California legislators have made a determined effort in the past few years to criminalize selling violent games to children, all of which have been struck down in the courts. The main proponent of this legalization, state senator Leland Yee, recently filed a legal brief [thanks Ars Technica] to explain the reasoning behind the legislation. He's trying once again to revive a law that has already been struck down twice. Meanwhile, the economy is terrible, California's job market is horrible, and Yee is wasting more of his state's money on this legislation.
"The United States Surgeon General has also warned of a demonstrated link between screen violence and subsequent physical aggression in children and adolescents that is stronger than the link between second hand smoke and cancer," stated the brief.
"Parents can read a book, watch a movie or listen to a CD to discern if it is appropriate for their child," the brief claims. "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."
"In the end, commonsense tells us what this mountain of research reveals. Society has a direct, rational and compelling reason in restricting a minor's access to violent video games," the brief concludes.
Despite these assertions, there has been no definitive research connecting violent games and aggressive attitudes in children, which is something that has been proven in the courts time and again. This brief shows the attitude that Yee and others like him take towards video games - that they have no moral, social or artistic worth, serving only as a medium to expose children to mature content. This issue of perception is a common one which IndustryGamers addressed in a recent op-ed.
4 Comments
July 24, 2009
As a society we have to take a strong stand against political deadbeats like Yee. Like most politicians, he only has self-interest and currying favor with those simple-minded enough to agree with him.
Mental instability(his) is not sufficient reason to legislate against an industry which he does not understand. He should be primarily ignored, but otherwise refuted in any available venue.
July 24, 2009
I really dislike this state senator. Games are rated, parents can set a parental lock on systems to prevent the use of certain levels of software on the consoles. His issue is solved! BRILLIANT!
Now the issue of kids plopping down in front of a tv and playing games or watching tv hours and hours on end, instead of doing other activities is a real issue. No amount of legislation is going to fix that. However that's a different topic unrelated to this state senator that really needs to go away and focus on California's real issues. Last I heard, we're still broke. *smacks forehead*
July 24, 2009
Doesn't California have enough problems with money? And now the same nanny-state bozo wants to waste more tax money that isn't there?
Michael hit the nail on the head. Games are rated with a big sticker on the box, and the 360, PS3, Wii and Win7/Vista all have parental controls. The 360 also has a timer and Windows has scheduling.
The problem, though, is that parents either don't know it because they don't read the manual or they let the kid set it up. They just sit them in front of the electronic babysitter, be it the console, computer, TV or whatever, and walk away. This is not parenting; this is child abandonment.
Parents: Play with your kids! Eat a family dinner! Get yourself involved in your child's life.
July 24, 2009
We need to stop giving this dude(and all other California politicians) media coverage for the same old losing arguments time and time again. If I were a resident of California I would absolutely hate how much tax dollars they waste yearly on nonsense like this. They need to be voted out of office with this bullshit.
First they complain that we didn't have any ratings so we made ratings for games in the early 90's. Then they complained that the ratings weren't big enough so we enlarged them to make them more visable. Then they complained that a simple rating letter wasn't informative enough so we added content descripters on the back of the games. Then they complained that parents wouldn't notice any of this(from lack of common sense I pressume) so we launched huge advertising campaigns for the ratings systems on tv, print and online. On top of all of that, parental controls were added to all consoles during the "last" generation and naturally this generation followed suit. And despite all of these informative preventive methods we took to protect young kids, California now wants to complain that an M rated game secretly has A rated content that can't be accessed unless you play the game for 800 hours. Um.....wow. How idiotic.