Illinois Videogame Law Moves Forward

The ongoing trend of legislating the sale of video games moves forward. Gamasutra has news on the Illinois law currently moving through the legislature, which apparently has "overwhelming support". From the Illinois debate: "An industry that is making so much money selling these things to your children is dealing with things like decapitation, defecation on people. There's vivid pictures of nudity. It's an industry that needs help being policed..."

Comments

Re:Here's my suggestion

[QuantumG]

Maybe you should actually read what I wrote before replying. I said, games which are rated for children should be available. Games that are not rated (at all) should also be available -- to people over the age of 18. Parents are obviously free to allow their children to play any game they see fit -- even if it is unrated -- but children cannot buy these games.

I think that's simple and straight forward, but your government (and mine even more so) do not understand that because they think of games as being solely for children. Here in Australia we don't even have an 18+ rating for games. We also don't allow unrated games on the shelves. The result is that the vast majority of people who play games (which, as I said, is mostly over the age of 18) are saddled with kiddie junk. The few companies that actually try to make games for adults have their games effectively banned from my country (as they are refused a classification and unrated games are banned from the shelves). So think yourself lucky that you have any adult rated games there at all.

Re:Here's my suggestion

[bmorton]

The parent didn't say that people under 18 didn't play games. The parent states that survey's have shown that the vast majority of gamers are adults.

The parent also didn't say that games should be banned for people under 18. The idea is that if a company wants people under 18 to be able to play the game, they have to submit it for review.

Review boards wouldn't be necessary for most games, as they are obviously targetted to adults and could go straight to the stores with a rating of 18+. If a game is meant for a younger audience (or for all ages), it can be submitted and reviewed and then deemed appropriate. This also has the effet of stopping violent games from "slipping thru the cracks."

Seems pretty reasonable to me

-B

Re:Patheitc

[HeavyK]

Go to this website: http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/default.asp Then on the left hand corner of the screen is a thing called "Search by Number". In the blank space right below it type "HB4023" without the quotes. Then in the top left hand corner click "Full Text". Sorry i couldn't find a direct link that could work.

Re:Parents can't distribute either?

[servognome]

Doesn't affect parents. From the Bill:
Sec. 12A-20. Affirmative defenses. In any prosecution
21 arising under this Article, it is an affirmative defense:
22 (1) that the defendant was a family member of the minor for
23 whom the game was purchased. "Family member" for the purpose of
24 this Section, includes a parent, sibling, grandparent, aunt,
25 uncle, or first cousin;
Of course the definition of "Violence" is way too vague... I guess Madden or any boxing game is "Mature" game because it allows serious physical harm to another human being
30 (e) "Violent" video games include depictions of or
31 simulations of human-on-human violence in which the player
32 kills, seriously injures, or otherwise causes serious physical
33 harm to another human, including but not limited to depictions
1 of death, dismemberment, amputation, decapitation, maiming,
2 disfigurement, mutilation of body parts, or rape.

Re:Here's my suggestion

[Eivind]

There's a problem with this, and this problem is obvious in countries that have such a law, for example Germany.

The problem is that in practice, any certification costs money. This means that any game developed by nonprofits in general will not be certified. It would be a lot of work, and quite likely costly, for a OSS developer to ensure that his game was certified according to each of dozens of different classification-boards.

And if you think large groups of countries will agree on one common standard, one common certification board, you're dreaming. That's not the case for movies and wouldn't be the case for games.

Practical upshot ? You can't legally sell a Linux-distro to a minor in Germany. In practice it's done all the time, because the law gets ignored for things which aren't mainly games, and which are obviously not very objectionable anyway.

But in principle, you'll have to strip ALL games (including solitaire, mahjong, minesweeper and tuxracer) from a Linux-distro, or jump trough expensive and time-consuming hoops if you want to legally sell your linux-distro to minors in Germany.

17 year-old linux-users aren't exactly *that* rare.