The War Against Virtual Beer Pong

Michelle Shildkret, 360i on behalf of TIME.com writes "JV Games was all set to release 'Beer Pong' for the Nintendo Wii when parents and lawmakers got a whiff, forcibly renaming the game to Pong Toss and filling its pixelated cups with water instead. But the game is still rated 'T' for teen, and anybody who encounters it will be able to draw clear conclusions as to its intended purpose (drink and get drunk)." Lesson: Don't play games that simulate drinking before you play games that simulate driving, or larceny.

Comments

Drunken Aim

[camperdave]

Lesson: Don't play games that simulate drinking before you play games that simulate driving, or larceny.

... or shooting at politicians. After all, you might miss.

Re:Beer Pong Video Game

[nawcom]

I can't wait until they come out with the wii game where you play a drinking game where you drink if your character in the game your character is playing for drinks....erm.

Hypocricy

[Aardpig]

The US has some of the most stringent laws amongst western nations for limiting alcohol access to young adults. You can be taxed, vote, fuck and die for your country, but you can't drink beer until you're 21. Yet, amongst its peers, it ranks close to the top in terms of alcohol abuse and related activities like drink driving.

Similar hypocricy abounds in other spheres of life. The 'most free' nation in the developed world, yet a higher fraction of its population imprisoned than anywhere else. Abstinence only, but the highest rates of teenage pregnancy.

All of these are symptomatic of the US's prohibitionist approach to life -- a trait that can be traced all the way back to the pilgrims, who fled England not to be free from religious persecution, but so that they could themselves persecute without interference.

Re:Hypocricy

[timmarhy]

it's definately a crime to think some kid could die in iraq without ever having had a beer.

Re:Hypocricy

[Anonymous Coward]

IAASMUT - I Am A Service Member Under Twenty-one - and I'm tired of hearing this argument. You can, in fact, drink if you're risking your life for your country. When in non-forward-deployed, non-CONUS locations, the legal drinking age is 18. Yes, you heard it right, when under-21 service members are deployed, risking their lives for their country, they are allowed to drink in their downtime.

There ARE restrictions - usually a ration card that allows you three alcoholic beverages a day, and obviously no drinking when you're forward deployed (read: taking fire!)

So all of you 18 year old pricks who whine about not being able to drink but being able to die for your country, well, join up and drink up.

Re:Hypocricy

[leereyno]

This is precisely why I've never had any respect whatsoever for the law. Now I'm no criminal, I try harder than many to avoid doing things that are wrong. However, if the only argument against something is that it is illegal then I don't consider that to be an argument at all. The tyranny of the majority not a moral principle. It is simply one of the inherent flaws of democratic rule.

What gets me the most is how people my age (35) and a little older will almost have a conniption about their kids doing the very same things that they (and I) did when we were that age. I drank, sometimes to excess but not often. I had sex, as did most of my peers. I didn't mess with drugs but I knew many who did. This is what is known as High School.

Very few of the things I did at that age were wrong, though many were forbidden because of my age. But I'll be damned if I'm going to apologize for any of it. I responded with puzzlement to the bizarre histrionics that older people would emote over the things I and others my age did. If it was ok for them to do it, then as far as I was concerned it was ok for me too. I stand by that to this very day. For the longest time I believed that the antics of the older generations were a put on, an act, a contrivance of melodrama and theatrics intended to fool me and others of that age into believing absurdities through which we could be controlled. In other words, a scam, a con. I didn't believe that the adults in my life actually believed the things they were saying, because grown people couldn't possibly be that stupid...or so I though. As I've grown older I've come to realize that yes, people can be that stupid, a life-long ailment for which there is no cure.

I honestly think that most people simply don't remember their teenage years in sufficient detail to understand what it means to be a teenager. They claim to understand, but their actions and attitudes speak otherwise.

Today the things I endured in high school are now being perpetrated upon college students, who by any sane definition are supposed to be adults. Colleges and Universities are there to provide an education to their students, not to act in loco parentis. If someone isn't grown by the time they reach college, then it means their parents didn't do their job. It doesn't mean that the university should be stuck picking up the slack.

It is sad and sick that grown men and women would be so fearful that their adult (or nearly adult) children might drink beer that they would launch a grass-roots movement against a video game for merely featuring the beverage.

These people have too much time on their hands if this is what they consider to be a pressing concern.

Tapper

[Fishbulb]

This is exactly what happened to the old video game 'Tapper', where you played a bartender serving thirsty customers. Originally licensed by Budweiser. They had to give it a face lift after parents complained (originally targeted for bars, it got into places it probably shouldn't have been in) to Root Beer Tapper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapper

C'mon people

[seanonymous]

Can't we all just get a pong?

Re:Beer Pong Video Game

[seanonymous]

The War Against Virtual Beer Pong is actually a first-person shooter. It's the prequel to Duke Drinkem Forever.

Re:They forgot to...

[the_weasel]

I am allergic to flowers you insensitive clod. :-)

Re:Nothing wrong with water sports, after all...

[multisync]

Honestly, when water isn't safe, where do you turn?

Actually, drinking too much water can be just as dangerous as drinking too much beer. People have died from drinking too much water.

I think it's extremely irresponsible of the "parents and lawmakers" to encourage behavior that may lead to water intoxication

Priorities

[thedullroar]

All the time these parents spend writing angry letters could be put to use parenting . Talk to your kids about things they shouldn't do (like drink alcohol) and why they shouldn't do them. If you don't want your kid playing that game in the house, don't buy it. If you don't want them playing it at a friend's house, know your kids' friends and their parents. If they are reasonable people, they will honor a request that certain things not be on the activity list when Jimmy comes over to play. And if you've done a good job parenting so far, playing virtual pong isn't going to turn your kid into a hooligan.

Re:So does this mean bars don't exist in games?

[Kohath]

Just wait. Soon bars won't be allowed in games. If there's a bar (or worse, smoking) the game will get rated (AO) adults only.

The new prohibition movement has already gotten smoking banned in bars and the "legally drunk" alcohol level has been changed from "actually drunk" to "imperfectly sober". They've done this even though the lower alcohol levels are not associated with a high risk of crashes. They can seize your car and sell it to fund their agencies though.

The media war has already begun. PG-rated movies can't have smoking in them.

A lot of people want the government to be your mom and make your choices for you. People vote for it because they think they're in the ruling class. When they find out they're actually "little people", it will be too late.

It's not as bad as you think...

[spook brat]

According to Federal law the armed forces can allow drinking by service members as young as 18 on bases in or near locations where the legal age limit is lower than 21 - the military enforces the local drinking age laws. The degree to which such leniency is actually applied differs from service to service (if you're in the Air Force, you're out of luck), but the Army and marines have been pretty good about such things.

Wow. Beer Pong On Slash Dot?

[Layth]

I compete in a lot of beer pong tournaments.
In fact I fly out to vegas every year for the world series (mentioned in article) and even placed top 10 for 2008.

Bizarre to see something like pong make its way onto slash dot.
There is another wii variant called Ping Cup in some type of party games package as well.

Personally I don't see the point to either simulations, since beer pong is ridiculously simple to set up an ACTUAL game in person.
All it takes is cups and ping pong balls! Why are you in front of a television - the game is supposed to be social.

Anyway, I can chime in on one aspect that most slashdotters are probably unaware of.
Beer Pong is extremely competitive. When you go to tournaments, it has nothing to do with getting drunk.

Make that shot and win that money. World series is 50k. Smaller local tournaments are 500-6,000 in prize money for 1st.
These politicians need to leave my game alone, damnit.

Beer Pong is not a crime.
The assholes are making me irked at my own country and envy other places' freedoms.

Re:So does this mean bars don't exist in games?

[Omestes]

I'm over 25, and I vote against EVERY vice law, since I find the very idea absurd. I'm not a libertarian (I'm a nutbag socialist, or moderate), and even I find that the government regulating my leisure activities absurd. If no one gets hurt, then it isn't their business.

While the poster is probably wearing his tin-foil hat, I agree with the general premise, America is becoming more and more neo-Puritanical as time goes on. We've decided to all announce what we think would be good for others, and collectively vote for it, ignoring the fact that the simple answer is just not doing it ourselves (free will, and all that archaic baggage). And these self-righteous idiots don't even play a fair game, they resort to dirty tactics since "they know better" than the rest of us, it has become a game of the ends justifying the means, which is NEVER a good position.

Looking at my home state, Arizona, which just banned all public smoking; some people put a sensable law on the ballots, banning it all non bar or bowling alley establishments (which still stretches things), and to fight this, another group (who I call niconazis) made another bill to ban it everywhere, period. This was not happenstance, it was a genuine political effort at confusion. A bar by my house found a loophole, and ran with it (with a couple million in lawyer fees), so the state decided to throw all their guns at it to make them comply, not just the legal ones. The received daily visits from the health department, and the liquor board, none of this was contained as a consequence of non-compliance with the law, it was just the state "out to get them" for not playing with the popular cause.

As a note: I don't understand how the state can tell businesses how to run themselves. Let places decide if they want smoking (or drinking, even), or not, and let the market decide.

This goes beyond the state level, the WHO frequently bans studies that find the link between second hand smoke and cancer negative or non conclusive, as do most modern Western health institutions. Its like an unpopular mirror of global warming. I, personally, think there is a link, but that still doesn't justify censorship of scientific studies that don't find things your way, and thus aren't allowed to be counted towards policy. (I also believe in global warming, and condemn all censorship that finds the opposite)

As for drinking, we're approaching the same level of insanity. My friend almost got arrested once for WALKING to her car while intoxicated (0.08). She wasn't going to drive, she was getting a camera. The police didn't want to believe her. This was a bar that offered free cab rides home, and to the bar the next morning, so there wasn't even a reason she would have driven, not to mention she didn't even have her purse. The law also ignores that alcohol affects people differently. I can drink all night, have a high blood alcohol percentage, and not be affected, while others can be well under the legal limit and be severely impaired. Biological differences FTW.

And then we bring on our war on boobs. We're an absurdly prudish and puritanical country. My mind boggles at the fact we find overt violence healthy for youth, but not natural biology. I almost got kicked out of college for mentioning the "nipples" on a nude bronze on campus, as it might offend someone. Everyone has them, how can it be offensive? I also almost became a registered sex offender in high school for saying something lewd to girl friend of mine (inside joke) and someone overheard it. If the target of the comment isn't offended, then how can a bystander who doesn't understand the context be?

Its very odd, as we become more politically liberal, we become more culturally conservative. Look at the idiotic gay marriage debate for example... It makes no sense outside of a narrowly bigoted religious context (which most of my religious friends don't agree with, anecdotally), but still we are willing to regulate peoples bedroom life, and their rights based on who they want to practice these rights on. As long as no one is harmed, it isn't societies business.

Sorry for the rant. Getting sick of idiocy today.