Videogame Regulation Is Everyone's Business

Thanks to the International Game Developers Association for their editorial discussing why game developers should collectively take a stand against negative views of gaming. The writer, IGDA program director Jason Della Rocca, suggests: "The perception that games are 'bad' for us stubbornly persists, and we have yet to find effective ways to change people's minds on this issue. Game makers may be biased toward games' 'good' qualities, but you'd be surprised how many developers simply don't care about the issue of public perception, don't have an informed opinion, or believe it is all a big waste of time - even to the extent of questioning the need to fight government regulations." He concludes with a message to game developers: "In the bigger picture, resolve to push boundaries and innovate... We need not put a stop to games with violence, but we need other avenues beyond violence as a design crutch."

Comments

A word from Jack Van Impe:

[AtariAmarok]

To quote Jack Van Impe:

"Nineteen hundred seventy-four is the year that they are now planning for
sex on the streets in every major city from coast to coast. And -get ready
for a shock- the 'music' that they're planning to use to crumble the morals
of America is this rotten, filthy, dirty, lewd, lascivious JUNK called
'rock and roll.' It isn't just the lyrics, it's the BEAT! I preached it to
my conversion story which you can get (?) how this 'beat' gets them 400
teenage girls in Detroit interviewed as to why they had illegitimate babies,
they said 'not just the words, the BEAT.' The fertility rites of the jungles
are the same beats (drums on lectern) incorporated in this 'modern rock.'

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Epilogue: this "beat" now dominates Christian music.

History repeating: the Comics Code?

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

Look into the Comics Code--apparently, they were going to make comic books illegal back in the 1950s, so the major American comics publishers began to voluntarily comply with the Comics Code.

Some interesting pieces of the code:

Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals. Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.

Basically, they mandated that America produce nothing but boring superhero comics for several decades, which is why comics tended to become more popular in Europe and Japan than in America.

Could something similar happen to games? The one big advantage games have in the 00s that comics didn't in the 50s is that comics were explicitly targeted to juveniles, which is why there was such public furor over them, while the more violent games made today are (supposedly) aimed at people in their 20s and up.

An industry effort to make more quality games rather than relying on the same old violence cliches could only be a good thing, but I don't think it will really prove necessary--games companies just have to keep emphasizing that they are not trying to sell to kids. (Hey, it works for the tobacco companies--which even with the settlement are rolling in the dough.)

Even if games never leave this sophomoric violent stage, any public attempt to ban them will run into the same problem that is run into when trying to ban guns in America--most people want to eliminate guns, but too many of the people who want to keep guns are single-issue voters.