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The Video Game Industry Goes Political
An anonymous reader writes "The video game industry is finally forming a PAC by the end of March to get some political clout. A story in The New York Times yesterday reports that the video game industry has finally woken up and realized that in order to stay strong going forward, it can't rely on 13-year-old pimple-faced kids to promote its agenda."
10: SIN 20: GOTO HELL
Notice Hillary Clinton's nomination in New Hampshire? She's been an anti-video-game crusader from day one. The timing of this move may not be coincidental.
Yes, because bribing politicians for hand-picked regulations instead of making competitive products is always better... or what?
Game companies doesn't necessarily want to create more games, they want money. If they can get that by forcing people to pay more for less by limiting competition in the field, then forming an alliance like this is a good way to do it.
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That the way it should be. However, more time and money is spent trying to ban games completely, edit content or hold game manufacturers responsible for society's ills. None of these lawmakers, parents and other "concerned" groups direct their attention towards the parents of those whose criminal actions have brought so much negative attention to the gaming community over the past several years.
From what I've seen there's a lot of push to have a legislated ratings system that's legally enforced (Hillary and Lieberman endorsed a measure to ban the selling of M rated games to minors). There have been a few single cases where people proposed complete bans of games. Chuck Schumer of NY, there have been a few other cases of trying to ban games that in any way glorify the killing of police officers, similar to the Body Count/Cop Killer case of the early 90s. These aren't going to succeed pretty clearly on the basis of the first amendment, as illustrated by the Body Count case -- in fact that never even reached the courts as it was voluntarily pulled from shelves by many retailers.
Anyway, I don't think the case for banning/editing/etc games is as strong as you say -- it's more that many parents and legislators are waking up to the fact that games aren't ms pac man and galaga anymore.
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
Understand that I'm for restricting companies from funding campaigns, but i wouldn't restrict any private personal donations.
A CEO is going to be more then happy to throw the COMPANY'S money under the rugs to popular candidates, i don't see any CEO doing it with their personal funds.
Companies don't have the right to vote, yet they can donate?
The US doesn't allow non US Citizens to donate, yet they let companies do so?
I hate to be so cynical, but a large company doesn't care about whats good for the country, only whats good for its bottom line, as such, they donate expecting political favors for their "donations"
Still, its not easy to draw the line in where money for elections can come from. The government can't be expected to sponsor startup parties/candidates
There also the fact that as long as the funds are spent on political education/advertising, more money to publish more information about what a party stands for is a good thing. Its just when money comes attached with strings, that things get awry.
A point of interest I'll point out, is that in my country New Zealand, we recently passed the Electoral Finance Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_Finance_Act which basically puts limits on anonymous donations, and how much can be spent by both companies and individuals political advertising without registering.
I'm considering the controversial act a work in progress, but a decisive step forwards... perhaps one day it'll spread to other countries, especially America...
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