Video Game Voters Network: fight For Your Video Games

As a employee and previous Videogames salesman at a big box retailer, I can personally attest to the fact that education, not regulation, is the way too combat minors gaining access to inappropriate material. Seeing as I am now in a position of authority, I make it my mission to make sure that young children are not exposed to games that are clearly identified as insppropriate. An example I use is one instance when a ten-year-old(guesstimate) was holding a copy of a Grand Theft Auto game, which had been identified by both the ESRB AND the retailers own stickers as not suitable for the child, yet when he showed the game to his mother, SHE AGREED TO BUY THE GAME. I stopped the mother and told her that the game contained extreme violence and strong, sexual themes, she just shrugged me off and said, "Oh, he sees worse on the TV". Needless to say I was floored by the nonchalant attitude she had, it also made me question her parenting skills. I forgot to metion that this retailer also has strict rules that dictate all cashiers are required to ask for ID when purchasing any M-Rated videogame. Since I have moved to those front lanes, I have taken it upon myself to make sure the cashiers do enforce this policies. I firmly believe it is the responsibility of the retailer and the parent to monitor what goes into children's hands, not a wasteful, taxfunded government legislation that would eventually get overturned in the Supreme Court, I am not paying tax for a bunch of hypocrits to try to pander to potential voters.

The control of video games should only be limited to ESRB ratings, no more no less. It is not the governments place to control video games any more than it is their place to control what car we drive or what clothes we wear. Video games do not cause violence, if anything they inspire creativity. Not in the blood, guts, and gore that are in some of the more violent ones, but in the more abstract concepts of futuristic governments and spacecraft, or the abstract armor of favored mid evil characters. Its the players choice, not the governments, what they like or dislike. Now granted, there are going to be some kids who get a hold of some of the more violent games: so what!? Your worried so much about the modern development of children and their ever-so-fragile psyche that you've overlooked the past, and how when we got pissed then, we'd vent it in a fight with other school children. Now that such an act is a heretical outrage against a neo-socialist capitolist cesspool, we turn to a different source: Video games. Is it such a bad thing that now instead of beating someone up, we beat someone up...digitally. I can't see how the psychological effect can be any more than mild. Please don't impede on our right to game freely! HOO-YAH!

AT3 Wittal, USN

I do not agree that video games should be regulated as a mother and 46 year old gamer I believe it is the job of parents and gaurdians to decide what is best for their children. I always had a open relationship with my daughter on violence and sexual content on t.v.,in movies,books or video games you have to explain that these are stories made up by people who get paid to entertain. The violence in video games or smoking and drug use for thar matter will not make someone do the acts experienced in any media. The people that do these things make a choice inside there selves and would do them even if no video games exsisted. It is my opinion that regulating the early news show would perhaps help influence children as those violent acts are real..

Hello... is this on? :)

Is this really the biggest problem we have in America? Why are our politicians wasting our time with this when there are SO many other issues?

I've been playing video games since I was a kid and now I'm 39 with two kids of my own that also play video games. I also help with GameCamp! (www.gamecamp.org) as I have been in the game industry since '92 and can relate my experiences from the games I've worked on to the kids that want to enter the industry.

Games (of all types) are an escape from reality, just like movies, books, comics, fantasy, thoughts, dreams, etc. They are most certainly not Satan, even though it sounds like the Church Lady is the only type of person that is writing our representatives.

Please write your representatives so they know that gamers vote!

I hate splinter groups in politics, because I think there are much bigger issues (I don't want to say what my biggies are... except for cancer research) that we need to wrap our collective tax dollars around - but this is truly a first amendment issue and it worries me to have so many people telling me what I can and cannot be exposed to.

My children play "E" rated games and are not allowed to watch PG movies without my wife and my permission (and we have to see it first).

One real problem I have is that TV commercials aren't rated, but that's for another rant. If you're a parent, you know what I'm talking about. Horror movie commercials (rated "R") during children's programming. I've seen it, really.

In summary, video games are ways to live out fantasies - not murder trainers. All games need the same protection, and since we DO have a ratings board, we can protect our own children WHILE we create games that fit every demographic. Here's a brain twister for you lawmakers... Does chess teach you to murder kings, or is it just raw strategy?

Sincerely, Billy Cain VP of Development, Co-owner Critical Mass Interactive www.criticalmassinteractive.com

I am a video game design major in college currently and video games have been my entire life. I have respect for the rating system that has been put in place and it is the resposisbility of the parents that buy their children these games for it to take effect. Video games are an artform and therefore should be treated as such. If you don't like what you see, then don't look at it.

I'm a Southern girl with fairly traditional values. I went to a private Christian school and graduated valedictorian with a 3.8 average. I'm a Christian myself.

I'm also a fan of computer games, especially RPGs. I'm an artist, I'm a musician, and I'm a writer. Video games give me a place to put all of that to use altogether. They give me a place to put my imagination to work, to make other people happy. I don't get paid for it. I enjoy making other people happy.

Does it sound like video games make me want to kill people? I've been gaming since I was thirteen.

My parents did a perfectly fine job of educating me in what's right and wrong. However, they never stifled my creativity. Is it really the government's job to parent the nation? Do you really think it would even help? If you really feel the need to spend money on this, spend money on putting out the word on gaming ratings and what they mean.

There are too many mature adults that are gamers to ignore. The government has stifled the gaming developers' creativity in gaming. As long as the content hurts nobody, there's no reason to hold it back. That would be like telling authors and artists what to write. How is gaming any different? It's a combination of creative art and logic.

All this commotion over video game censorship is completley arbiturary and a waste of tax payers dollars. It's not the goverments job to punish my kids, it's not the goverments job to pick them up from practice and its not their job to try to regulate the games they are playing. Thats my job. Don't ruin video games, for their main demographic (males around the age 33) just because a few ignorant senators can't accept new things in our culture. In twenty years if not sooner most of the kids that have played video games in their youth will be running the country, we will never hear of this issue again after that.

"Video games are bad for you? Thats what they first said about Rock and Roll"

-Mario brothers creator Shigeru Miyamoto

Video Games are the latest in a history of scapegoats our politicians and worse yet, parents are trying to pin blame on instead of accepting it themselves. I grew up with video games in my life, I learned to read, faster than other children my age, through video games. It angers me to see our elected officials trying to place legal shackles around an industry that has been every bit as forthcoming about its content as Hollywood, in an attempt to release lazy and/or underinvolved parents from what should rightfully be their responsibility.

Video games should stay self regulated for one simple reason: the job of raising a child is the duty of the parent, not the state. To illustrate my point, I will tell you a story.

I was six years old in 1991. I had a SEGA Genesis, and the big game of the summer was the first Mortal Kombat. My mom knew about the game and the extreme violence depicted in it, and she forbade me to play it (as she did all M-rated or equivalent games at the time).

However, me being a resourceful child, I found a friend who also had a SEGA Genesis and whose parents had bought him a copy of Mortal Kombat. So, I go over to his house and we play Mortal Kombat until the wee hours of the morning.

That following Monday, I got into a fight. My mother, being the inquisitive sort that she is, found out that I had been playing Mortal Kombat while I was at my friend's house.

Her punishment lasted for seven years. I was not able to buy or rent an M-Rated game. She enforced this rule very strictly, and because of this rule I experienced more games in more genres. I also learned the power of what an M-rating means when parents use it.

Eventually, she thought I was mature enough to understand the difference between the game world and the real one, and she let me rent an M-Rated game. I do not recall the title of the game, only a great sense of disappointment as I played it, due to the game being very terrible from a gameplay point of view.

The point of my story here is that the ESRB has functioned, for those parents who cared enough to look for the rating, since its inception. Government regulation of the games industry is not the solution to the problem of young children buying and playing violent video games. The solution is better education of the parents, or incentive for the parents to pay attention to the ESRB ratings. The ratings are not difficult to understand, and indeed provide more information on the game than movie ratings do for major motion pictures.

The ESRB is an immensely useful tool for game buyers, but if parents do not use the tool then it is not the tool that is at fault. To use an analogy, imagine your car breaks down on the highway one day. You've got a wrench in the trunk and with some time and elbow grease you could fix the car yourself. It is not the wrench's fault that the car broke down, and anyone can see that you should use the tool you have to fix the problem.

The ESRB is the video game industry's wrench, and it's a heck of a tool, especially for those who know to use it.

Any child whose parents do not involve themselves in his or her interests has bigger problems than simulated violence in Mortal Kombat. Rather than expending political capital fruitlessly attempting to be a surrogate parent, the government should be endeavoring to improve the state of education, balance the budget, and create high quality jobs, so that parents everywhere have more time and energy to do what only they can do: parent.

Nathan Frost Programmer and Life-Long Gamer Crystal Dynamics