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.

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.

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.