Slashdot Mirror
How Your Game Voting Turned Out
Democrats, the war, and taxes are all just sidelines to the real issue: gaming. We talked about game-related political issues on Tuesday, and now Chris Kohler at Game|Life has the run-down on how the game voting turned out. From the article: "In short, anything that could have gone wrong, did, no matter what your political stripe. Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton, co-authors of the Family Entertainment Protection Act, return to what will likely be a Democrat-controlled Senate. Meanwhile, two of the only House seats that Republicans managed to hold on to will be filled by Cliff Stearns and Fred Upton, each author of his own pet anti-games bill. (Stearns is the guy who wants to make the ESRB play through every video game in its entirety before rating it.) What this means for all of us is more wasted taxpayer money, as the ESA eats legislation like this for breakfast and we'll be footing their legal bills."
Face it...video game violence is nothing but a hot-button "get me voted" issue much like abortion and gay marrage. Once in office, these politicians could care less.
Caffeine is my anti-drug!
Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
Couple things I'll say on the matter:
- I think issues such as the Iraq War etc. were probably more important to the voters than games. I may be a out-and-out nerd but I wouldn't vote solely in the interest of games.
- If I'm not mistaken, in Britain, it's ALREADY illegal to sell games like GTA to minors. Games likely to have violent content and that are rated by the BBFC, which is well-known and well-respected for setting the age limits for movies. However, such ratings don't harm sales and are often ignored - misjudgement often from parents, which goes to show that no amount of legislation can compensate for ignorance.
- But even this ignorance is not always crippling for kids, and GTA is not really that violent a game, to be honest. The violence in it is kinda cartoony - blood fountains and that, no intestines, no realistic death animations, characters are often revived by paramedics no matter how much you shoot them. Also, I don't know if it's just me, but the whole concept of being the criminal loses its appeal by the time you hit the 17 mark. As you can see, I did get GTA when I wasn't supposed to, but I never thought "I want to do this in real life", and a couple years ago, I lost interest in the whole criminal concept altogether. But very small children should certainly steer clear from it, and the blame should never be placed on the game when a minor uses it as a learning device.
Lastly, this is something I'm sure politicians can understand:
- IF YOU BAN SOMETHING, MORE PEOPLE WILL DO IT.
Maybe these politicians have no love for gaming or protecting gamers' rights, but there's no evidence that's there's going to be anything significant done to alienate gamers. When it's all said and done, nothing will be significantly different from when the Republicans were in control. Politicians are politicians, and despite party differences, both sides are exceptionally good at not getting anything done.
yes, but they still have a scape goat if something goes wrong. They'll still blame Bush. Heck, Bush will be blamed for American short-comings for probably 2 presidential terms after him.
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
Above someone said some Dems are treating Lieberman as a leper (kudos to CT for breaking replies today). That's actually a bit incorrect. Without Lieberman, the Dems don't have their majority. He's said he'll caucus with the Dems, but his "bipartisanship" (read: conservative leanings) usually causes him to cross the lines on important issues. So they're going to have to let him have his way or he can become a real pain and decide to side with Republicans on key issues. Even better, he's probably going to be the most powerful man in the Senate as with Cheney he'll be the tiebreaker on straight down party line votes.
With all due respect, a person's stance on gaming isn't generally what one should base their votes on.