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

Not really..

[JavaLord]

. 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."

Is this really any different from rating movies and not letting 18 and unders into R rated movies? Video games should be the same way, stores and parents should be monitoring what the kids are doing. If this does pass, I think we will see more games released both with and without blood included.

Re:Not really..

[andrew_dupont]

Is this really any different from rating movies and not letting 18 and unders into R rated movies?

Yes; it's completely different. The MPAA ratings are policed by the theaters themselves; there's no law that says a theater can't sell a 4-year-old a ticket to an R-rated movie. The ratings were put in place several decades ago under pressure from Congress, yes, but the movie industry got out of having this stuff legislated by agreeing to play ball.

The idea behind an industry rating system, as opposed to a government rating system, is that it puts the ratings in the hands of those most qualified to make them. The system in place with video games right now is most comparable to movie ratings. The problem, it seems, is that many game retailers aren't playing ball. According to Yee, a vast majority of underaged participants in an FCC undercover study were able to buy M-rated games without their parents.

What Yee is proposing is basically throwing out the ESRB rating system and using his more stringent guidelines to decide which games are unsuitable for children. He leaves the door wide open for "T"-rated games to be unavailable for purchase to those under 18.

Is this wrong? Yes. But so is being able to buy Vice City if you're 13 years old. It's not just stupid parents -- it's game retailers as well. Until they stop selling violent video games to unaccompanied children, we haven't got much ground to stand on.

Speaking of Bill...

[GridPoint]

Perhaps they should be considering banning another violent game as well?

Only one objection here.

[a whoabot]

Mr. Lee didn't really convince me on his point of why the parental control isn't enough. He says "Unlike movies, in which parents can easily determine whether it is suitable for their child, many of these games must be mastered before the interaction begins at the most violent levels." I don't see any basis for that. Video games are definitely as easy to indentify as violent as a movie. If the graphic content on the back of the package, the ESRB rating, and the hours of grisly sounds and images emanating from the living room aren't enough to allow determination then either is what's offered by movies for determination.

I think that's an important aspect because parents buy kids the games anyway. I bet that's the most common way kids get their games: from someone else buying them for them, but I could be wrong.

I guess it's not really a big deal in the grander scheme of things, just possibly a waste of money and time and effort.

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...

It Pains Me...

[LordYUK]

Everytime I hear someone try to pin violence onto video games. Whats more bloody, watching the nightly news or pretend killing nazi's in Wolfenstein?

As a parent, its your responsibility to watch what little Billy is doing, and if you cant, to teach little Billy that killing is wrong.

If little Billy goes out and gets a gun and shoots people, its either cause he's messed up in the head, or you failed as a parent, not because the guy in Doom did it.

Heck, if you arent intelligent enough to seperate reality from fantasy (reality, killing bad... fantasy, killing acceptable) than you have deeper issues anyway.

M rating OK, but who provides the rating?

[Slider451]

The idea of rating games M for mature, and denying access to those under 17 is acceptable. But who provides the ratings? If it's not an independent, objective group, the rating will mean little. Game makers will not willingly give up a large chunk of their customer base for violent games: teenage boys.

Movie ratings provide parents a consistent measuring stick to enable them to make informed decisions for their kids. Parents can accompany their kids to R-rated movies if they wish. Likewise, parents can buy M-rated games for their kids, nomatter what laws are enacted.

The challenge will be in making the rating consistent and trustworthy enough for parents to depend on without having to research each title extensively before buying.

D&D All Over Again

[BeProf]

This is just the D&D Panic of the mid-80's all over again.

When are people going to realize that if you go out and shoot up your school after playing some FPS, that there was probably somethine wrong with you to begin with?

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.