[StarSlayer]

Anybody notice when the politicians whine about game violence they still site Doom .

Ach! ze blood! I'm traumatized!!

As for parental controls and selling games based on age IMO its a good idea, and as kara pointed out might insulate the gaming industry from the whole "OMG Timmy played GTA and shot up the police station, lets blame the media!" issue.  Do i think it will end the persistent "lets ignore ****ty parenting and scapegoat somebody else" method of doing things? No, but it will add a buffer... hopefully.

[Maxwell]

Unlikely.

Once you admit that games are dangerous enough that they have to be regulated by law, its a short leap to blaming them for every kids misbehavior.

Parents already don't use the existing rating systems on games, which is why the state wants  stores to enforce it.  So I'd say its a safe assumption that any new system wont shield developers any more than the old one did.

[karajorma]

For once I agree with you 100% nuclear1 and I'm as liberal as they come.

Liberal, conservative, it doesn't really mean anything.  This is a common sense issue, and everyone regardless of what side of the aisle they're on should see this as a step in the right direction.

But glad to know we both see eye-to-eye on something for once.    I'll get the insect screens up for the swarms of locusts anyway.

I know. I felt dirty just saying that I agreed with you.

But that was my point. A lot of people were trying to argue with you claiming that this was censorship or vilification of games. It's a bit hard to make the same argument when you have liberals agreeing with you though. This isn't censorship at all. If anything it could lead to more violent and bloody games. Because now the onus is no longer on the game producers to keep their games out of children's hands. They can simply say "This is an adult game and someone broke the law to let a kid play it. We're not responsible at all"

id rather my kids (not that i ever intend to produce any more humans) see something like saving private ryan, where they can see the blood, guts, pain and suffering that comes as the consequence of war, than a movie such as (insert name of generic action flick here) where bullets kill instantly, you dont see any blood, and the gun weilding good guys are portrayed as heroes for gunning down all the bad guys. the idea is you want those kids to come out of the movie thinking "violence sucks" and not "that was cool".

Interesting, because I 100% agree with you Nuke.  There's a difference between SPR/Platoon and XXX/genericactionflick#49591:  the exact reasons you just stated.  Still, I don't know if I'd want my kids watching SPR at age 10 or so; maybe wait a few years (14/15 or so), then let them have a go at it.  Just my own personal experiences working on that, I guess.

And that's the important thing. They are your kids. You should have the right to decide when they watch 18 rated movies. You should have the right to decide when you think that they are mature enough. You can do that with movies because laws exist preventing the sale of such movies to kids. Video games however were a huge loophole in that right though. One which hopefully is plugged by this law.

Which is, of course, where I agree with you on this issue:  parents have to be parents.

Exactly. And now you can blame them. Lets say that some teenager goes on a rampage and the media want to blame Doom 3. Now you can blame the parents for giving that child Doom 3. Even if the cause of the neglect is bull**** at least now the right person gets blamed. That's not much progress but do you really expect the politicians/media to stop looking for a scapegoat?

You can't say parents should be parents while simultaneously knocking their legs out from under them over this sort of responsibility. If you do you just give them weasel room to say "My bad parenting is not to blame. I couldn't stop them from playing Doom."

[Bob-san]

Why not make all games with a single piece of "adult" material rated NC200? You must be over 200 years old in order to buy this game.

[karajorma]

Why not make all games with a single piece of "adult" material rated NC200? You must be over 200 years old in order to buy this game.

Cause that would be stupid.


Which is why the bible thumpers would all support it.

[KappaWing]

I agree with Swantz and Nuke. Someone I know very well was taught sex ed by his mother in a very matter-of-fact way at age 5, and hes perfectly normal today. Censorship is theocratic in nature.

[karajorma]

So you think that only theocrats have a problem with say 5 year olds watching porn then?

This isn't censorship. If a parent wants their children to play these games then nothing is stopping them from letting them play them. What this does is allow parents who don't want their children to play them the chance to say no.

[Nuke]

censorship is where the media content is edited in order to remove anything which may be considered obscene. ratings arent censorship, there just a way of telling consumers what theyre buying. i have no problem with making it illegal for children to buy adult  products without parental consent. this gives control to the parents, forcing them to be accountable for their actions. then again i dont believe it should be a felony to sell kids copies of quake 4. a misdemeanor woulld suffice, a small fine and a coulple days in jail. but to make it a felony is down right ridiculous. this just shows how ****ed up our judicial system is.

[Maxwell]

So you think that only theocrats have a problem with say 5 year olds watching porn then?

I'm sure everyone has problems with the notion, but we should also have issues with letting the government sit as judge and jury over whats morally acceptable content.
 
Ratings are not censorship, until you enforce them with law.
Once you add legal liability to this equation then its going to effect what games businesses choose to put on their shelves.  If a store like walmart kicks a fuss about content, that problem is going to reach right back to the money men who pay this industries bills (and they will quickly reach into the game designers crotch area, with the obvious results  ).

The government won't be erasing any adult content from the market.
But if they threaten to stick a product with a bad rating, the producers will do it for them.

[karajorma]

I'm sure everyone has problems with the notion, but we should also have issues with letting the government sit as judge and jury over whats morally acceptable content.
 
Ratings are not censorship, until you enforce them with law.

They still aren't automatically censorship then either.

Once you add legal liability to this equation then its going to effect what games businesses choose to put on their shelves.  If a store like walmart kicks a fuss about content, that problem is going to reach right back to the money men who pay this industries bills (and they will quickly reach into the game designers crotch area, with the obvious results  ).

The government won't be erasing any adult content from the market.
But if they threaten to stick a product with a bad rating, the producers will do it for them.

Why? That's certainly not having any effect over here in the UK. Lots of films get an 18 rating and it doesn't stop them selling well. It's only in America where they have NC-17 and 18 as different ratings where 18 is seen as box office death.

I'll bet the re-rating of GTA : SA as 18 didn't do its sales much damage. The actual re-rating cost them money but I doubt it would have hurt them much if they had actually launched as an 18 rated game in the first place. Lots of games do that here in the UK.

You already have to rate people when they buy alcohol or cigarettes or guns anyway so Walmart already have the systems in place to check ID. This is just a fuss over nothing.

[Maxwell]

They still aren't automatically censorship then either.

It leads to the same result.
The walmart debacle in particular has already affected a few titles, forcing their developers to either make a different version of the software or edit out materials.

The rating system does not harm big name titles like a GTA or Halo that have an established fan base or a powerful publisher backing them.  It does the most serious damage to lesser known titles that are tying to break out. The smaller companies that depend on these types of sales will be forced to alter their products.
Add to this problem, the morality of a review board is not always consistent with the morality of the audience.  Which means the next Doom spinoff is likely to go unmolested no matter how high the body count, but if you dare show Alpha 1 smoking a cigarette (or God forbid some Vasudan nipple gets in there) prepare for some rushed editing.  Which is going to affect the freedom of the games makers and the players experience.

Bottom line is what you get is not what the designers delivered and intended to sell to you.
...Which is (de facto) Censorship, and that wont help the little guy.

[karajorma]

I'm still not seeing the problem though. If you set out to make an adult game then you know your market is adults. Why are you complaining about a law that restricts you to adults only?

This still isn't censorship. It's the developers choosing to target the audience they want. That's why The Little Mermaid doesn't say **** in every sentence (Although I've heard that Warner Brothers want to make Little Mermaid Xtreme in which she does ).

If you're sticking nipples in your cert 12 game then they probably are there just to titillate and not because you're making Michelangelo's Paint the World Challenge where it might be for artistic reasons.

[Maxwell]

If you set out to make an adult game then you know your market is adults. Why are you complaining about a law that restricts you to adults only?

...because you might not be setting out to make an adult (xxx, murder, politics, drug abuse, etc...) game and you get a nasty phone call from your boss saying "if the ratings board does no approve, you don't get a paycheck".

When your trying to titillate the audience, games being entertainment and all, do you really need more non-gamers looking over your shoulder and passing judgment?

[karajorma]

Well then the issue is not the law but the make up of the ratings board then surely?

You're complaining at the wrong target.

Remember that movies have their own ratings board and although you do get the odd bit of stupidity from the studios over that sort of thing by and large they make the kind of movies they want to. They might be by and large bad, formulaic movies but that's not a ratings board issue.

[Maxwell]

I said before that its not a big deal if the industry provides a label of contents on the games we buy, we can ignore that tag.  The problem comes in how the state enforces an arbitrary label.
We can debate at which point the contents of a peanut butter jar go from "Crunchy" to "Creamy", but throwing people in jail over the issue takes things to a dangerous level.

The NY bills call for three main things:
1) Establishment of  a council that will decide if the industry run ESRB is a valid rating system and help improve it.
Which suggests the ESRB will have to adopt government standards or be replaced.

2) A mechanism to prevent unauthorized access of software by minors.
This parts vague as most new consoles already come with parental locks (which has some folks thinking they mean an additional layer of protection).

3) Making the sale of games with "indecent images" to minors a felony.
Not only is the wording wide open to interpretation but this also makes the Walmart model a standard for every distributor.

A class E felony comes with a three year Jail sentence  (and, when combined with NY's "three strikes" law, could score you life).
...Unless you rip the cutsenes from your adult game and burn them to DVD, then there is no penalty for selling it to minors.

[Dark RevenantX]

I could somewhat agree with the law if it was a misdemeanor, but a freaking FELONY?  So, if you're some store clerk who hands a (tragically single (hypothetical)) 17-year-old the new version of "Leisure Suit Larry," you're going to jail for 3 years, lose your job (and most likely your wife), and have any hope of getting a decent job eradicated (having the class of "felon" on your resume is required by law if, in fact, you are a felon).

They're placing "unauthorized video game sale to minors" in the same category as "vehicular manslaughter of the 2nd degree"

[Sarkoth]

We in Germany have to deal with politicans, who try to place even playing violent videogames in the same category as makers and watchers of childporn.

Thats freakin' annoying.

But censorship in any way seems always to represent some lack of ... dealing with with issues.

It's always easy to blame. And actually, this didn't change in history and won't in future either.

[karajorma]

Remember before we go any further I was arguing that the idea of such a law isn't bad. Not that the law itself isn't a poor execution of a good idea. I've not read up on the law and I have little intention of doing so.

Most of the arguments I've seen seem to be against the very idea of a bill making it illegal to sell to minors.

A class E felony comes with a three year Jail sentence  (and, when combined with NY's "three strikes" law, could score you life).

Surely an incentive to actually card the individual then?

Given the ease with which underage people can buy alcohol and cigarettes despite similar prohibitions to the ones you state it's pretty obvious that the danger of getting caught is not a sufficient deterrent against the financial benefits of ignoring the rules.

I doubt that many courts would actually go for the maximum sentence. We're talking about suspended sentences for pretty much everyone convicted.

[Nuclear1]

They're placing "unauthorized video game sale to minors" in the same category as "vehicular manslaughter of the 2nd degree"

Agreed.  A misdemeanor would do just fine.  While I deplore selling these sorts of video games to minors, it's not really enough to warrant felony charges, is it?

Unless, of course, you really want to get the message across to parents that some video games are bad enough to warrant said charges.  In which case, you've got parents who are-hopefully-more aware of the law and how exactly bad these video games may be for their children.

But censorship in any way seems always to represent some lack of ... dealing with with issues.

For the thousandth time, this isn't censorship.  There's a very distinct difference between barring the selling of violent video games to minors (what the NY bill is doing) and barring the inclusion of violence or obscene content in video games or barring their creation outright (what censorship actually is). 

Like karajorma said earlier, if anything, this will allow companies to produce more violent video games.  Only now they won't take flak for it, because if a minor ends up playing their game, there's two levels to go through:  the negligent parents, and/or the workers who committed a class E felony to sell the game. 

So really, this is almost the dead opposite of censorship.

[IceFire]

I don't see a huge problem here.  Mandatory ESRB ratings is good...ESRB is a industry standard for gaming and it seems to work quite well.  Its flexible enough to cover the whole range of content that is available without being too ridiculous.  And I don't see a huge problem either with stores preventing 10 year old Charlie from buying the latest 18+ game.  It would then be either the fault of the store for allowing little Charlie to buy it as mentioned before in this thread or the parent for buying the game for him.

I know from personal experience that some parents are totally clueless about what to show their kid and where to take them so this is perfectly fine in my opinion.  I don't like massively restrictive laws and I don't like the calls for a new rating system when the ESRB one seems to work so well and is governed by the industry but this one seems, at least on the surface, to make a fair bit of sense.  The penalty to store owners/workers caught selling to minors should be the same as in the movie theaters...not sure if this part matches up or not.  Don't know a whole lot about the US legal system there.