Supreme Court: "You are asking us to create a whole new prohibition"

I don't know about the First Amendment, and really don't care. But banning children from buying 18+ games does not strike me as a "freedom of speech" issue. I believe (I might be wrong) that many countries have this ban, what is so special about having that in the US?. That walmart won't sell your game? Then I am tempted to say that the problem is walmart not this legislation.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Jma on 3rd November 2010 10:24am

'deviant violent videogames'
"As opposed to what? A normal violent videogame?"

Haha!

YAY silly people trying to ban stuff fail whoooo

This makes for a great read, and it's interesting and encouraging to hear a lot of common sense.

As pointed out by Joao, this quote seems rather alarming/misdirected. Does this mean we can butcher elves or orcs, say, but not someone very slightly different who would be a 'normal' human?! Surely that's an utterly flawed argument.

<em>"Would a video game that portrayed a Vulcan as opposed to a human being, being maimed and tortured, would that be covered by the act?" asked Justice Kagan.

Replied Morazzini: "No, it wouldn't, because the act is only directed towards the range of options that are able to be inflicted on a human being."</em>


I'm not sure how the ratings work in America; does it mean that a thirteen year old, for instance, can go into a store and buy a game like Dante's Inferno or Condemned 2 unhindered? Sod the constitutional rights; surely there should be basic restrictions in place (a la BBFC or PEGI ratings) which enforce a legal minimum age for buying these extremely violent games?! That just seems like common sense.

@ Terrence and others. The ratings system is enforced in as much as retailers agree to enforce it. Therefore a minor cannot go and buy an 18-rated game from a store that is supposed to be following the ratings system any more than they can in the UK or other countries.

The main difference here is that in the US they have this double standard regarding freedom of speech and inherent censorship from the population (and therefore retailers). This means that if a law such as this passed many games would be upgraded from mature to AO which is 18+ equivalent in other countries. This means that the game will, by and large, be unsold in America as none of the big retailers will stock that content. Sure, the retailers are well within their right to do this but then it begs the question - why have the rating in the first place? Movies also suffer from this problem too.

This wouldn't be a problem if the rating system worked within the moral boundaries of the country but as it is it does not and therefore developers have to push their offerings to match M rating rather than whatever they want. An AO rating is as good as an X (or pornographic) rating for all the difference it means when it's shipped (or not) across the country. People might disagree that it's censorship or an effective ban but that's what it is and i don't really see how they can argue against that.... but they do. :)

Great summary, very interesting read!

@Gabriel

"I believe (I might be wrong) that many countries have this ban, what is so special about having that in the US?. "

We have a "alike" system in Germany, that turn into a high percentage of the games being imported from UK; that turns into a loss of profit for the country.

Also, believe me; Wallmart to shelling the game IS a big loose, and you can't force a company to shell something if they don't want to :/

It is so refreshing to see some people using common sense rather than the irrational scaremongers that usually dominate the media.

I always thought they had similar age ratings to the UK but if parents are willing to buy these age restricted games for their children then it would be their responsibility to inform those children about the difference between a bunch of 1s and 0s on screen to the real thing. Has anyone ever seen the Penn and Teller Bull**** epsiode about violent video games?

@João Thats a great point but it wouldn't surprise me if they tried to pass another law for that.

I'm really glad it's turning out this way. I hate these studies done by anti-games campaigners, they're just biased and hold no weight. This would have meant nothing but bad news for the industry.

In Europe at the age of 18 you can drink, drive, smoke etc which means you are an adult and can do all the adult stuff.

In the US, 18 does not give you all your adult rights.
Two examples that require you to be 21 is gambling and drinking.

AO rated games would be seen in the same light as pornographic material and alot of places have an over 21 age restriction on those as well.

Thats the main difference between the UK & German compared to the US.

The USK system for games in intresting, a unrated game can still be sold by retailers but a customer must ask for it as it has be kept under/behind the counter and out of sight.
This wont happen in Walmart or other US retailers as they have a blanket ban on AO rated games.

Its very stupid but if they did have a 18+ ESRB rating that fits between the M and AO ratings we might not have to deal with this.

Game companies could rate the titles as being 18+ but can still say its not an AO title meaning Walmart should have no issues selling it and continue to check little Bobby's id when he tries to buy it.

OK, I think I get a clearer picture of how it works in the US. However, I still believe going against this proposed law JUST because the big retailers won't sell your game is going against the wrong thing and not very moral if you ask me. I think kids should not be allowed to buy 18+ games, just as they are not allowed to buy alcohol or cigarettes, drive and a ton of other things.

Now, it seems that the problem lies in that they don't seem to have a proper way of rating a 18+ game without it getting thrown into the XXX shops. I think going somewhere in between like what @John was saying is the best way to go. The gaming industry is HUGE (specially in the US) and I cannot believe they cannot somehow work with the big retailers and the rating bodies to find a way of selling these games without going with "we'll just sell them to whoever we want".

It is only natural for the judges to be critical for both sides to try and test to see if they are genuine in their cases or if they are only emotionally BSing.

I was reading the PDF file and I was not surprized that the attorney general representing Caliafornia's case acturely said that he never played any of the games that he mentioned but still said allot about the games with their violence.

I would suspect allot more of this coming from the anti-gaming crowd in the court room that they were trying to talk about the games that they have never really played at all.

And I would hope to god that the judges pick up on that fact and criticise them for not doing any research and at least PLAY the games that these people were trying to ban.

Also any violent videogame has a story to it, even if the story is not clearly obvious it still has a story.

Hope it does not take long for the Surprime court to throw this case out of the door and hopefully impeach the senators like Yee for wasting millions on this bill over the past 5 years, but I am getting a bit wishful thinking here.

As soon as Yee and other politicians like him are gone and replaced by better and more sensible people to govern this world, the less we would have to go though stuff like this.

ESRB is not perfect, but they are doing a hell lot better than what any government can do when it comes to regulating content in videogames.

@Gabriel
The bill sets out to restict access of a single type of entertainment media.
It singles out games as being "Bad" when TV and film are full of the same things we have in game.
This is the main problem and its why they are protesting under the first ammendment.

The US lawmakers and retailers can learn alot from Europe on this.
The PEGI system is a good example for how games can be rated. Its not perfect but its not flawed as well.

Second though. Walmart own Asda, Asda sells games and some of those games are 18+ meaning they would operate under double standards in the US so game companies could go in more business speak "You refuse to stock this game in the US, you cant source it from us in Europe then. Try undercutting other retailers when you have to go grey market to buy the copies"

Arguments against this thing seem really stupid to me. THEY ARE MINORS. MINORS! should you remove the laws that make it illegal to sell alcohol to minors then? Since the person made this statement

"You are asking us to create a whole new prohibition. What's next after violence? *Drinking?* Movies that show drinking? Smoking?"

minors already aren't allowed to drink. Go ahead and let your kids smoke, reap the rewards later.

Anyone who says movies are on the same level as games doesnt partake of either in any meaningful manner. YOU are the one taking actions in games whilst you arent in movies. There is a difference between passive violence and actually ripping someones head off yourself (sometimes even by choice).

I am honestly confused by the objection to this. Are people fighting to get games sold to minors even if they are inappropriate? Because it seems as if thats all the law would prevent. So why the opposition? You WANT you kid playing this rubbish and thus are fighting tooth and nail for it? Are you just fighting for kids rights to violent video games?

Kotick made a comment about this once and he is pretty much what i htink about when i see people argue this. Kids play his violent games and he wants to maintain that. It's like a cig company objecting to minors not being allowed to smoke. You might as well let kids watch porn any time they want, listen to profane language any time they want etc.

the problem i see is deciding which games should not be allowed to be sold to minors. One major problem I see with arguments against this is not mentioning the bit about minors. They just say "outlaw violent video games" or some such halftruth

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Temi on 3rd November 2010 5:00pm

Glad to see our Supreme Court exhibit some common sense. Enough of having video games be the scapegoat for any type of 'deviant' behavior.

@Temi, I think you are missing the main point here.

This is a very bad law for video games.
It will hurt the industry and play in the hands of the anti-games lobby.

I am not opposed to laws restricting access to adult content to minors, I am however against moves to block the sales of games at the retail market which is what this law could easily end up doing.

@John Donnelly so the law needs to be refined but there is nothing wrong with its goal?

you said anti-games but is that accurate? A group of people who want to form of entertainment destroyed is what that means. Or are they just a group of people who want the form of entertainment properly censored?

A comment was made elsewhere that gamestop actually considers firing staff for selling violent games to minors. So some stores already don't do it. This just makes it a law.

The american army have their one video games encouraging young people to join them and therefore training them to fight and kill. This doesn't make sense.

Gentile, an anti-game campaigner and researcher at Iowa University, has frequently accused videogames of being addictive, causing a lack of concentration and/or aggressive behaviour and reducing empathy for others. His methodology has been subject to significant criticism.

Funny... you could replace videogames with Fox "News" and argue the same point about their more rabid viewership...

Anyway, this will be a big win for the industry (a good thing), but it won't stop politicians from trying again and again to focus attention on the medium whenever they need votes. It's a good thing this hasn't degenerated into those awful hearings from the 50's that nearly destroyed the comics industry...

why not back off and let parents decide if billy can play halo. Glad the justices seem to know what's up

I think people are getting confused here: The opposite of not wanting this law to go through is NOT being for the sale of adult (or older) material to minors. It's a fallacious argument and is very reductionist.

Maybe i misinterpreted the law in the UK but up until the 'recent' Byron review there was no law governing the sale of 12 rated games to underage children - however retailers and industry work towards limiting the sale of those games (and movies). That's no different to the current state in the US - having the law only makes the punishments for retailers more severe (though i'm not sure if that's covered under other laws in the US anyway).

@Temi, et al,

the argument in my country is one of who parents our children. The government should not be removing, through force of law, those parenting choices. It's a parent's call, not the government's, as to what is or is not too violent for a child. And Scalia's counters are sound; what next, then? Where does that line get drawn? In this country we have strong opposition to putting the words "properly" and "censored" in the same context.

Whether parents then go on to make those choices on their children's behalves is a separate argument entirely, and the government cannot legislate - or should not be allowed - to legislate against a "what if."

Parents still have the choice despite the law. A parent can choose to buy said games for his child. The law prevents a child from buying it without the consent of the parent or other adult. Is that too much for the government to do?

Hi everyone, it might help the discussion if you understand that content based regulations of speech in the US must be constitutional in order to be enforceable. That means they if they violate the Constitution then they can be challenged and tossed out. The First Amendment states clearly that "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech". This applies to the states and applies to music, film, books and thankfully videogames. Cigarettes and alcohol are not applicable to the arguments because those are products, not speech, and they have a harmful effect on anyone that uses them, not just children so regulation is not subject to the First Amendment protections. Access to speech (including video games) for minors should therefore be protected.

There only a few limited exceptions to the First Amendment, including "fighting words", yelling "fire" in a crowded theater or obscenity. In the US only sexually explicit material as ever been considered obscene. One famous justice defined obscenity as "I know it when I see it." So the fundamental difference in this law is that it equates "extreme violence" with "pornography". CA was asking the SCOTUS to create a new exception to the 1st Amendment without much reason beyond "parents can't control their kids". Does that sound reasonable?

It may be difficult to understand all the culture differences between the US and other countries when it comes to sex and violence. However there is strong legal precedent protecting US citizen's right to express themselves and to access speech, even if it is unpopular. The fact they are picking on video games with so much other violent materials available to kids these days makes this law seem rather absurd to most Americans.

FYI - when the government surveyed game retailers compliance with the ESRB they found that the game industry did a better job preventing kids from buying M rated games (80% effective) then movies, TV and music. The ratings system works, its parents who need a kick in the pants.

@Temi, I'm not really understanding the gist of your argument. The Justice bringing up things like alcohol and cigarettes was admittedly confusing, so perhaps it caused some misunderstanding. Video Games are not chemicals that have addictive qualities. A normal person cannot become physically addicted to a video game. A normal person isn't going to suffer withdraw symptoms if it's taken away. There are people who have addictive personalities that can certainly be harmed by playing too much, but a responsible parent has it full in their ability to turn off the TV and have their kids do something else.

If an adult decides to ignore everything else for video games, then they are going to suffer the penalties, and unlike drugs and alcohol, you don't put other people at immediate risk and any personal harm is essentially self-inflicted, so there's not going to be a law against video game addiction. It's no different from a gambling or shopping addiction.

With that said, violent video games and violent movies have a lot of direct correlation. You are NOT actively killing a person, nothing on the screen is real, regardless of weather you are manipulating the primary character on the screen or not. Watching the killer in a slasher flick behead someone is the same thing as watching your character in a video game behead someone, it's imagery. Kids imitate what they see, having pressed the A button to do so doesn't escalate things. Additionally, every person that has ever committed a gross act of violence that could attribute anything they did to the video games they played were shown to have had pre-existing conditions that made them uniquely unfit to be allowed access to any violent media, not video games exclusively. That said, there are no correlating facts that implicate video games to cause ANY long standing negative effects to a normal, stable, human being.

More on point, I'm sure most (as I am unsure of foreign legislature on the matter) know that movie theaters have the right to card potential minors attempting to watch R-rated films and deny them service. This isn't a perfect system by any means, nor is it universally enforced by law, and minors still sneak into movies they're not supposed to be watching, or con an older sibling/friend into taking them. What I guess a lot of people don't realize is that major retailers are now ALSO carding potential minors who attempt to purchase Mature rated video games. They are already self-regulating the issue. I've spoken with acquaintances that work at my local Gamestop, and an employee can be terminated if they're caught selling M-Rated material to someone who is clearly underage. Heck, I've stood in line behind parents buying games and have had to wait through the mandatory spiel employees are required to give about M-Rated games to parents. It's a legal double-standard to force legislation on one industry and not another very similar one. Any lack of similarity you see in their products by now is purely self inflicted.

Here's another important point. A trip to the movies with no extras is at the most I've seen, $14. A child can get that sort of scratch fairly easily. A new video game is easily $50 and up, not really in the budget of a grade school kid or even teenagers considering labor laws. They'd be saving allowance for at least three months, cause you know they want the new ones they saw on TV, not old games. And if they're stealing shit to pay for it, you have a bigger problem than your kid wanting a video game. Regardless, how many kids are going to even have the money to buy the games in question? I always thought the problem was that parents kept buying their kids these inappropriate games. And if it's still okay for their parents to buy the game, which is practically inevitable and additionally more common due to price, what is the point of this law at all?

Basically, it's not that we WANT kids to go play games that are inappropriate for their age. The problem is that this legislation is vague and unnecessary to the point of being more harmful to the industry than a round of Halo has ever been to a twelve year old. It doesn't make proper distinctions on what a "deviant violent video game" is compared to all of the regular games with violence in them. Considering an embargo already exists on Adult Only games, isn't what they want to accomplish technically in effect? Those are the games that can make a grown man squeamish, or are just outright pornographic.

The vague definition of "deviantly violent" would effectively ban the sale of games rated by the ESRB that are actually intended for people under the age of 18, as many that are rated "T" for Teen are rated for violence, and the deviance in question seems to be purely based on personal taste and opinion. The ESRB and major retailers are already trying to educate and self-regulate to accomplish just what this proposed law wants, because they don't WANT the law. All it will create is an industry that isn't willing to risk making violent games for older consumers because of the scrutiny that any "violence" would have to undergo for the enforcing body of this new law to figure out if any instance thereof is "deviant" by the standards of the one reviewing it, and even once the game did release, the number of retailers willing to deal with the inevitable fact that a minor WILL get their hands on a game rated "Deviant" would be slim.

The overall financial blow government legislation of this nature would cause would cripple a lot of the industry considering the US is the biggest source of customer revenue. Beyond the money, it would stifle creativity. Go ahead and tell yourself "Violence isn't creativity!" if you want, but we'd be left with puzzle games, point and click adventures, and non-violent platformers. People are already creating "experimental" game designs, sure, but you'll never see any of them with a real team or budget since the experimental and risky designs are funded by the surplus created from all of the popular violent games a publisher sells. If you put a kink in the pipe, you're going to affect everything down the line.

@James Prendergast. You did misinterpret the UK law. Until recently we had 2 ratings systems in the UK. PEGI, and BBFC (our film classification board).
All games were classified by PEGI, but this wasn't legally enforceable. Any game with sensitive content had to be submitted to BBFC, which rated it, and this was legally enforceable. Whilst it was up to a publisher did not have to submit all games to BBFC, if they'd failed to submit a game that would have been 18 or 15, they would have been breaking the law. However, the Byron review decided that this was confusing, and it was decided there should be one system for all games. As such, BBFC no longer rate games, as the PEGI rating is legally enforceable instead. In turn PEGI had to make their ratings clearer.

@Temi, Yes I am sure its a bad law. I have been following this for a long time now as I was formally residing in California.

Thanks Kevin, you summed it very very well.

@Andrew, the PEGI/BBFC stuff is a little confusing for those outside of the UK.
Games had to pass a BBFC rating is they contained any movie related content so all movie titles had to be BBFC rated along with titles above PEGI 16+ and also some 16+ titles that where borderline.
It was a confusing system at times and tripped people up including myself at one point.

There isnt really a solid way to stop minors playing violent video games. You can introduce all the bans and laws you want. Sell COD or GTA in xxx stores to over 21 ones, all that will happen then is Billys big bro will get the game and bill at some point will play it anyway! Parental guidance is the important factor.
In the UK you cant buy an 18 rated game unless you are over 18 and have ID, that doesnt mean once the game is purchased a minor wont play it. Like it said in the article, kids are smart and will bypass parental locks on a 360 in less than 5 mins. All we can do is hope for a better structured guidance rating system and pray that parents have the common sense to monitor what media their kids are viewing.
Besides, if someones picks up an axe and lops someones head off 'cause they did it in a game, they likely had some deep rooted mental issues before playing it in the first place!

Im fine with it, as long as they apply to film too.

@ Andrew. I'm not sure how that counters what i said. PEGI wasn't legally enforceable any more than the US rating system. i.e. It wasn't part of the law. Therefore it wasn't illegal to sell 12- rated games to those under that age.

James I was just trying to clear up, PEGI wasn't enforceable but we had BBFC ratings that were. So games like grand theft auto, gears of war, mortal kombat, or Mass Effect were illegal for a minor to buy as they had a legally enforced age restriction, the BBFC one, not the PEGI one. This was a very confusing double rated system, I was just trying to clear it up. We have had legally enforced ratings on games since the mid 90s, and legally enforced ratings on all movies on DVD and Cinema since the early 80s I believe, brought in as a result of the video nasty campaigns.

Also, like cigarettes, alcohol and gambling, a shop selling 12/15/18 movies has to have a licence, with at least 2 people working for the shop being named on the licence (requiring a licensee course and exam) to do so. Whilst some stores still sell 18 games to minors, as well as severe fines, repeatedly being caught will lead to the licence being removed.

I hope this isn't seen as a criticism, but it is why a lot of people from this side of the pond don't see a big deal in the law.
I do believe that to introduce it for games means they need to introduce it for movies, which I'm guessing Arnie is too hypercritical to suggest, as he has a lot of friends in the Californian movie business.
The ideal would be for the industry in the US and the government to be in talks to come up with some compromise, such as an 18+ cert that doesn't carry the same stigma as AO/X.

An argument the pro-game press in the UK relies on when the daily mail starts screaming that these games should not be put in the hands of kids, is that we agree, and it is illegal to sell them to kids, and that the only legal way for them to get their hands on them is for adults to buy them. If a parent buys a game that is clearly age restricted, and gives it to a child without first checking why it has the 15 or 18 classification, then starts ranting about that content, they are the guilty party. If the kid buys it behind there back, then there is legal recourse against the vendor who sold it.
Until now I assumed it worked similar (with the exception of the licencing) in the US, and wondored why when something like hot coffee blows up, the US pro game lobby was unable to make similar arguments, it is clear now it is because there is no legal penalty for an irresponsible salesperson to sell these games to kids.
It also strikes me as weird that kids watching people ripping out entrails is less obscene than sex, which our species depends on for survival.
I think that if we want freedom to express what we want in games, age restrictions done right (which admittedly this law doesn't sound as if it is nessicarily) can be an asset as well as a burden. It allows you to put a lot more into a game that is aimed at adults, protected from the argument that you shouldn't be peddling this to children.
But, this may stem from innate cultural differences, and perhaps a model that makes sense here isn't right for somewhere else.

@Kevin "The ratings system works, its parents who need a kick in the pants." Having worked retail for videos and games couldn't agree more.

@Andrew the Byron Report made the recommendation regarding giving PEGI the same legal status as a BBFC rating (IIRC supplying content with a BBFC rating to someone outside the stated age bracket can be punished by a £1000 fine or up to 5 years in prison). The recommendations of the Byron Report have not yet been enacted (Not sure that there are any plans to at this time) and the BBFC still rate games (18 rating on Black Ops just a couple of days ago).

The key difference between BBFC and PEGI is that with the BBFC you submit a game with the rating you want, they play it and make a recommendation and there's a big debate and editing until there's an agreement (lengthy and expensive). Whereas PEGI is a self certification system similar to that used for television programs.

So PEGI doesn't have any legal teeth...yet.

@ Andrew, Being British and having worked in HMV i'm pretty aware of the legalities of selling games. I'm not confused between the BBFC and PEGI systems and in fact i wrote to the Bryon review when they asked for personal opinions from the populace as well as industry to say that i felt the BBFC system was overall better for the industry and for consumers because it mirrored the film ratings and these are universally known and understood in comparison to the then PEGI system.

PEGI have since altered their ratings to appear more like the film rating system (though i don't think this is yet implemented). So, thanks for trying to clear things up.... though it wasn't really necessary.

My point was and still is that the same framework that works in UK and the EU will not work in America because their ratings system does not work within the moral framework of their society. It's like having a word that is perfectly fine - it's not a swear word or rude.... but if you try and use it in conversation people will stop talking to you. So, though the word is in the dictionary and there's no prohibition from government from using the word there's an essential societal ban on using it because if you do you are suddenly outcast.
It's the same situation with regards to AO rated games. There's no 'ban' in place from the industry or government but you cannot use that rating because if you do you will not be able to sell your game.

The proposed law will not change how the industry operates with respect to minors because, as i was pointing out, retailers already work with industry to stop sales of games to minors - as they do with PEGI in the UK and even though there's no legal enforcement or retribution against the practice. What will happen though is that by reclassifying games with phrases like 'deviant' or 'obscene' they're going to get landed with that AO rating rather than the M. This results in a censorship culture within and without the industry.

[edit]
I should point out that by "censorship" i mean compared with equivalent actions and depictions in other media (e.g. film and TV).

Edited 1 times. Last edit by James Prendergast on 4th November 2010 12:56pm

BBFC have been rating video games for years (certainly since early in the PS1 days), and aside from that there have been PEGI ratings in place for a long time and I've even got a few PS2 games with an ELSPA rating too, so it was something of a mess. But, as pointed out, it's only BBFC which are legally enforceable, and unless I'm mistaken this only refers to the sale of goods to those under the alloted age, rather than the supply of goods (so Game can't sell 15 year old Michael CODBLOPS, but if his 18 year old brother Matthew buys it, he can lend or give it to his younger brother if he wishes) -- bearing in mind this is discounting that loophole which was exposed a couple of years ago or so which made the BBFC ratings not legally enforceable until proper measures were put in place; I'm guessing this has been sorted now! However, as previously mentioned, PEGI will be taking over as the sole games rating system in the UK soon, although this was first proposed a good couple of years back now and most well-known or particularly violent games still carry the BBFC rating.


Anyway, I still think the obvious fix for this whole mess would be to bring in another ESRB rating between Mature and Adults Only and make the system legally enforceable. It's great if Gamestop or whoever outline that their employees must follow the ratings as company policy, but sure making it law should quell anyone's concerns. I don't know (or care) much about the First Amendment, but surely making it law so a 12 year old cannot buy God of War III or Dead Space is just common sense.

@James
"Being British and having worked in HMV i'm pretty aware of the legalities of selling games."

Oops. Sorry :/

But whilst I do see the dilemma, with how the proposed law fits in with how the current system in th US works, I agree with Terrence that it is a no brainer that a kid should not be able to walk into a shop and buy Dead Space (even though it is one of my favourite games), and that whilst yes, retailers may work with the industry to stop kids being sold these titles, if there is no consequence for a storeowner deciding not to do this, you will always get some people who put profits first. I also believe a well balanced law can protect creators,as well as restrict, giving the choice to edit the game so anyone can play, or stay true to an original, more mature vision, safe in the knowledge that you have a defence that you are making these creations for a mature market.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Andrew Goodchild on 4th November 2010 1:29pm

That's fair enough and i don't necessarily disagree with your or Terrence's points. The problem is that the legal framework to put this in place would not work in the US at this point in time because of their social framework which is quite different to the UK.

I guess there's more of a comparison between the potential end result of laws like this in the US and those that currently exist in Germany. The threat of bans to all violent media*, censorship of Nazi and other things is probably more akin to how it would work than by comparing the US to the UK's system where we're (strangely) more relaxed about many things that otherwise cause outrage in many circles in both the US and Germany.

Must be all the fart and poo jokes we're telling all the time.

*Including sale, importation, ownership and development of said media.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by James Prendergast on 4th November 2010 2:02pm

In my country we already have a law and a organization that not ban anything, its very like a ESRB, just with legal force. Minors cant buy extreme violent games here and for me theres no harmy. Of course, a lot of people dont give a damn for this law and sell violent games to children everyday, but hey, its not my problem! =)
Ban is a problem, restrict isnt.

Cliff Bleszinski of Gears of War Fame over at the BBC defending violence in games.

Think it might be interesting if we saw a few more articles running around about the huge number of games that don't have violence in, how gaming is out their genuinely helping people, genuine technical and design innovation, rather than constantly having to defend the presence of content aimed at mature audiences.

Looking at some of the transcripts of this case and remembering the Fox News interviews surrounding Mass Effect, anyone answering "No" to the questions "have you actually played the game?" or "have you played any games recently?" should be politely asked to:

Be Quiet
Sit Down
Or leave the room

@ temi a long time ago...

"YOU are the one taking actions in games whilst you arent in movies. There is a difference between passive violence and actually ripping someones head off yourself "

i think there is a slight technical difference between pressing A, and electrical signals inside a computer representing the action of head ripping-off on a screen, and actually going outside, walking up to a stranger and deciding to try to physically remove their cranial containers from their bodies.

The thing about walmart is just wrong. yes they clearly have a lot of buying and selling power in US, but i assume they sell 18 rated films?

If there is a law against a minor purchasing 18 films in America, (should do more research but no time is there AO film classification?) then the same law should apply to interactive entertainment. If they refuse to stock AO games, i think i see potential market for new/existing indie outlets who could.

lots of people making very nice points here.

How I end EVERY anti-game debate in ten seconds (more or less):

Q: "So... are you a boxing fan?"

(feel free to substitute any real-life full contact sport where viewers get that same sort of rush politicos say turns kids into mindless killing machines, by the way).

The minute that person emphatically answers and starts describing their favorite athlete/team, that last big fight, a hard hit, or something else that sent them off the couch with a fist pump (and the cat flying off their lap) and some poor sap to the hospital with another concussion (or worse), they've pretty much got one next move, which will sound something like:

"Oh. Uh... Well, sports are different! It's REAL life!"

You really don't have to do much defending of games after that comes out.