How Violent Media And Game Censorship Interact

Socrates writes "GamerDad has an article up called 'The Media War', a feature discussing videogames in the context of violent media and the well-meaning groups who try to censor it. 'The war against violent media is not new. Learn the history of media controversy, and take a sobering look at what's in store for gamers down the road.' The piece includes quotes from Douglas Lowenstein of the ESA and IGDA spokesman Jason Della Rocca."

Comments

Must be a slow day.

[Alkaiser]

Anyone who actually reads the article will discover...it's a reprint of something from November 2003. Whoopty-freaking doo.

Re:Huh?

[PainKilleR-CE]

The IDSA/ESA founded the ESRB, which controls the rating of games.

Ratings, when actively enforced (or when retailers decide not to carry something with a given rating) can influence content through self-censorship, simply because developers will try to get a lower rating to gain more sales.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your view of the matter), many of the best-selling games in recent years have been M-rated games, so it's unlikely that we'll see much self-censorship (or publisher-enforced censorship) as a result of the ratings any time soon.

Of course, the article actually discussed some of the effects of ratings by examples of the movie, music, and comic book industries...