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California Continues To Push For Violent Game Legislation
Back in February, the US Court of Appeals shot down a California law that banned the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. Shortly thereafter, State Senator Leland Yee petitioned the US Supreme Court to review the case. Now, along with California's Psychiatric and Psychological Associations, Yee has filed an amicus curiae brief with Court that elaborates on the reasoning behind the law. Within the brief (PDF) are some interesting quotes: "Parents can read a book, watch a movie or listen to a CD to discern if it is appropriate for their child. These violent video games, on the other hand, can contain up to 800 hours of footage with the most atrocious content often reserved for the highest levels and can be accessed only by advanced players after hours upon hours of progressive mastery. ... Notably, extended play has been observed to depress activity in the frontal cortex of the brain which controls executive thought and function, produces intentionality and the ability to plan sequences of action, and is the seat of self-reflection, discipline and self-control." The video game industry has filed its own amicus brief to dispute Yee's claims.
California has no other problems right now...
Oh right, I forgot the contemporary approach to politics. If you have real problems you don't solve them, you distract your people by making up problems where there are none.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
California does not have the cash for a case that will likely end being shot down by the 1st amendment.
I hate those little fungus motherfuckers. They make my skin crawl.
Every time I see one of those pieces of shit, I jump on it until it's fucking smashed and dead.
I also hate fucking ducks with shells. Those fucking freaks of nature just piss me the hell off. I love to stomp on them and then grab the shells and just wipe mushrooms the fuck out with them.
Goddamn pipes also freak me out.
can be accessed only by advanced players after hours upon hours of progressive mastery
If a kid is smarter than his parents, maybe he should be put in charge of restricting his parent's media content (maybe reality TV, Deal or No Deal, 20/20 are all off limits).
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Some huge majority of 12 year olds with $300 gaming systems are talking their parents into the $75 game anyway.
The ones that aren't will play them at their friend's.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
No one organization out there right now can provide definitive prove that playing âoeviolentâ video games train kids to be killers or desensitizes them from violence. Just because the military uses simulators to train soldiers for combat preparedness; does not mean that FPS game are the simulator training kids to be killers. If this was true every child who ever played FPS or âoeviolenceâ video games would be able to handle a gun like a pro and kill anything that moves without discrimination.
Yeah, that's actually true and what this guy is conveniently leaving out is that it's not permanent. I was reading about this phenomenon on Dr. Daniel Amen's website years ago (and it's NOT just violent video games).
Essentially, too much intense video gaming for too long makes your brain concentrate too much and you use up all the neurotransmitters that let you concentrate. The result is ADD-like symptoms. Cut back on the video games to reasonable levels and the neuotransmitter levels return to normal because they aren't being depleted.
So the real message is: too much of anything is bad for you.
But this Yee dude doesn't bother to say that part.
What does that even mean? 'Depressed activity in the frontal cortex of the brain'. Boohoo. What can we conclude from that? How long does this thing last, how does it affect a person?
Maybe it simply means someone has become good at the game and no longer needs to think about every single action while playing, like many sports (we'll probably never know since it's hard to scan the brain of someone playing tennis or juggling...). Maybe it means your brain has magically become more efficient and requires less activity to deliver the same quality. Maybe it even means we get dumber, less capable of self-reflection and planning, but only while playing the game.
The little fact about the brain is completely useless without more information. If 'they' had more information that would suggest these effects are permanent and damaging, they would have included this information, since it supports their point. Since they didn't, we can conclude that there is no reason to believe the changes in the brain are permanent or harmful in any way, but it sure sounds like something creepy and nasty to those who don't think it through.
Violent games are not affecting our kids in negative ways. Canada plays our violent video games and has a passion for guns and they have no where near the US gun fatalities. Japan plays extremely violent video games and has the lowest gun fatalities.
Parents need to stop blaming the media and start being parents.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
If we start to make rules for the many based on the actions of a select few, we're destined for failure.
The fact that a couple of disturbed and mentally unhealthy kids got their adrenaline running by psyching themself with violent video games doesn't mean we should ban these games from all kids. Just like if I use a baseball bat to beat someone to death we shouldn't shut down every single litte-league in the country to stop the children from doing the same.
I think that some age control with games is good. In Finland we use PEGI age recommendations, and some games are also reviewed by the Board of Film Classification. The important classifications are 16+ and 18+. A retailer can refuse to sell a 16+ game to a person younger than 16 without a parents consent. 18+ games are prohibited by law to be sold to minors. If parents choose to buy a game and give it to their child, it's their choice, but a retailer, with no way of knowing the personality or mental maturity of a child, will not be permitted to sell an 18+ game to the child.
This system is by no means perfect, but it stops little impressionable kids from getting their hands on adults-only games, but permits parents to expose their children to such material, if they feel they're mature enough to handle it.
[I hate Goombas from Super Mario Bros. But] I also hate fucking ducks with shells. Those fucking freaks of nature just piss me the hell off. I love to stomp on them and then grab the shells and just wipe mushrooms the fuck out with them.
But even more than that, I hate people who insist Koopas are ducks. According to the field guide Koopas of the Mushroom Kingdom by James Bond:
A lot of people got their NES with both Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt and should know what a Nintendo duck looks like. The only kind of "duck" in a Koopa shell is a turtle that has "ducked" into its shell.
Dreading Columbine by Mark Ames:
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
I'll admit, it's easier to get into an R rated movie as a minor then to rent an M rated game, but I've still been carded in the past. Your statement is simply untrue, or depends on the state from which you are posting.
My statement is _not_ untrue. Re-read it.
It is not a crime to let a three-year-old into an R-rated movie. Movie theaters restrict kids from their audience, yes, but they do it voluntarily in order to adhere to the system of rules set in place by the MPAA. A theater could theoretically let an unchaperoned group of kindergartners into any R-rated movie they wish right in front of a Cop and not be charged with a crime, since it's not against the law. They may lose their license by the MPAA but, again, let me reiterate: they won't be charged with a CRIME.
That's why this is completely different from movie ratings. Movie ratings are an industry standard, and there is literally no legal weight behind them. California's attempts to put legal weight behind Video Game ratings will end in failure, just as it did in Freedman v. Maryland.
The reason they are talking about things like brain activity (and no neuroscientist can tell you what patterns of brain activity are good or bad) is they are trying to distract everybody from the fact that as videogames have gotten more realistically violent, real world violence and crime have dropped, and dropped most sharply in the very same demographic of young males that are the biggest consumers of videogames. Of course, that doesn't prove that videogames prevent violence, but it does prove that any hypothetical anti-social effect of videogames must be so small as to be absolutely swamped by other social and economic factors that influence violence and crime.
But in this case, California is pretty much bankrupt. It would be like if someone living paycheck-to-paycheck decided to tour the world. That isn't going to solve their financial problems its only going to make it worse (by spending a ton and not working), California wants to use this which would result in less taxes for them.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
This is supposed to be a liberal state, but those Democrats in Sac (and in San Francisco, and San Jose) keep passing laws that remove choice from every aspect of our lives.