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Game Industry Derided For Mature Content
Steve Rock writes "To the surprise of no one, game manufacturers and resellers were again
taken
to task over the production and sales of games containing violent or
sexual themes. According to the National Institute on Media and
the Family's Ninth
Annual Mediawise Video Game Report Card even games with beneficial
or neutral content can be harmful to children because of the connection
between gameplay and our obesity epidemic. Interestingly, out of
fifty
surveys mailed out by the Institute to retailers and producers only
two were completed and returned. The industry was given a passing
grade for the ESRB rating system but the actual enforcement of the
system by the retailers was not -- it is worth noting, however, that
the Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association has stated that self-regulation
procedures were scheduled to be implemented by December 2004 and therefore
tests of retailer compliance to ESRB ratings was premature."
Yeah, I think that young kids (pre-teen, at least) should be protected from GTA's brand of somewhat mind warping shiat, but this group clearly has no idea what they're talking about, because of the above and because the kind of group who releases this kind of ranking is clearly never going to actually play the games in question, and is just going on knee-jerk press response. Same goes for their listing Hitman, or Manhunt; these things actually are harmful to children. I think kids can handle playing the bad guy, even without heavy moralizing or justification, but not on such an extreme scale as most violent video games.
But I think Doom, Half-Life, Halo and the like are perfectly fine, for a kid. If it scares them, they won't play it. If it doesn't, the fantasy provided is the kind lived out daily by tens of millions of kids, all over the world. The lone hero against the alien/demon onslaught stuff playtime is built on. Despite what the progressive immasculation of our society, and worst of all the pussification of our children would suggest, this kind of fantasy, violent though it may be, is inherently healthy. Girls play Mommy, boys play Commando, though I'm all for eliminating traditional gender roles; my point is: boys, at least, need violent fantasy - it's biologically programmed, and trying to unnaturally suppress it causes the kind of desperate overcompensation which causes people to vote for George W. Bush (flame on!). Yeah, playing these videogames instead of getting a few buddies and making a heroic last defense of the junglegym against the Intergalactic Martian Horde is antisocial, unhealthy and degrades the imagination, but the same goes for Disney Presents Mickey and Pooh's Homoerotic Adventure.
Not that any of this shiat matters. Good parents already know and are taking action, bad parent's aren't and won't. And the government won't act on it, in fear of the great Cheeto Insurrection that would surely follow. This shiat does nothing except let some bible-farking, holier-than-thou adulterers, coveters and liars feel self-righteous (not that they need any help with that).
You want to see extreme violence. There are websites all over the Internet of the American prisoner getting his head severed by Iraq terrorists while held down and screaming in tears.
Yeah, let me tell you... those terrorists were influenced by Gran Theft Auto and Mortal Kombat. If they grew up with Tetris, they would have been good people. These rating systems are a joke. Stop blaming video games for the White house's fault.
oh good effing lord.
grow a pair of cherries assmunch, you've got to be funcing kidding me. you're big fears have been around for thousands and thousands of years, and yet we managed to fucking survive and thrive as a species.
you act like violence to children is a new 21st century invention - its not, there have been sick fuckers for thousands of years, and we've survived. children have survived.
... hi bingo
You have no idea what you are talking about. This statement is no less bigoted (and ignorant) than "All blacks are lazy." or "All Jews are greedy."
So tell me, how do you get the bloodstains out of your pillowcase?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.