Acid for Blood

Don’t Shoot the Messenger

I picked up a copy of The Economist (January 20th - 26th, 2007) whilst I was at the airport. I haven't read it lately, but I was feeling a bit cut off from world events and this bothered me a bit. I guess travel does that to you. Usually when I buy a copy of The Economist, I rarely read most of its contents. This time, I did. Go me!

Anyway, this week's edition has a rather balanced view of the debate surrounding the accessibility of M-rated videogames. Unfortunately, you need to be a premium subscriber to access it on the internets. This issue will be removed from newsstands fairly soon, so you won't be able to purchase it either. If you can buy it, then do so. If you can't...

Don't Shoot the Messenger

Films are not banned to keep them away from children. The same should apply to video games.

They poison the mind and corrupt the morals of the young, who waste their time sitting on sofas immersed in dangerous fantasy worlds. That, at least, was the charge levelled against novels during the 18th century by critics worried about the impact of a new medium on young people. Today the idea that novels can harm people sounds daft. And that is surely how history will judge modern criticism of video games, which are accused of turning young poeple into violent criminals. This week European justice ministers met to discuss how best to restrict the sale of violent games to children. Some countries, such as Germany, believe the answer is to ban some games altogether. That is going too far.

Grand Theft Coach and Horses

Criticism of games is merely the latest example of a tendency ot demonise new and unfamiliar forms of entertainment. In 1816 waltzing was condemned as a "fatal contagion" that encouraged promiscuity; in 1910 films were denounced as "an evil pure and simple, destructive of social interchange"; in the 1950s rock 'n' roll was said to turn young people into "devil worshipper" and comic books were accused of turning children into drug addicts and criminals. In each case the pattern is the same: young people adopt a new form of entertainment, older people are spooked by its unfamiliarity and condemn it; but eventually the young grow up and the new medium becomes accepted -- at which point another example appears and the cycle begins again.

The opposition to video games is founded on the mistaken belief that most gamers are children. In fact, two-thirds of gamers are over 18 and the average gamer is around 30. But the assumption that gamers are mostly children leads to a double standard. Violent films are permitted ("Apocalypto", anyone?) and the notion that some films are unsuitable for children is generally understood. Yet different rules are applied to games.

Aren't games different because they are interactive? It is true that video games can make people feel excited or aggressive, but so do many sports. There is not evidence that video gaming causes long-term aggression; violent crime in America has fallen as games have become popular. Violent criminals do sometimes turn out to have been gamers. But since so many people play video games (half of all Americans, for a start) it would be strange if some criminals did not.

Games ought to be age-rated, just as films are, and retailers should not sell adult-rated games to children any more than they should sell them adult-rated films. Ratings schemes are already in place, and in some countries restrictions on the sale of adult-rated games to minors have the force of law. But most games for children are bought by parents. Rather than banning some games outright, the best way to keep grown-up games away from children is to educate non-gaming parents that, as with films, notall games are suitable for children.

Oddly enough, Hillary Clinton, one of the politicians who has led the criticism of the gaming industry in America, has recently come round to this view. (Perhaps somone gave her a Nintendo Wii.) Last month she emphasised the need for parents to pay more attention to game ratings and called on the industry, retailers and parents to work together. But this week some European politicians seemed to be moving in the other direction: the Netherlands may follow Germany, for example, in banning some games outright. Not all adults wish to play violent games, just as not all of them enjoy violent movies. But they should be free to do so if they wish.

Culture Clash: With Teeth

This month's IGDA Culture Clash article calls for a reform of the ESRB rating system. Amongst Sakey's reccommendations are:

• Don't hold publishers responsible for the actions of modders
• Don't re-rate games so quickly
• Content descriptors should be more prominent than the ratings
• Don't separate sex and violence
• Enforce the ratings
• Enforce policy wisely

In other words, "demonstrate that the industry can police itself".

[Read]

Culture Clash: You Don’t Know, Jack

In this month's Culture Clash, Matthew Sakey writes a thank you letter to Jack Thompson:

If you weren't the spearhead of the anti-video game movement, someone else would have to be. And that someone else might be charismatic, rational, well-spoken and deft with the press. Instead we got you, and you've done more for us than all the PR firms in the world could have.

[Read]

ESA Launches Videogame Advocacy Group

It's about time a group like this was formed:

The Video Game Voters Network is a place for American gamers to organize and defend against threats to video games. This medium is fully protected speech under the Constitution, and receives the same First Amendment protection as books, movies, music, and cable television programs. The Network opposes efforts to regulate the content of entertainment media, including proposals to criminalize the sale of certain games to minors, or regulate video games differently from movies, music, books, and other media. The Network also enables gamers to stay educated about issues, reach out to federal, state, and local officials, and register to vote. The Video Game Voters Network is a project sponsored by the Entertainment Software Association, a trade group representing America's video game publishers.

[Via Next Generation]

Cultural Differences

Three enlightening pieces that I have read recently:

Jim Rossignol visits Korea and writes about their games culture: "Sex, Fame and PC Baangs: How the Orient plays host to PC gaming's strangest culture".

Nick Yee from The Daedalus Project draws parallels between entrenched American prejudice against Chinese labourers in late-1800s San Francisco and in-game anti-Chinese comments and behaviour perpetrated by Western players in MMORPGs (The Chinese players are assumed to be gold farmers by virtue of their nationality.): "Yi-Shan-Guan".

On 4colorrebellion, an American gamer living in Japan voices criticism against American Xbox 360 fanboys for their anti-Japanese comments due to the tepid Japanese response to Microsoft's new console: "The Xbox 360 and Japanese Nationalism".

Family Media Guide Says Mature Games Are Not for Kids

The Family Media Guide has released a list of games that parents should not buy for their children for Christmas. Parents should take the extra step of consulting the Family Media Guide, because the ESRB ratings, conveniently placed right on the fucking game box, are not sufficient for parents to make an educated choice.

All of the games on the list are rated 'M' for 'Mature' by the ESRB and state that the content is for players aged 17 and older. The ratings on the box also provide a list of reasons why the game was given the rating.

[Via Joystiq]

Madness! Madness, I Say!

Politicians are insane. They get in an uproar over non-pornographic depictions of consentual sex between adults, and yet they don't react with as much fervour to depictions of violent crime in all sorts of media.

Game Girl Advance puts the Hot Coffee scandal (and now the brewing Sims hoopla -- no pun intended!) into perspective (N.B. -- The ages listed correspond to the "M" rating, games suitable for people aged 17 and older, and the "T" rating, games suitable for people 13 and older.):

What's okay in GTA (the series) for seventeen year olds:

Assault with a deadly weapon.
Battery
Murder
Assassination
Vehicular homicide/manslaughter
Grand theft auto (duh)
Sex with prostitutes (tastefully hidden!)
Racketeering
Drug trafficking

What's not okay in GTA (the series) for seventeen year olds:

Consentual softcore sex between two adults, one of which is fully clothed.

What's okay in Sims (the series) for thirteen year olds:

Removing a ladder from a pool to induce drowning.
Locking someone in a room until they die from exhaustion.
Intentionally getting sims to wet/soil themselves.
Voyeurism (Sims taking showers)
Tricking people into setting themselves on fire in a kitchen.

What's not okay in Sims (mostly 2) for thirteen year olds:

Consentual implied sex between two adults, nudity mosaic'd out and they basically play under the sheets making monkey and dog noises.

In this post on Game Politics, one mod community argues in a letter to Clinton, Yee, and Thompson that there have been far more contentious video games released with an M-rating, which have not received the flak that San Andreas has gotten:

In recent statements by the ESRB, they have accused the mod community of undermining their ratings by putting sexually explicit material into PC games, namely San Andreas, which was already rated "M". However, if you look into a game by the name of "Singles - Flirt up your Life", it becomes quite clear they are doing a good job of that all by themselves. This "M" rated game features full frontal nudity (and not androgynous "barbies" like The Sims) and characters engaging in interactive sexual scenes.

More from the mod community on this issue. [Via Cathode Tan]

The Truth About Violent Youth and Video Games is an interesting article which compares US Government Statistics on youth crime to the release dates of Grand Theft Auto games and launch dates of the PS1 and PS2:

US Department of Justice report: "Recently, the offending rates for 14-17 year-olds reached the lowest levels ever recorded."

The lowest levels ever recorded. In other words, the Playstation era has, in fact, produced the most non-violent kids ever.

[Via Pixel Kill]

More voices of reason, from Reality Panic.

I know. I wasn't going to say anything about Hot Coffee, but this whole situation is frustrating, and I couldn't contain myself. Fluffy Guild Wars posts will resume in due course.

Preachers and Haters

Christian evangelical types are making video games to spread their message, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before white supremacist groups decided to make games as well. National Alliance's Resistance Records produces the game, entitled Ethnic Cleansing.

From the Review section on their site, comes this gem:

"...I believe this game is going to be extremely popular -- and it will touch the hearts of thousands of White people because it's not intellectual -- it's entertainment, and that's why it delivers a very powerful message. Every young elementary school kid who plays this game will have visions of killing Ariel Sharon while sitting in class! When their history teacher asks the class if they've ever heard of Israel or Ariel Sharon, the White kids certainly will have!"

"...If there isn't already one being planned, I wouldn't be surprised if an "Ethnic Cleansing Fan Club" starts up on the internet. Many players can compare notes and strategies in one of these clubs. I wonder if there is a special combination of keys that when pressed, gives the player supernatural powers?"

"...I guess I've gone over the edge. I have become an Ethnic Cleansing junkie, and if you sold T-shirts with the Ethnic Cleansing logo, I'd buy one."

- Rob M."

And the game not without its detractors:

"You should all go to hell for even creating such a disgusting piece of shit. I can't believe people are still around who are so shallow and create things like games to kill jews and blacks! People can't choose what race or religion they are at birth, and they shouldn't be discriminated for being a different color. Whites are the minority, you know! And what is with your kill-the-jew concept? Just because jews don't agree with some things, means you should kill them off? You people are disgusting! And it makes me even more angry because I am a jew. You should be ashamed for even making a site so repulsive. So go and fuck yourselves, you disgusting bastards.

Love,

Helene"

The internet can be a scary place...

Sound and Fury

Right. GTA: San Andreas. Hot Coffee. Rockstar. The ESA. The ESRB. Senator Clinton. Jack Thompson.

Not going to comment.

Thoughts on Video Game Legislation

This is hitting close to home. According to Game Politics, the Washingon, DC City Council held a hearing on a video game bill today. From the bill (full text):

"The ultra-violent and sexually explicit content of video and computer games rated M and AO violate contemporary community standards, and, taken as a whole, appeal to prurient interests and morbid and depraved interest in violence in minors."

...

"Video games rated M and AO by the ESRB, taken as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value to minors."

Sounds scarily similar to what Illinois Senator Deanna Demuzio said last month:

"Video games are not art or media. They are simulations, not all that different from the simulations used by the U.S. military in preparation for war."

Value-Added

Every time one of these bills comes to light, legislators always seem to make a big fuss about how games lack literary value. It sounds suspisciously like the arguments that Frederic Wertham launched against comic books in his book Seduction of the Innocent, published in 1954. Are video games the new comic books, destined to be vilified until some new form of entertainment media comes along to supplant its place as corruptors of the young? Possibly. New media has the tendency to make older people nervous or uneasy.

Strangely enough, comic books haven't gone on to produce mass murderers or sociopaths. Society and troubled upbringings are the main culprits. All those violent school killings by teenagers were perpetrated by kids who had become social outcasts, who had not gotten the help they needed, who had not gotten the attention they needed, and who had very serious family and psychological problems. These situations were in place well before they started playing video games or reading comic books.

If legislators had actually bothered to play video games, and not just any out of the Grand Theft Auto series, they might be surprised at the depth, the creativity, and yes -- the literary value that some games have. I'm not saying that all games are of equivalent literary value as Gaiman's The Sandman or Orwell's 1984, just as not all comic books and novels are literary gems, but how can one ignore the creative storytelling and the narrative that some games contain? How can one ignore the variety of experiences, entertainment and learning, that games provide?

Here is a quote from Stephen Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You, that shows another perspective:

Reading books chronically understimulates the senses. Unlike the longstanding tradition of gameplaying, which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical sound-scapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements, books are simply a barren string of words on the page...

Books are also tragically isolating. While games have for many years engaged the young in complex social relationships with their peers, building and exploring worlds together, books force the child to sequester him or herself in a quiet space, shut off from interaction with other children...

But perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear path. You can't control their narratives in any fashion, you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you... This risks instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though they're powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active, participatory process; it's a submissive one. [New Yorker book review, if interested.]

It was written half-jokingly, but the point of it is that games have much to offer players. Even games that don't involve story -- how can one deny the artistic merits? Not all games can be called masterpieces of art, but every single game involves artists to visualise the designer's world. Games like Madden have artists working on them. Does that mean that those artists lack creativity or skill? I would argue that they don't. Just because you're stuck making the textures on buildings in EA's next racing game, doesn't mean that you aren't an artist.

Commercial graphic designers certainly wouldn't think that their works are devoid of creativity, despite their utilitarian objectives. It takes talent and skill to create striking and memorable brand logos. Architects, while they are involved in the creation of useful things such as buildings and bridges, also must take into account the aesthetics of their endeavours. Do these creations lack artistic merit? Some architects even create structures whose sole purpose is to beautify the landscape. People who direct pornography may believe they are creating art. Some commercial fashion photography might border on the pornographic to some viewers. Others may disagree.

I won't say that I have never seen a piece of art that hasn't offended me or been, in my view, absolutely tasteless, horrible, disgusting, without value, and even dangerous to young viewers (and a lot of mature viewers, too). However, art is very subjective. Who are legislators that they can tell us how to view an image, a game, a story? Shouldn't it be up to the viewer to decide whether something has artistic or literary merit?

Access

On the issue of restricting sales of certain games; I'm not against M or AO games being restricted from purchase by minors. The reason the ESRB has rated them as such is precisely because they should be played only with a parent or guardian's consent. Just as I would not advocate a minor reading American Psycho, I would not advocate a minor playing Doom 3 or Resident Evil 4. On this point, I agree with legislators. However, making more laws won't solve the problem.

Let's think for a second. Who has the money in a family? Who is supplying violent video games to children? The Cathode Tan entry in the last Carnival of Gamers makes a very good point on this issue. Parents are the main suppliers of (violent) video games to children.

Some key facts (from the Entertainment Software Association, emphasis added):

75% of heads of households play video games
30 is the average age of a video game player
43% of game players are aged 18 - 49
37 is the average age of the most frequent game purchaser
92% of the time, parents are present at the time games are purchased or rented
87% of the time, children receive their parents' permission before renting or purchasing a game

There should be more education, not more legislation. Just as with comic books in the 1950s, I think it's a lack of knowledge that scares people. All this media is new to them. They didn't really grow up with video games. They only see the bad potentialities, and seek to protect the young from unkown horrors.

I'll end with a comment I made in the Cathode Tan post I linked to earlier, regarding my experience working in a video game retail store:

So many of the parents who came were incredibly uninformed about what their kids were playing. The number of parents who were shocked when I told them why GTA: San Andreas has an M-rating was substantial. If parents refuse to get involved in what their children are doing for fun, that is their fault. It shouldn't be up to the government to raise children.