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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..."
Seems to me video games should not be regulated any more than movies or music. If children playing mature video games is a problem then it is their parents' problem not the government's.
Wonderful point there...
Any time I hear "it's for the children," "the elderly," "less fortunate," "disabled," or some other emotional plea for support of some legislation, I always think:
This legislation must be pretty bad if it can't support itself without blind emotional pleas...
RW
I don't understand why people who's kids buy games they don't approve of don't just stop giving their kids $50 and letting them go to the video game store unsupervised.
Instead of making sure that all potential crime victims are unarmed and thus unable to resist, perhaps we should punish those who commit ACTUAL crimes (you know, things which violate the rights of another human being).
A law abiding citizen carrying a concealed (or not) firearm violates nobody's rights.
RW
The industry does not need to be "policed". Parents need to be policed. Can't parents in Illinois control their kids?
Damn whiny dems.
I have 10 bucks that says this crap actually passes and wastes our precious $ on its way to the Supreme Court, which of course, will over turn it.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Illinois Congress, meet Foresight.
You can get japanese H games in the US legally, though not at any retailers that I know of. There are cute little animal games where your cute little animal takes cute little turds, but not on anybody. There is a webgame version of Puyo Puyo where your special attack is throwing up on your opponent. There were a few games in the 80's where birds would poo on you, though those weren't very good games. There's the 7 sins, where the point is to try to have sex with as many people as possible. There is, of course a PS2 version.
There are a lot of bad games out there. But then, there are millions of games out there. By the same token, I don't have anything morally against making parents come in and buy games for their kids if they want them to have them. I've known far too many people in the retail sector who have told kids no, and been yelled at by the parent for stopping their kid from buying, say, Manslaughter. Inevitably, the parent then comes back the following day and freaks out on the poor underpaid associate for selling such filth to their kid.
I think the generation which preceeded ours has certain expectations about cartoons and videogames which ours does not. To them, more mature cartoons or videogames is like Jack Daniels flavored breastmilk. Or black leather studded diapers. In exactly the same way that movies were seen as kid's stuff at the turn of the century, so too is videogames the realm of kids. And therefore anything that gets released in a videogame is marketed at kids, and all of that stuff that you see in videogames is people trying to mess up your children.
It's a different perspective. While I don't disagree with the idea of restricting the sale of certain videogames to minors, I do disagree with the perspective.
The ______ Agenda
The funniest thing is they say "they make a lot of money selling to your kids." Immediately I picture parents totally unaware of what their kids are doing. And secondly, it wasn't until I got a job in high school that I could afford them. So who is REALLY buying these games, is it really the kids or ignorant, lazy parents?
No sig for you!!
As someone who lives in Illinois and has had to deal with such things before, this is yet another example of people wanting the government to parent their children for them. People do crazy things, that's a given. And having played my fair share of violent games, I can say I'm pretty well desensitized to CARTOON-esque violence (actual blood still makes me squirm a bit). That isn't to say that is a bad thing and I'm sure my parents don't think so. Hell, my dad got me a copy of Wolfenstein way back in the day (and I only hope I can do the same, or at least similar, for my kids someday).
But I seem to have digressed slightly. If parents have a problem with something, then they should police their own kids; they don't need to force their beliefs on the general public.
Lets see, Video Games are less violent then the evening news (where once in a while you can see mutilated bodies). 10th grade world history class (where they often have a unit showing the results of the Natzi concentration camps in detail... yah know the liberation video tapes). They are as graphic, though not as realistic, as many movies. Oh and they have the best content classification system in the world, as admited by groups against video games. So why are Video Games being singled out? I call it the Comic Book effect. And god forbid the parents take five secconds to look at the big lable that classifies the sugested age and content.
"off the street" is code for "away from the nigras"
Ive said it before and I'm sure i will be saying it again .
,I am willing to place a hefty wager that it was not computer games that made them angry and violent
Witch hunt
This is nothing more than a simple ploy by some politicians to push ahead on the morals front
If you don't want your children to play these games then please do so parenting and don't let everyone else suffer from increasingly restrictive laws due to your moral sence of misplaced duty.
Most of us here played games as violent as these when we were kids , The graphics may not have been as good , though kids have great imaginations. I turned out OK,
Most of the other people here turned out OK.
Violent games don't make violent people
go to a maximum security prison and asked some of the inmates about their childhood
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
"It's an industry that needs help being policed..."
Enron needed to be policed. Spam needs to be policed. Telemarketers need to be policed. Any industry that relies on fraud, embezzlement or harassment to turn a profit needs to be policed. And, as the video game industry does not (yet) fall into any of these categories...
Oh, and one more industry should be policed: politics. If the state legislators in Springfield have this much free time on their hands, perhaps its time to shorten the length of the legislative session in Illinois.
I want all cartoons to be rated R until otherwise certified to be lower. Don't be ridiculous.
But that's not ridiculous - it's how things ARE! Mainstream cinemas won't touch unrated movies; movies that want to be marketable to kids have to be certified to deserve a suitably low rating!
If you start from the opposite premise, and assume that all unrated cartoons are suitable for children... well, let's just say I sure hope you don't mind getting home one day and finding your nine-year-old son watching tentacle rape scenes on Cartoon Network.
Why should games be any different? Why should we NOT assume that games are unsuitable for children unless they have actually been checked and found suitable?
Also worth noting for its oddity value, there are exactly 18 games intended only for people over 18.
The reason that congreess people are so up-in-arms about this is because there are 3 sides to this issue. Pro regulation: You think that video game violence is dispicable and the sexual content is deplorable, even though you've never played a video game nor have you ever seen any of this content you're so enraged at. Anti regulation: You think that the industry is doing a good job of regulating itself. You play games and if you have children, you monitor what they play and consider the ESRB ratings before making any purchase. Apathetic: They're just games... who cares?
What makes lawmakers so fervent about this is that the type of people who are for regulation call them and write them constantly to make sure it happens. People who are anti-regulation write reactionary articles and either post them online or send them to the lawmakers, but since the lawmaker doesn't want to look like a "flip flopper," they refuse to change their stance. And the vast majority of people are apathetic on the subject, so even though they really aren't calling for regulation, nobody notices because they're not saying anything at all.
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I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
Nothing to see here folks! This is just Illinois politics. The governor has been a profound disappointment here and is now scrambling for easy targets to win reelection. They all know this law won't stand constitutional muster.
This is just a waste of taxpayer money.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
The argument over this law being constitutional (which it isn't) notwithstanding, here are my two cents:
It's stupid to try to legislate the games you can sell and who you can sell them two. I think movies are far worse offenders, often featuring far more violence and language than most computer games. I'm seventeen, and I've never once been carded when I've bought movies. Even when I bought a spectacularly profane, violent and drug-filled double feature: Reservoir Dogs and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Where's the outrage of politicians when kids buy violent movies? IMHO: The government can not legislate things that parents need to do.
This sig is false.
If I'm 17, and want to play the next FPS, I'll download it off the internet instead. Warez 4 Pirates.
God spoke to me.
I think there is a more imminent danger that is being marketed directly at our children than the intangible fantacy that is a video game. maybe we sould be spending our time stopping the tobacco companies from selling their very REAL death to our children. If you take away video games, our children are left with shitty TV, Cigarettes, internet porn and homework. governmental bodies need to stop waisting time chasing the boogey man and get after the serial killers.
-Boycot shampoo! demand real poo!