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California Violent Gaming Bills Fail To Advance
Thanks to Reuters/Yahoo for its article discussing the failure to progress of two California violent videogame bills, since they "failed to clear a committee of California's state Assembly, killing them for 2004 unless the committee changes its mind." However, "One bill, which would expand the definition of 'harmful matter to children' to include certain types of violent games, received a favorable 5-1 vote, while the second, regulating how some games are displayed in stores, got a 3-1 vote" - but "both needed 7 votes in favor to be approved." Bill sponsor Leland Yee has released a statement claiming: "I am deeply disturbed that money ruled the day here in Sacramento... Rather than protecting our children and giving our parents a tool to help raise healthy kids, the multi-billion dollar entertainment industry was allowed to shoot down necessary legislation."
Seriously, some happy news amidst the general gloom these days...
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
How is this any different from other special interest groups? We see laws shot down by the movie industry, by the NRA, by Grandmothers Against Rubber Sheets, and no one says anything at all.
When the law concerns video games, however, it's "a tool to raise healthy kids" and "necessary legislation," and the media makes a big deal about the bill's failure to pass?
Heck, as far as I know, the video game industry wasn't even fighting the law. I haven't heard any stories about Nintendo and Microsoft sending lobbyists to the California legislature to tell people about the joys of gaming.
Seems a bit unfair to me...
Goo goo g'joob.
Concentrate more on promoting than on demoting. The real goal here is to find the juicy good stuff and let others read it. Do not promote personal agendas. Do not let your opinions factor in. Try to be impartial about this. Simply disagreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it down. Likewise, agreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it up. The goal here is to share ideas. To sift through the haystack and find needles. And to keep the children who like to spam Slashdot in check.
Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/19/00
"Retailers would have also been responsible for clearly displaying signs explaining the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) ratings system."
Aren't they pretty self-explanatory already?
"In fact, the video game industry's own representative admitted she would not allow her child to play the games that the legislation targeted." (Leland Yee)
That shows that a *parent* already is deciding what to let her kids play. Isn't it supposed to be the parent who has the power to decide? If so, then what useful purpose does the legislation serve? If the legislature is hoping that lazy parents will somehow be "empowered" by the legislation, I think they'll be disappointed by the results. Then again, I suppose they can continue to use parental laziness to justify further legislation.
Another Victory for us parents who want to raise our kids without endless regulations and laws. It is my job to make sure my son does not have access to games I think are not suitable for him, not the store. So far this has worked out quite well.
Well done legislators!!
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
Don't feel too bad. You can still try to pass off a law restricting access to other types of violent content, like movies or maybe books (remember all that stuff in the bible?).
I wonder if this kind of thing will stop happenning in a few years, when most voters will have grown up with videogames. Or do people lose all sense of freedom when becoming parents?
P.S. It's such a shame money ruled the day. Let's all work together to make sure it never happens again. If it were up to me, I'd just outlaw it outright.
But am I the only one who finds it funny - i.e.... his choise of words.. "...shot down..." when talking about violent video games...
Maybe if he didn't use such violent language, games wouldn't be violent, and we wouldn't want to try and shoot *him* down....
my opinion only...
... You can't even get a TOTAL of 7 votes! So much for our elected officials making their constituents opinions heard. C'mon boys, get off the golf course and get back into the office.
Do it doug.
This makes it more obvious than the entire move was just a political ad. Im afraid money has won moral today, vote for me anyway! yeah right
Ok muddy issues aside, if you are an actual conscerned parent heres a fact for you: The M rating is the equivalent of the R rating in movies and just like in movies There are a lot of titles that dont really desserve the rating and they are quite a few that actually desserve an stronger rating like A (Nc-18 X Adult only) rating (manhunt, gta3 in some cases , the suffering, doom 3) want to know which one is which? Easy! stick around and watch your kids playing! stablish as a rule that all games must be watched by the entire family (or at least by you), before you decide if is ok for them to play or buy. (if possible rent before you buy) problem solved! Read the manual, watch the game for at least half an hour, if after that theres something you find suspicious (the manual mentions hookers but you havent seen any) ask the store clerk they ussually know which games are really violent and which ones are not. EASY as that! You are the one who provides your kids money for buying games and therefore you are in charge of what they have, not CNN not the government YOU!
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
Rather than protecting our children and giving our parents a tool to help raise healthy kids, the multi-billion dollar entertainment industry was allowed to shoot down necessary legislation."
For someone to be able to use a tool, they must have the knowledge on how it works and what to do with it. Lots of stupid parents still buy their ten year old games like Vice City or Manhunt because the kids beg and the parents say "Ok". I highly doubt this 'tool' would be used effectively (if passed,) it would just make parents bitch that they have to go to a different part of the store to buy their children the 'cool' games.
Yes kids should not be allowed to play these kinds of games till they are mentally ready to. But laws will not prevent this! Parents will have to. Too may times I have seen parents buy games for their kids that the clerks would not sell them (never mind the question where a 12yr old gets $60us to buy the game) due to their age (store policy for most places I have visited lately).
And I have seen the manager answer the complaints when they return with this: "We sold the game to you, you gave it to your child."
Yes there is a need for responsibility in the industry to regulate itself, but parents need to do their job as well. And their job does include making sure their children's friends are not playing the wrong types of games when they visit (Parents and the community have to work together).
We are the future of humanity... be afraid, be very afraid...
I would disagree, as a parent of 3 young ones and the owner of serveral computers in a at my house, it bothers me not to have my children play togther any video game, violent or not, my children seem to understand that Video games are pure fiction but i am constantly asked by them if what they see on TV and movies is real.
This is why i try to steer my children, who get nightmares from scary movies but have no discernable ill effects (violent behavior, nightmares, etc...) from blowing each other's butts off in UT2004, away from violent or horrific TV shows and movies.
Just the other day we were playing some UT2004 and I had blown up my son (age 7) with the redeemer on the ons-torlan map as he sat atop the middle structure waiting for that very same gun (which i had snagged moments earlier) to respawn, my daughter (age 8) started laughing because I had "blown his butt off" and my son gave me one of those looks akin to "thanks a lot dad!".
But yet this same little girl runs from the room as soon as she hears the warning music change (that typically signifies something scary or malicious about to happen) in a scary movie.
Side note, same child also loves to play GTA3 and I let her, as I watch her play i realize she wasnt at all interested in the role play laid out for most players (advance through the ranks as a mobster) but instead prefered to drive around the town in a taxi or fire engine helping people...
I didn't say it was the truth, just that it's the way most folks would probably see it. ;)
:)
I don't have kids myself and don't remember things well enough from that age to speak from my own experience, so I'll trust you.
Fucking astute comment sir.. summed up nicely, and the second point is so blatantly obvious i hadnt noticed it myself..
thanks dude, you made me think some
bah!*@%!
In the government offices there's high ranking officials blasting pedestriands and running them over in long GTA3 marathons... No wonder they don't want the bills passing...
This is a huge accomplishment for the industry. Having been able to defeat a piece of worthless legislation, IMO, gives the industry more credibility and respectability in the eyes of the beholder. Leland Yee came across to me as a sore loser who's acting as if he himself is not beholden to special interests. Sure, Leland, I think that this moron needs a woman, no matter how expensive she is.
Also, I believe that the defeat of these bills will also doom Rep. Joe Baca(D-CA)'s bill that's going to be languishing in Congress for the next several years anyway. Think about it this way: If you were a Congressman, and your own home state defeats a bill that is similiar in content to your bill that's still sitting in a House committee (and will continue to), not only would your bill lose credibility, but you too would lose credibility, as well, as it makes you look foolish for filing a bill that's similiar to one that was defeated in your own home state.
BearDogg-X
So that this is on-topic, I think that the re-defining bill sounds bad, but the bill forcing stores to segragate games by rating and putting up a sign about the ratings (which the industry recommends they do anyway) is not bad. Maybe not a Good Thing, but it's something they probably ought to do on their own. Okay, now to respond. :-)
Knowling a lot about psychology, I will disagree with you. Actually, my wife studied Psychology in school, and I read her books and talk with her about conference papers and the kids she works with. Understanding fiction is not enough, and there are other factors.
I love games, I play games, I develop software tools for games. But I restrict my 4-year-old to Putt-Putt and the PBSKids website, and I turn off the TV or monitor & sound if I'm playing something violent and she walks in the room. I don't turn it off when the 10-year-old walks in, but I do stop playing.
I agree that being able to decide if it's real or not is very important. A 4-year-old, who thinks that My Little Pony cartoons are just as real as horses at the ranch, really has no business even watching a minute of realistically violent games. It would be immoral to let a 4-year-old play violent games. I think everybody here agrees with that.
However, it is NOT> just a perception problem in the case of the woman above who thinks violent games have a bigger impact to everyone (not just the 4-year-old) than violent movies; that is something that research is actually consistantly showing. Current research, (for example, look up Anderson & Dill, "Video games and agressive thoughts, feelings, and behavior in the laboratory and in life", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) has been showing a stronger reaction than movies and TV between games and hostility. If aggressive movies have an affect on you, an aggressive game has a bigger affect. For me, the bunch of articles I was shown is as good as proof.
Just understanding the difference between reality and fiction isn't enough for kids and teens. In some research from the 1960's where kids and tweens watched an adult beat up a 'bobo the clown' doll. The kids would see one of three endings: adult was praised by others for violence, adult was punished by others, adult saw no consequences. Those who saw the reward for violence would often agressivly harm the doll when asked how to treat it, even more than the adult did. Those who saw nothing would repeat the behavior, those who saw a punishment were least aggressive generally. It didn't matter that THE KIDS WERE OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW REALITY AND FICTION, THEY STILL MODELED AND AMPLIFIED THE BEHAVIOR THEY SAW, increasing it if the behavior was rewarded, or decreasing it if punished.
Moving on...
Discarding the reality/fiction argument, actually playing games means you are more likely to encode the actions of the game, good or bad. If there is reinforcement for encoding more stuff, you are more likely to learn it.
A good example of encoding: without looking at US coins (which you probably have seen thousands of times) what direction does Lincoln face on the cent? Jefferson on the nickel? Where do the phrases "IN GOD WE TRUST", "LIBERTY", "THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" and the date show up? Where to the mint marks appear? You probably don't know, because there was no reason to pay attention to it.
In media generally, and to a greater extent in games, we need to endoce more details. Coins have only a few words, and counterfeit coins could land you in jail, but you don't bother to learn the details. A 2-hour movie has thousands of words and images
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Ok, first off, I am also studying Psychology. I have also spent most of my life playing videogames and have also read the article you mentioned above. In fact, it was part of my literature review for one of my reports. It's one of the easiest to find reports around, but it is also very old.
Let's break it down, they lock people in cubicles and tell them to play Wolfenstein, Myst and a Tetris clone (Tetrix) in 15 minute intervals. Just comparing the games shows that the study is seriously flawed. Playing Myst (a VERY sedate game) in a 15 minute interval will not allow you to get far enough in the game to experience any real amount of frustration or excitement. Of course if they had gotten to the base 5 puzzle, they may very well have gotten extremely frustrated. Tetris (Tetrix) also starts off fairly slowly, and many if not all (depending on player skill) of those 15 minutes will be spent in the low speed levels. In Wolfenstein, it is almost IMMMEDIATELY possible to die (lose), and the gameplay is in a competitive manner (ie it feels like it is you against the computer or enemies). This has an effect when you are told that the purpose of the experiment is to examine your skill development in the game.
Then let's move on to what they consider "aggressiveness". The participants are asked to send off a blast of white noise at their OPPONENT if they win by pressing keys faster than their opponent. The Wolfenstein and Tetrix players will be more likely to win this, because their games involve quicker reaction time. Besides this, Wolfenstein is the ONLY game that feels competitive. They should have included another game where it feels that you are playing against an opponent (even a computer one). Even something simple such as say Pong would have been better.
It seems pretty clear to me that playing a game that is designed to be more immediately exciting, with a competitive element and a quick win/lose condition, when you are told that you are being measured for your skill (what skill would they measure in Myst?) would leave you more excited after 15 minutes of play than the Tetrix or Myst. Also, Wolfenstein is much more complex in terms of controls and perhaps more inherently frustrating to play. OF COURSE this tends to result in more aggressive immediate behaviour.
But does it lead to the person becoming more fundamentally aggressive? Games are being played by more people, while becoming more "realistic". There are more titles rated as being violent every year. There are people (like me) now who have grown up on videogames. The violent crime rate has been steadily dropping every year in both Canada and the United States. Now, the violent crime rate is affected by more than videogames, but that is exactly my point. Videogames just don't have that big of an effect unless it is on someone who would probably have the same problem with other violent media.
I am also studying psychology and I probably have read more recent texts and studies than you have. And I admit that I do not work in a professional capacity with kids. But I have many young cousins with a fairly large age range, and they have grown up playing more violent games (more games in general) at an earlier age than I did. They don't cause more trouble than I did. All the boys but one get into fewer fights than I did at their age, and the one that does get into more fights plays the least videogames (he is more into physical activities) and he has changed his behaviour in the last 2 years.
I'm not saying that videogames don't have an effect, it just isn't as large an effect as other socio-economic factors. You only have to look at the difference in the Canadian and US violent crime rates (we watch/play the same media you do, and our film ratings are more lenient that American ones, btw Canada's population is MORE urbanized than the US per capita, to remove a common misconception). Of course, my argument was that videogame violence isn't necessarily more harmful than TV violence, and I think this is better brought out by
"But I trust in the people's capacity for reflection, rage and rebellion." -Oscar Olivera
You realize that the gun laws in the peoples republic of California are almost as restrictive as In Great Britain.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed