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ESA Pushing for Gamers to Vote
Grooves writes "The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has announced the first voter registration drive aimed at gamers, called 'Play for Real: Gamer Voter Drive'. The drive is being managed by the ESA's Video Game Voters Network, an attempt at growing a grassroots community around the issue of games legislation. From the article, 'Lowenstein would like to boost these figures by convincing younger voters that their voice will have an influence over issues they care about, particularly efforts to create new laws restricting video games.'"
Well no wonder. I am 45 and can barely stand to vote for most politicians. Most elections in the last 14 years have been votes for the lesser of evils as I saw it. If I struggle to relate with them on any level, how much success is an 18 year old going to have.They haven't gained a sufficent level of cynicism at that age. Although God knows our society is trying to beat them down until they do.
The problem I see with this is that the only reason there is any movement for pushing gamers to vote is so the industry doesn't lose out with money. No one involved in this cares about the issue as much as it's threat to their pocketbook.
I am a member of the IGDA, a developer, and I don't want to see free speech be limited any more than the next person. But when the IGDA directors started spamming my inbox last year trying to rally folks to fight against legislation for limiting game sales to minors, it didn't matter if games actually were harmful to the psychology of adolescents, it was just a perceived threat of lower sales that drove them to action.
I can agree with saving our civil rights and our artform, but I can't agree with blindly following these decisions and encouraging others to fight for it solely based on profit.
Both major parties are anti-video gamer. The Democrats are actually even worse here on "morality" than the Republicans, but the bottom line is that neither party is a good vote on this issue.
If you want them to make a difference, have them en masse vote Libertarian at the local level. That's where most of the "decency" legislation is really passed and enforced.
I tried playing that game a couple of time before. I keep dying a few levels in.
There are two unlocked characters to play from the start, but they're virtually identical. There are other characters, but I've yet to be able to unlock any of them. And there is no way to switch characters between levels, which would've been nice.
The controls are sluggish; it seems to take forever to get anything done in the game. There appears to be a controller glitch because the characters often do not go in the direction you are pressing. The Jump and Fire buttons work sporadically, and sometimes switch for some reason. It seems the only thing you're really meant to do is turn the game on; the controls are that bad.
The graphics are really flashy, but the story-line is pretty shallow and cliched. It's not much fun at all.
My rating: 2/10
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
The left would ban it for both. See Tipper Gore.
Here's to the effort put into getting this age group to vote. It's been tried numerous times though. Rock the vote was the most recent. Voter turnouts continue to plummet and obviously something is not being done to change this.
Getting gamers to put their voice in their vote isn't guaranteed to work. There is a disconnect between youth and voting and the underlying issues aren't being addressed.
If you think the Gores, Clintons, or Liberman are on the left, you haven't learned what the real left is like. Kucinich, Feingold, Nader and others like them are on the left. Tipper and her ilk are just centrists posing as leftists.