Lately, the blog has been a lot of stupid bullshit about me driving listening to F-Zero music and playing Rescue Rangers on the NES. While I am a big proponent of stupid bullshit, I also have a serious side. It’s not big, but it’s there (that’s what she said). So today, I want to talk about the issue concerning the legality of selling violent games to kids that is on its way to the US Supreme Court.

What is currently happening is that the Supreme Court has decided to hear both sides of the case in regards to a proposed California law, written by State Senator Leland Yee and signed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005. The law was challenged by industry representatives, and deemed unconstitutional.

What this law seeks to do is make it a crime to sell “ultra-violent video games” to children. The entertainment software industry has a voluntary and self-moderated ratings system, the ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board) that has been in place since 1994.

So, what do I think of this bill? While I honestly believe that it has noble intentions (at least I’d like to think so), I find that it is a misguided attempt to wrest control over an industry that is often unfairly made the scapegoat once everyone starts finger-pointing after a child commits a violent act. I think that this bill becoming a law would have dangerous repercussions not only for the video game industry, but for entertainment as a whole.

“This is not about Leland Yee trying to destroy the industry,” Yee said in an interview with Kotaku. “This is not about Leland Yee trying to prevent any of you game [developers] from developing any more atrocious kinds of games. This is a free society. If you have the imagination to do something even more horrible with the technology, then god bless you. That’s part of our freedom of expression here in America, but you just have to figure out when it’s appropriate and when it’s not appropriate. For me, as a child psychologist you ought not be doing it for kids.”

Pick out the venom from that quote. “Atrocious kinds of games.” “Do something even more horrible with the technology.” Yee, who is proposing a law, which is supposed to be fair for everyone, has already made up his mind about the people who create these games. He sees them as little more than frat boys, high-fiving each other as they all seek to push the envelope a bit further than the ones before them. For me, as a human being first and a gamer second, Mr. Yee has thrown any credibility he had out the window with such petty remarks.

The thing that really seals the deal, though, is how he ended it: “You ought not be doing it for kids.”

As someone who has worked in the software retail industry in both California and Massachusetts, I can safely say that the industry is doing a fine job policing itself. While working at GameStop, we had specific instructions and training that required us to request identification from people who tried to purchase a game that had been rated M (for Mature, suitable for ages 17 and over). There were even secret shoppers who would test a store’s compliance with this guideline. If you were caught selling the game to a minor, you were terminated from the company.

Just two weeks ago, I was in Best Buy to purchase Mass Effect 2 for the Xbox 360, a Mature-rated game. I am 26 years old. I was with Christina, who is 24. We don’t get carded when we order a beer at a restaurant. The Best Buy cashier carded both of us before he would sell us the game.

Are there kids who occasionally slip through and purchase an M-rated game? It would be naïve to say no. However, every day there are also kids who get away with buying alcohol or cigarettes before they’re old enough as well. The sale of alcohol and tobacco IS regulated federally, and it has not eliminated children from acquiring them. It has made it harder, but not impossible. What proof is there that video games would be any different?

Lumping video games in with tobacco, alcohol and pornography is ignorant and prejudiced. Video games are not a form of entertainment solely for the enjoyment of children. Several studies have pegged the average gamer between the ages of 18 and either 39 or 49 depending on the study. They are the ones with disposable income, and as such there are games that cater to that demographic. Just because they are on a shelf does not mean that they are being promoted or sold to children.

When I worked at GameStop, nine times out of ten when I’d refuse to sell an M-rated game to a child, they’d leave the store and come back a few minutes later with an annoyed parent. I would explain the rating and the game’s content to the parent, and they’d buy it anyway.

This law will do nothing to stop children from getting their hands on these games. The solution isn’t to place federal restrictions on something that retailers are already doing voluntarily. The solution is education, putting the ESRB more out in the open as a way to educate parents about what games are and are not appropriate for children. Ultimately, it is the parent’s decision, not the government’s.

The problem is, most parents don’t care. They still see video games as a childish venture and they don’t want to be bothered with it. If God of War will make Billy shut up and stop bothering his sister, then God of War is what’s going home with them. It’s a video game, so it’s for kids, right?

This law will only reinforce that ancient assumption and doom the medium to always be considered below television, movies and books.

Another problem with the proposed legislation is the vague wording. “Ultra-violent” games. How do you define that? Here is the outline from the bill, taken from a Kotaku article:

(d) (1) “Violent video game” means a video game in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being, if those acts are depicted in the game in a manner that does either of the following:
(A) Comes within all of the following descriptions:
(i) A reasonable person, considering the game as a whole, would find appeals to a deviant or morbid interest of minors.
(ii) It is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the community as to what is suitable for minors.
(iii) It causes the game, as a whole, to lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.
(B) Enables the player to virtually inflict serious injury upon images of human beings or characters with substantially human characteristics in a manner which is especially heinous, cruel, or depraved in that it involves torture or serious physical abuse to the victim.
(2) For purposes of this subdivision, the following definitions apply:
(A) “Cruel” means that the player intends to virtually inflict a high degree of pain by torture or serious physical abuse of the victim in addition to killing the victim.
(B) “Depraved” means that the player relishes the virtual killing or shows indifference to the suffering of the victim, as evidenced by torture or serious physical abuse of the victim.
(C) “Heinous” means shockingly atrocious. For the killing depicted in a video game to be heinous, it must involve additional acts of torture or serious physical abuse of the victim as set apart from
other killings.
(D) “Serious physical abuse” means a significant or considerable amount of injury or damage to the victim’s body which involves a substantial risk of death, unconsciousness, extreme physical pain, substantial disfigurement, or substantial impairment of the function of a bodily member, organ, or mental faculty. Serious physical abuse, unlike torture, does not require that the victim be conscious of the
abuse at the time it is inflicted. However, the player must specifically intend the abuse apart from the killing.
(E) “Torture” includes mental as well as physical abuse of the victim. In either case, the virtual victim must be conscious of the abuse at the time it is inflicted; and the player must specifically intend to virtually inflict severe mental or physical pain or suffering upon the victim, apart from killing the victim.
(3) Pertinent factors in determining whether a killing depicted in a video game is especially heinous, cruel, or depraved include infliction of gratuitous violence upon the victim beyond that necessary to commit the killing, needless mutilation of the victim’s body, and helplessness of the victim.

Again, it’s too vague. A lot of the wording of this definition leaves it open for interpretation. Virtually any game with any level of violent conflict could become entangled in this catch-all web. What this means is that there will be a committee, appointed by the government and paid for with taxpayer dollars, to re-do everything the ESRB is currently doing.

There will be a government body deciding what is and is not appropriate for your children to play.

Please re-read that sentence a few times and let it sink in.

So where does it go from there? Now the government can decide what games can and can’t be sold to kids. So what’s stopping them from deciding what kind of games can’t be sold AT ALL? If a “game, as a whole… lack(s) serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” then why even bother putting it on shelves? Only psychopaths would play that game, right?

The fact of the matter is that video games are a protected form of free speech, as has been proven time and time again when a lawyer or lawmaker has tried to get their 15 minutes of fame by creating one of these laws. The music industry has stood by the video game industry during this entire issue. “Culture and art thrives on the preservation of the First Amendment. Any law or effort to weaken First Amendment protection of free expression whether in music, film or video games or other creative content is ultimately a harmful thing,” said Cara Duckworth of the Recording Industry Association of America in a Kotaku interview.

So once video games are regulated, what’s stopping them from regulating the sale of movies, books or music?

This bill is dangerous, misguided, misinformed, and unconstitutional, just as others have been deemed by the Supreme Court before. I hope that this bill will suffer the same fate.