well. I believe it got knocked down by the courts, and the state legislature is trying to draft something up.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
"Come on now... your child playing violent video games does not cause him/her to become a killer/rapist. Bad parenting/lack of good parenting is a much bigger factor"
That is the / cause of all the problem with kids these days: most partents aren't worth a shit anymore. Parents either by necessity (thanks to the record tax burden), or by choice (gotta have not one but TWO BMW's in the garage) are both working and that means kids don't get the supervision they used to.
Naturally parents don't blame themselves, even though they are at fault. It is 100% the parents fault for basically abandoning kids to be raised by TV and video games. Is it any wonder that kids are more succeptable to influence by media now than ever before?
Parents shift the blame to TV, video games, the Internet, etc (the very things they abandon their children to be babysat by). Why? First to pass blame. Second, for convienience.. To them, its perfectly acceptable to place restrictions on EVERYONE ELSE'S liberty to gain the convienience of not having to supervise their own children.
The consequence of 20 years of bad parenting (my generation and my parents generation have to be the WORST parents in the history of the world) will be a set of laws that have no effect on the kids at all (laws restricting my access to things never stopped me when I was a kid from getting what I wanted to see, though there weren't many inthe 80's) but they WILL have a chilling effect on free speech and expression on those kids when they become ADULTS.
Unfortunately, I can guess as to what the next phase will be. I'm sure somewhere, some unprincipled lawyer (oxymoron) in allaince with some brainless Soccermom group is getting ready to try to sue the video game industry out of existance.
It's time to quit harming the rights of adults to protect children. Children will become adults someday, it's a biological fact.
As each year passes and another hysterical Soccermom group gets another law passed, the children of today are going to be less and less free as adults tomorrow.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
I don't understand why this is such a big issue. British Columbia Attorney General Graeme Bowbrick is not suggesting that the video games be banned, he is suggesting that there should be a rating system for the games ("government sponsored classification system").
I love playing video games myself, but I have played a few that I would deem unsuitable for children of certain ages. There are issues such as violence, foul language, etc.... I wouldn't want my 12 year old child (supposing I had one) going to a restricted movie, just as much as I wouldn't want him playing a graphically violent video game.
I don't think that the BC Attorney General is suggesting that we start the equivalent of a book burning club, just that we provide more information for the consumer. The ability to make a more educated decision about the product that you are purchasing is a bonus in my mind. As long as the rating are consistent, then I can see no harm in this proposal.
For all of you crying violation of civil rights, get a life. Not everybody buying these games is old enough to understand the contents of them, nor understand the effects of the contents. Let the parents and those of us that are over the legal voting age make these decisions...and kudos to those that want to help us do this (and provide us with the necessary information to be able to make educated decisions about it).
It's not about censorship, it's about awareness.
Sincerely,
A Canadian from British Columbia
Why should I be made to feel like some kind of dirty old man or psycho-path by having to venture into the "adult section" of a store just to pick up that copy of Quake X or SOF or whatever other harmless game gets slapped with this absurd rating? All this is going to do is flag games with a, "Look at him/her! They're disgusting for buying such titles."
For a province that wants to attract high tech business at their new "Tech Park" they're not sending a great message to any of those publishing type companies out there who just might want to venture out this way. "Sureeee comon out! Setup shop, but we'll red flag all your titles due to a few specs of blood."
The NDP party of British Columbia.. NDP no longer stands for "New Democratic Party" it's "No Damned Progress".
If they have so many as three seats, I will be severely disappointed. An all-Liberal government for three to four years is the price we must pay to destroy the NDP as Social Credit was destroyed.
--
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
it was like big news about a few weeks ago. The classification for TV in fact just started on the 17th of march (for movies it was the 22th of february). The classification system itself distinguishes 4 different age groups (AL: for all, MG6: 6 and up (parental overlook might be necessary), 12: 12 and up, and 16: 16 and up) and has 4 pictograms that can be added (for sex, violence, ...). There was quite a lot of international media attention since this was the first system covering the entire audiovisual industry (games, movies, TV). more information (int dutch) on http://www.kijkwijzer.nl