California Anti-Videogame Bill Author Interviewed

rsmith-mac writes "As an update to last week's story about a proposed California bill to bar minors from buying first-person shooters, HomeLANFed has an interview up with Leland Y. Yee, the assemblyperson responsible for creating the bill. While there are some good intentions with Yee's actions, I can't help but feel that this is a classic case where the road to Hell is being paved with those good intentions."

Comments

Re:Only one objection here.

[PainKilleR-CE]

I found a few more objectionable things about Mr. Lee's statements, such as the following:

We can also point to the testimony of criminals as further proof. We know that the Columbine killers compared their intended crimes to the game Doom. Earlier this year, a group of Oakland teenagers went on crime spree, stealing cars and committing several murders. One of the perpetrators was quoted as saying, "We played the game by day and lived it by night." The scientific community has put it very simply -- the debate is over.

1) We don't know much at all about the Columbine killers because they are dead. They may have made comparisons to Doom in order to plan their crimes, but in the end, they killed themselves and no one knows any real reasons for their actions. Besides that, one of them was 18, and Doom existed before the current rating system was widely used (and was an old game by the time of Columbine).

2) 'We played the game by day and lived it by night', well, that's very nice, but if he's referring to GTA, you're looking at a game (GTA:VC) that has sold millions of copies, and yet only had a couple of people claim that they were copying it. We'd be living in hell if there was true causality at work here.

3)The scientific community is not united on this matter, and this is not some media conspiracy to prevent people from finding out that violent games may cause violence. If anything, the reverse is true, because before Columbine it was quite easy to find one study saying the reverse for every study saying what he's quoted, yet it's become harder to find even pre-existing studies every day. Not to mention that a scientific study should prove it's hypothesis, and not many psychologists have been starting with the hypothesis that violence does not beget violence these days.

4) As he is a politician, the final line may disturb me the most: '-- the debate is over'. Sorry Mr. Lee, the debate is never over, and you should know that. You don't try to pass laws and declare the debate over, because the debate will have to continue in order to make sure your laws are not only effective at doing what you intend, but also are not stopping people from getting Constitutionally-protected material.

Furthermore, he says on one hand that the law will not just cover Mature and Adult Only material, but also some Teen material, yet states that it will be easy for retailers to determine what should be seperated from the rest. The wording that he quotes is so vague that you could find some E material to be covered, yet retailers are supposed to be able to do this easily...

The Comics Code

[SteevR]

Case and Point:

In Japan today, their comics (manga) are a multi-billion doallar industry. There are manga cookbooks, manga textbooks, all genres of entertainment and reference material; everything that in the US might be done as a movie or text (they have normal books etc. too).

In the US, comic books and graphic novels are marginalized in the mainstream. Many of the few profitable companies (those that make mainstream fare) left make all their money on merchandising, and have been run completely into the ground several times each. Why is this so?

In 1954, the Comics Code Authority was created as an "Industry Association" in response to congressional coercion. Check out their standards. This quashed much of the creativity present the in the mainstreaim industry, which was about 40 years old. Many of the true creative geniuses were forced underground for nearly a decade, and the mainstream companies that followed the code rotted from within.

In the mid-fifties, the manga industry essentially sprung from nowhere, blossoming into a huge industry over a decade. The average age for a consumer buying manga in Japan is just barely below the average age of the population there, whereas in the US the average age of the comic book consumer grows older by one year every year.

In Japan, their "industrial" complex for producing games is just as developed as that in the US. If creativity is stifled by lawmakers, it will cost the US Billions in lost revenue. If any country passes laws that restrict its entertainers or artists, it will cost that country a chance for the revenues or prestige generated by those creators.

I think the IGDA is more organized and is better capable (with benefit of hindsight) to combat these sons and daughters of those who created the Comic Code than the naive comic industry of the 1950s. I don't believe that there is any less general paranoia (Red Scare vs. Terrorist Scare, same thing) than then, and its got the populace running scared and not paying attention to their freedoms (why is it times like this that would-be censors always choose to strike?).

I encourage everyone to check out the link to the Comics Code. Its stipulations are eerily similar to many proposed restrictions on interactive software today, and as such its a very relevant piece of history.

A couple of things

[bigbigbison]

I know that someone here has already said, it but it bears repeating:
The reason this is different than ratings on films is that ratings on films, like ratings on videogmaes are volantary. There are no laws agains children seeing R rated films.

Secondly,

Leland Y. Yee - I have not personally played these games, however many of my staff members have. I have seen numerous footage pieces of these games, which clearly shows the need for such legislation.

I have said this many times, watching a clip of a videogame is like reading the script to a film. If you have not actually played the games, then you have very little idea what it is actually like to play them. If you have time to write a law, find a day to sit down and actually play the game. If you watch clips, surely you know that those are totally without context.