FTC: "Video Game Self Regulation Works"

Itesh writes "Following an established trend, a Federal Trade Commission undercover shopper survey found that video game retailers continue to enforce most vigorously the ratings governing age and content that were established by the entertainment media industry. Music CD retailers lag far behind movie theaters, as well as movie DVD and video game retailers, in preventing unaccompanied children under age 17 from purchasing entertainment intended for mature audiences."

Comments

Duh!

[Desler]

And yet all the politicians who think we need to enact all these stricter laws when it comes to video game sales will ignore this and try to claim that any 5 year old can walk into a game store and buy GTA IV on their own.

Self-Regulation Never Works

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... not that I support the nanny state or game censorship but self-regulation doesn't ever really work.

Look at BP and the natural gas fracking disasters.

I don't know anyone who would seriously wait till they are 17 to play Grand Theft Auto. I mean you can drive to the store to buy it at 16.

Though your still better off finding and fucking a girl IRL once you get a car.

read it too fast

[uncanny]

Strange, i will have to read the article again. I missed the part about parents being responsible for their children.

Missing the point.

[LastGunslinger]

If someone is old enough to walk into a store and purchase a product, then that person is probably old enough to not be significantly harmed by hearing, seeing, or playing the content. The ratings should exist as a guide to parents, who shouldn't purchase these products for young children. By the time they're teenagers and have their own money and transportation, there are more pressing things to worry about than if they're seeing boobs in a movie, hearing explicit lyrics in a song, or turning enemies into a mass of blood and gore in a video game. Let's worry about keeping them in school, off of drugs, and not pregnant.

Re:Missing the point.

[dkleinsc]

Of course the kid isn't going to be harmed by sexually explicit stuff. The average kid sees his first female breast within their first day of existence, probably plays "doctor" before he's in school, and has probably kissed someone of the appropriate sex with somewhat sexual intent by the time he's about 10 or 12. I distinctly remember my middle school principle getting on the PA to tell students to stop copping feels the hallways. And a bunch of my high school classmates ended up pregnant years before turning 20. In short, kids are nowhere near as naive as their parents would like them to be.

These legal efforts aren't and have never been about protecting kids. They're about protecting parents from the thought that their little angel will at some point in their life have sex. Kids are rather horrified at the thought that mom & dad would get it on too, but they're legally second-class citizens and can't vote so their opinions don't matter politically.

Re:Missing the point.

[corbettw]

And a bunch of my high school classmates ended up pregnant years before turning 20. In short, kids are nowhere near as naive as their parents would like them to be.

You just contradicted yourself. It is exactly the naivete of high schoolers that leads them to getting pregnant in the first place.

Granted that draconian rules on keeping kids away from each other rather than teach them how to be responsible can tend to lead to that kind of naivete, but underage pregnancy is still a symptom of the kids being naive so my point still stands.

Self.

[Seumas]

We're not supposed to have a problem with censorship when it's by private industry, because it's only censorship when the government does it. But if the industry is self-censoring because the only alternative is the threat of the government stepping in and doing it (which would presumably be unconstitutional) and that results in a whole range of content not having distribution and titles that do have distribution being modified so that they have less teeth (think of the most mature game versus the most mature movie you can get at the theater or on DVD) . . . and I have to ask "what's the difference?". One is a result directly mandated by the government and the other result is derived through extortion by the government. Worse, the extortion/threat method allows them to accomplish the same thing through a ratings middle-man in a private industry that keeps them from getting their hands dirty at a legal level.

Re:Personal responsibility

[Kamiza Ikioi]

Natural human responsibility? You're not a student of history, are you? Everyone's always been blaming everything on someone else. Even the bible toting population can escape it with the myth of the first man Adam blaming eating an apple on the first woman Eve who blamed it on a snake. So... If that's your baseline "natural", then there ya go, nobody takes responsibility "naturally".

Of course, if we're talking evolution, taking responsibility only makes sense if it propagated our species. Doesn't make much sense in a death penalty court case. Doesn't make much sense in telling your lover you screwed around on her/him (since you are now very unlikely to procreate with said lover).

So... what's this "natural" thing you are talking about? Or is that some 1950's sounding buzzword to return us all to the "good ole days"?

If everybody took responsibility for themselves, their children, and their own actions and words, then what's in that for government? The goal is to transfer that natural human responsibility to the business of government, justifying yet even more power and revenue for the elite few. The goal is to have the populace run to government at the first hint of a problem -- NOT to think for themselves and come to a reasonable solution, skipping the middleman entirely.

You're not in the buisiness of government, are you?