The Video Game Industry Goes Political 187
An anonymous reader writes "The video game industry is finally forming a PAC by the end of March to get some political clout. A story in The New York Times yesterday reports that the video game industry has finally woken up and realized that in order to stay strong going forward, it can't rely on 13-year-old pimple-faced kids to promote its agenda."
"13 year old pimple faces" (Score:5, Interesting)
Hands up. How many here are above 18? Eligible to drive, drink liquor and (most of all) vote? Ok, hands down again, I can't see the opposite wall anymore.
I think it's a good step. It's time the politicians see that it might not be a good idea to use games as the scapegoats anymore, because gamers vote. Computer games ain't for the 13 year olds anymore. Computer games aren't just for kids who don't matter because they can't vote. 20 years ago, computer games were a teenager pastime, today, more and more computer gamers are well above 18, many are interested in politics and many take their games, and their freedom to play the games they want, serious enough to consider it and the stance politicians take towards games important enough to have it influence their decision who to give their vote to.
There is a reason why politicians have no problem blaming every single thing that goes wrong with today's youths on games, but surprisingly few blame TV and movies. The reason is simple: TV and movies do have a political lobby.
While I'm not really a fan of political lobbying (it is so close to political bribing), it seems to be a necessity in today's political climate.
Re:"13 year old pimple faces" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The time is ripe. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What? (Score:3, Interesting)
Who has the lowest UID*Age on slashdot?
Re:Conflicts (Score:4, Interesting)
Quickly, now.
Name one - just one - developer whose name doesn't begin with the letter R that makes headlines for the violence of its video games. Whose PR trumpets the casts the player in the role of the psycho killer. The use of the Wii controller to mime torture porn kills. F.E.A.R, The Orange Box, Bioshock. These games and a hundred others enter the market to critical and popular acclaim and nary a whisper of complaint. You take Rockstar out of the picture and most of the problems disappear.
To take an example from television - and from Fox, of all networks: "The Sarah Conner Chronicles" has all the patented shock and thrills of the Terminator franchise. In a sense, the story begins with a shootout in a high school classroom. But there is a lot of fun to be had here too. You get to save Summer Glau by tossing her out of a twelve-story window. Fun is something we haven't seen much of in sci-fi since Battlestar Galactica turned so bleak.
Re:The time is ripe. (Score:5, Interesting)
The game ratings set by the ESRB are voluntary. Just like the movie ratings by the MPAA are voluntary. No game "HAS" to be rated. In fact several games (and movies) are released as "NR" (not rated). Hillary of course feels that government should ENFORCE ratings systems.
Oh and as for the "age restriction" - yes, there is a HUGE difference between a 17 year old playing a violent video game and an 18 year old playing the same violent video game... All this politics came out because of the "hot coffee" mod for GTA... a game released with a 17+ rating. Now at 17 you are old enough to enlist and go kill Iraqis oh sorry "insurgents", but apparently heaven forbid you witness some bad attempt at video porn (no actual oral-gential contact is visible). Big fucking deal.
Enough of the "nanny state" philosophy. It's up to parents, not the government, to regulate what their children can and can't play. And guess what - violent crime and rape statistics are at an all time low since the mid/late 90's and the popularity of home computers/internet/gaming systems.
Re:Why not state it plainly? (Score:3, Interesting)
On the one hand you'll see them battling out for getting rid of censorship of gaming, which is a good thing.
On the other hand you'll see them battling out for making the DMCA even tighter than it already is. As much as we like to point fingers at the RIAA, and MPAA, Nintendo and Sony have both leveraged quite a few government resources in the past to do raids of copyright violators. As for Microsoft, well, they seem to like DRM just as much as anybody.
Re:The time is ripe. (Score:3, Interesting)
'Voluntary' in the sense that the government threatened to impose restrictions if the game industry didn't censor itself; they've just proven why self-censorship is always a bad idea, because game censorship laws would have been thrown out by now, whereas the ESRB is so entrenched it's almost impossible to get rid of.
Either way, without threats from the government the ESRB ratings would not exist. That's hardly 'voluntary' by any standard I'm aware of.
Re:Why not state it plainly? (Score:3, Interesting)
Until political lobbies are basically outlawed, this country will continue to suffer. It's not the rich getting richer that is the true problem. It's that as the rich reach a certain level, they then get to start buying laws that favor them getting even more... richer.
Lobbyists and campaign contributions from corporations or cartels (read: *IAA) have never been so open with their intent to buy politicians. It's always been "we know what you're doing but you still do it on the DL."
Now, here you have a new lobby being almost flippant about their right to buy politicians, as if it were protected constitutionally.
I've actually started paying attention to John Edwards this campaign, as he is the only candidate that has not accepted lobbyist contributions to date, and espouses the need to rid the White House (and I hope the other Houses) of lobbyists for good.
Although, that kind of talk will hardly get you elected. Sigh...
Re:Attention span (Score:3, Interesting)
When everquest came out, I know people who dropped out of university, and others who who took letter grade hits. I know a guy who lost his job... just started calling in sick to keep playing. There are countless stories of broken relationships over that game. And extreme cases involving parental neglects and suicides.
People were playing every waking hour they had. It earned the nickname evercrack for a reason.
You can argue that these people were 'weak willed or something' if you want, but they were almost universally good students, good parents, and socially well adjusted prior to EQ. I dont "blame" EQ, or think Sony should be held responsible... but that game triggered a level of obsession/addiction in a lot of otherwise perfectly well adjusted people.
Games like EQ aside, I think a lot of us can remember irresponsibly playing games like Civilization, Masters of Orion, and Starcraft into the wee hours of the morning... 6-10 hour marathons when we'd only really meant to play for 1 or 2.