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Illinois Senate OKs Violent Games Bill
The Illinois senate has approved the violent games bill proposed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The bill was also passed by the House, but the Senate stripped the possibility of jail time out of the wording before approving it. The House must now reconsider the bill before it can be passed into law. From the article: "The sponsor, Sen. Deanna Demuzio, denied the measure would interfere with free speech rights.'Video games are not art or media,' she said. 'They are simulations, not all that different from the simulations used by the U.S. military in preparation for war.' Apparently I have been misinformed as to what exactly I've been doing for the last twenty-odd years. Thank you, Illinois Senate, for correcting my error.
As someone who plays video games and has written war simulation software, let me say that the two are VERY different.
One is very obviously created for entertainment purposes. The other is very obviously NOT for entertainment purposes. In fact, it's pretty d@mn boring.
Of course, they do have one thing in common: I doubt either has ever been proven to make anyone more likely to commit a violent act. And I doubt either makes someone more effective at it.
ESRB is there to provide the OPTION to restrict the sale to ANYONE the store wants to. Many retail stores don't carry games "beyond" a certain rating. All this bill does, if I read it correctly, is create penalties for any store that sells games beyond a certain threshold (sexualy or violently, or both if you like it like that) to minors.
I understand some of the hooplah about this, but why is everyone so pissed that minors now have to get their parents to buy a Doom 3 or the next Leisure Suit Larry? Granted, I'm in my early 20's so take all this crap about parenting with a grain of salt, but I'm all for parents getting more involved with their children and what they do with their free time. I would MUCH rather force a parent (or, some might argue, older sibling or older friend but it's the same story with alcohol/tobacco) to buy this game for the child. They'll (hypothetically) be more interested in the game to see what their $50 just bought. If it's outside of their comfort zone as a parent, they can stop the child from playing it.
On a very high level, how is this different than restricting the sale of smoe of the more risque tatoo magazines, pornography, tobacco and alcohol to minors?
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
Serriously dude, don't even worry about it. Nothing like this will ever pass. It's just a diversion tactic like immigration. Something that politicians keep in their back pocket to pull out when other things are going poorly. There's no sense in even paying any attention at all to 85% of the bills which are attempted to be passed in this country. You'll probably be more sane if you just ignore untill it becomes a law and then let all hell break loose.
Why is everyone in such an uproar when such a simple and reasonable solution exists?
Because they're not taking the simple and reasonable solution. They seem to be ignoring the fact that there is a competent ratings board that has been rating games for about 15 years now and almost every single game out there has a rating on it. Instead, they have to make up their own rules. Washington had one (that fortunetely was struck down) that restricted games with violence against police officers, which would cover even some E-rated games (while excluding M-rated games with rape, amoung other things)making it a nightmare to work at a game store and figure out what you can and cannot sell, and not preventing kids from getting bad games anyways. Not to mention the cost to taxpayers to get it overtuned, which it probably will be. So that's why I'm not real fond of these kinds of laws.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
Mike Jacobs is a Democrat from my hometown. His father, Denny, was the one who was actually elected to the state senate (and has been for as long as I can remember). He retired earlier this year and the party (at his biding) gave his seat to his son. Anyway, a lot of Democrats in the area are pissed about this and there's a very good chance he'll have to fight a nasty primary when he actually runs for the seat he has. I'm not surprised that he'd vote for this - he'll probably stay with the herd on pretty much everything while he's still serving his father's term.
One other tangential point about this and Illinois politics - this bill is more than likely not a Democrat/Republican thing. Illinois is the only place I'm aware of that one party (D) fights amongst itself as much as it does.
As an inhabitant of Illinois, I would liketo apologize for the dim-witted actions of our political leaders as they not only condemn video games as a form of mind melting evil, but also strip away the title of art from them. I am from a family of computer programmers, and my father, brothers, and I have all made games and they are definitely art. To have our hard work insulted by our own officials is embarrassing. Again, I'm sorry for their numbskullery. And although I realise that the law itself is for all purposes not enforceable, they still make games in general the enemy, all in the name of "protecting our families". ugh.