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California Passes Violent Games Bill
TecnaDigit writes "Today, after sitting on the bill for nearly a month and constant political pressure, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Bill 1179, the bill that would prohibit the sale and rentals of violent video games to minors. Again, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board and the Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA) are challenging the bill. According the the VSDA, the bill is faulty in that a game is decided whether or not it is 'violent' by juries, and different juries could have different opinions on what is defined as 'violent'." Commentary on GamerGod.
Let the parents decide what is too violent and what isn't and be done with the whole thing. If parents cared then we would not be in this whole entire mess.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Do we need legislation to set up ratings schemes? Once its rated, selling to minors is illegal already.
No matter how much law is enacted, they still won't be able to enforce the law with anything that approaches what people envision. Grandmothers and family members will still buy games and movies for kids when they shouldn't....
What a gigantic waste of time and money... pfft!
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
A man best known for starring in violent movies that mostly appeal to adolescents signs a bill prohibiting the sale of violent video games to adolescents.
Rob
Like, the parents perhaps...
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Indeed. Although we routinely use juries to decide matters of actual life or death, using them to judge video-game violence is beyond their competence...
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
I heard Schwarzenegger on the radio and he was saying that when he was an actor he felt that the ratings system kept kids from seeing violent content, and stating that games needed similar ratings.
Um? Hello? You mean like the ratings system they have now? The one that is more granular that the MPAA system? With movies I get a general "R" rating. WIth games I get a breakdown of what that "M" is for, similar to the TV ratings system.
So do the people who come up with this stuff simply not realize that there has been a game content rating system in place for YEARS now? If not, that's just woefully ignorant.
Parents don't want to watch every movie beforehand to see if it is suitable for their child, same goes for games. Rating is perfectly acceptable way to do it.
For that matter, why don't people challenge movie ratings? The juries that rate movies are generally quite fair, can the game rating people not be fair?
Does this bill only mention it being violent games that cannot be sold to minors? What about sexuality? If it doesn't mention sex - hooray! Finally a law that realizes that violence is worse than a normal human activity!
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Unfortunately this bill misses the mark.
I know numerous parents that buy their kids any video game they ask for, regardless if it shows sex, violence, etc. Better to do that than suffer the wrath of a pissed off pre-teen.
The abdication of parental responsibility in the last twenty years is astounding. But I'm part of the generation that spoils its kids but fortunately have no little curtain climbers.
If I did have kids they'd sure as hell play by my rules though.
I abhor overreaching government intrusion into these kinds of things, but the video game industry has had ample time to step up to the plate on this. This has been an issue for over five years at this point. The film and tobacco industries self-regulate to some degree in this regard. There's no reason video game companies couldn't have done the socially responsible thing and headed this kind of thing off. It still may not be too late, but when money-grubbing video game companies and their corporate parents carry on like they don't give a shit, then I find myself extremely unsympathic to reactions against this kind of legislation.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
It seems he may be unfit to be a politician.
If he did not want to sign this bill, then he should have not signed it, regardless of how much political pressure he was under. Freedom of expression for the Californian citizenry is far more important than him having to tolerate pressure from a few anti-violence extremists for a little while.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I notice that nobody is bitching about the busybodies in the California legislature who actually wrote this bill. This is just the latest in their endless campaign to make us all Better People. No soft drinks or junk food in schools, no "ethnic" team mascots or names, feng shui in the building code, requiring vending machines to sell health food, banning GMail ("we think it's an absolute invasion of privacy. It's like having a massive billboard in the middle of your home"). These are all recent bills they've considered. These people, mostly Democrats, have an absolute mania to micromanage our lives in this state, and we somehow keep electing these radical loons.
If you're not a slave, why should you care about slavery? Dangerous logic my friend.
Precisely! But some of you are clearly not experienced enough to know what the hell you're even talking about or how complicated that proposition gets.
I am a parent. I don't want society raising my children. In that regard, I don't want society shoving overtly violent or sexual imagery into my childrens' faces at every turn. I want to raise my child... not society and not corporate entertainment industries (that includes video game companies.) I want to make decisions about what imagery and content is appropriate for my child. I don't need advertisers, movies and video game companies deciding what's appropriate to put out there for my children.
So, when you say you don't think "society should raise your child," I agree.
And if you think video game companies are all about over-the-counter game sales, then you're fooling yourself. Look around. Violent video game imagery is gradually saturating our society and I don't care to be pummelled with that at every turn. Even now, I have to keep my kids away from the video games in most movie theater lobbies because some of them are ridiculously violent--more violent than some of the crap on the movies playing there. I have to carefully watch what games are demoed at Toys-R-Us. I have to keep a close eye on what my kid sees on the covers of the game boxes.
It's not all just parents monitoring what their kids are buying and playing. I wish that's all it was. That's the easy part. That's not what inspires this kind of legislation. If you think that's all this is about, then get outside more often. And stop griping at this strawman argument about inattentive parents you've propped up. That's not even the half of it.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Stragegy for video game profit:
1. Take any game you're developing, and add just enough sex/violence/drugs/etc. to make it onto the "banned" list.
2. Since any game on the "banned" list is immediately desirable to all teenagers, sales will skyrocket.
3. Profit!!