Stop Picking on Video Games – and Video Gamers
Politicians are always looking for an edge to be seen to be doing something, especially if it involves children. Never is it more likely than during an election year or the lead up to a general election. Politicians all over the Anglosphere are eyeing the video game industry with ill intent.
US government leaders are examining slapping extra taxes on game transactions, justified by the supposed link between video games with violent behavior – which also bolsters the cries for censorship. The latter is occurring despite evidence that video games do not lend themselves to encouraging bad behavior. There is a recent study showing that video game paranoids are completely off base.
Surprisingly, for some, it seems that it’s not violent games that make children violent, but the dysfunctional families they live in. Just like with the recent spate of college shootings, it seems that sick, violent people, when allowed to roam free, act out on their proclivities. Messed up people, off their medication, do messed up things. Is this news to some people? Obviously it is, if one reads some of the rants against video games in the media these days. As we found out in the recent Mass Effect kerfuffle, some of the people who are venting about video games have never actually played the games they are criticizing. There are even commentators who are proud of that fact. Though, to be fair, the person involved in the Mass Effect fiasco actually apologized later, after she had played the game in question and viewed “the sexual situation” people were going on about.
More amusingly, there is a study that actually suggests that violent video games have the opposite effect on their players, relaxing them and providing them relief from the frustrations of every day life. Someone actually spent money studying this fact, even though any video gamer could have told them this.
Of course that doesn’t stop everyone -from mayors of major US cities, like Tom Menino, to Prime Ministers, like Gordon Brown- from attacking the video game industry with ill informed charges and populist rhetoric. Gordon Brown hired some TV “expert” who believes video games are “like heroin” to write a report.
This is, of course, at the same time as über-violent movies are allowed to be shown in normal cinemas and released on video. Movies likes Hostel II or the Saw series celebrate gore and torture, even bragging about it in their marketing. This type of twisted, voyeuristic entertainment should be viewed in a similar light to games like Manhunt II, if not more harshly, yet these two are the ones that get a general release.
Of course, a libertarian like me does not believe that either should be banned. However, if there are standards to be applied, they should be applied fairly, no matter what the means of delivery. It should be pointed out that the video game industry is now larger than the movie business worldwide, and the US/UK produces a great deal of content for the genre. Of course, if politicians continue to meddle, game companies could move to more friendly places like Quebec, Scandinavia, or even Eastern Europe, which is starting to produce some quality products.
Then again, this is par for the course these days. People don’t care what the government bans as long as it’s not something they like. And, let’s face it, the stereotypical nerdy young man, the perceived video game player, is fun to pick on whether outside the pub or with the help of the government.
Parents should be informed by a rating system and then allowed to make a decision. The trouble with government is that it uses a hammer to crack a pistachio. Like with high taxes on booze to prevent underage drinking, the honest get screwed.
Gamers are not idiots and should not be treated as such. It’s a clear case of parents needing to act like parents and stop expecting government to do their job for them. It may be easy to pick on video gamers and treat them as geeks or nerds who won’t fight back, but is it really a good idea for politicians to do their best to hurt such a big industry?
Don’t they realize that video games are now a huge growth industry, employing thousands of highly intelligent people, that provides pleasure, relaxation, and escape to millions of people worldwide?
As with many things that politicians go on about in complete ignorance and angst, video games are the latest whipping boy. Unlike some of the other groups politicians prattle on about in ignorance, there is a large contingent of clued up, highly motivated, and intelligent people who like video games and are keeping tabs on them.
One has to wonder if we will soon see a politician taken down by an organized campaign to unseat him, led by annoyed video gamers. Watch this space.
Andrew Ian Dodge blogs at Dodgeblogium.
I’m 51 now and I’ve enjoyed video games since the “Pong” days. I like First Person Shooters because they are essentially action/adventure movies with you as a participant rather than passive observer. Also the driving games on the current generation systems–I own both a PS3 and XBOX 360–are phenomenal and the only way I will ever drive an Audi R8 on the Nuremberg Ring.
People my age are generally clueless about video games and still think everyone is playing silly games of their youth like Pac Man, or what they are told are uber violent games, without realizing the average episode of “CSI” has more gore in it than a video game.
I also believe it is one of the few remaining outlets for male aggressiveness and competitive nature. In an age where dodge ball and even tag, are outlawed, and Rittalin is handed out like candy, this is important.
Well done article. I think you mentioned in your article why the pols are after the video game industry, but I will point out a couple of reasons:
If the game industry is growing and increasingly lucrative then the pols will want their cut of the loot. The attack on the industry is merely the opening salvo in an extortion attempt which will require the industry to hire elite lawyers to pay off the status quo pols.
The established film industry is losing sales to the game industry. Since the film indusry is a status quo power base, their lobbyists will attempt to use the power of the pol to punish their competitors. This will require hiring more establishment lawyers on all sides to battle this out. This avenue gives employment to establsihment lawyers and increases the chances of the pols to get a bigger cut of the loot.
The elites may know that video games reduce violence in a demographic historically the source of violence. The establishment may not desire this effect for it would reduce the influence of the corrections industry. What do the pols do with all the social workers, police, prisons and detention centers. A reduction in violence in a key demographic would adversely affect a powerful lobby and endanger the living of thousands of parasites developed by the state to enhance its power over the citizenry. A side effect, of course, would be the need on the part of the corrections industry to make up the revenues somewhere elese; to the detriment of the rest of us.
I agree with Paul and Howard, and the author of course. I’m 35 and far from the nerdy stereotype. I’m an avid gamer and I play just about every genre of game that exists. Recent next-generation games for Xbox 360 and PS3 are more like simulators and movies than traditional video games. Games like Grand Theft Auto IV and Mass Effect play just like movies, where your decisions affect the outcome of the story. You can choose to be good or bad and there are rewards and penalties associated with each choice.
Grand Theft Auto IV has been getting a lot of heat from various activist groups and governments, for no reason whatsoever. M.A.D.D. criticized the game for promoting drunk driving because you can take a friend to a bar and get drunk, then drive a car around a busy city. They should have actually played the game. They would have found that GTA IV sends a clear message about drunk driving, and it isn’t one of promotion. I drove drunk one time and one time only. After exiting a bar, your character stumbles around and falls down, taking health damage. If you get into the drivers seat of a car, the cops are instantly chasing you. It’s impossible to drive in a straight line, and vision is fuzzy so all you can do is crash. I was busted by the cops, so now I call a cab after getting drunk.
Any politician wishing to write a law concerning video games should have to demonstrate a proficiency with many modern games. I can tell by their language that they have never played, nor seen the games they are criticizing and wishing to legislate against. If there is a problem with video games, it’s the amount of underage kids playing rated M games. I encounter these kids online quite frequently. They are common enough to have earned the nickname, “squeakers” because of their high-pitched voices. I have seen various retailers refuse to sell rated M games to underage kids, so the real problem lies with parents. I went to the midnight release of Halo 3, an M rated game, and I saw about a dozen teen and pre-teen kids with their parents. Other parents were talking about how their kids were sleeping and they came out to pick it up for them. The next day, some of those parents let their kids stay home from school to play the rated M game. Currently, Xbox Live offers no way to report underage play, even though thousands of gamers have asked for such a feature on their forums and via email and phone calls. We don’t like playing mature games with kids. They just don’t belong there and we have no way to stop them. We shouldn’t have to stop them, because their parents should never have bought them the game in the first place.
Video games are a great way to have fun and relieve stress. There’s nothing better after a few hours in a traffic jam than coming home and blowing up a traffic jam in a video game. I am far less likely to become overly stressed or violent in that traffic jam knowing I will soon be home blowing up traffic, or aliens, or terrorists, or whatever I want to blow up.
There are plenty of family-friendly games out there and parents need to play with their kids. They need to play the games, so they can know what’s appropriate for their kids. Until then, most parents will continue to ignore the ESRB rating on each game, while griping about violence at the same time. That kind of ignorance opens the door for activists and legislators to force their agendas upon a massive industry. If they push too much, violent games will go underground but they will never disappear. A video games is just software, after all.
Yeah, I think that the fact its a big industry makes it a target. I doubt they really care about content. Like Hollywood, if the game industry bribes them enough, it’ll go away. I do agree, however, that this is sorta sleazy. Politicians however, are politicians.
“I went to the midnight release of Halo 3, an M rated game, and I saw about a dozen teen and pre-teen kids with their parents. Other parents were talking about how their kids were sleeping and they came out to pick it up for them. The next day, some of those parents let their kids stay home from school to play the rated M game.”
Though parent’s negligence is indeed a problem, I think Halo 3 is a bad example. From my point of view, it was the definition of a “soft M”, as it’s called. There was some scattered cussing, but for the most part it was nothing I wouldn’t let a 14-year old play. There are quite a few games that are rated unfairly simply because there’s no rating level that would properly describe the content. In film, this problem was solved for the most part by creating the PG-13 rating (specifically for Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom), and the ESRB should do the same. What’s chiefly called for is a label between “Teen” and “Mature”, which some other ratings bureaus, such as Japan’s CERO, already have.
Before video games, people blamed television and movies. Before that, it was comic books, as this CNN article describes:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/4owfbz
Before that, it was “little big books” and pool, I guess. I don’t know what it was before that – maybe penny dreadfuls, whiskey and poker?
There’s a new book for parents out, called _Grand Theft Childhood_, that sounds like it takes a sensible approach (unlike most books on the subject). I suspect the writer of this post would agree with the authors.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/62przq
Spot on article. It’s not about the thing, it’s about politicians breeding fear of whatever the thing is so they can wring more $$$ from their constituents and prove they are doing something to combat this menace.
Thanks for all the kind words. It is alas a cross-party problems.
Parents need to realise that its not the job of Facebook, EA Games or any other company to look after their children, its their job after all.
I don’t play video games, but have you seen anything, anywhere that a politician can’t turn into a problem?
Squeaker bans! Hmm. I like it.
I too am a middle aged gamer and I have played for hundreds of hours with thousands of kids and adults alike. I can tell you within 2 minutes which of the squeakers are problem kids and which are not. I’ve had kids tell me online that their fathers are drunks and beat them in the lobbies of multiplayer videogames. There are responsible adults and parents online, which is something a lot of people like to pretend is not real. Still, I couldn’t tell you which problem kid would or would not commit violent acts. That’s a job for psychiatrists (which of course, if they were doing that job nobody would grow up to be a criminal). It seems to me that if you can’t catch ‘em at school, how are you going to catch them online when nobody knows their real name?
Anyway it’s more paranoia that yeilds nothing. Remember Tipper Gore’s music stickers? That really helped.
I too am over 36 and quite well-to-do, yet still play video games online, these days I put in about 10 hours a week in to Call of Duty 4, or madden, or a racer like burnout. I’m far from a geek, being a general firearms expert, race sports cars, rides a Ducati, can water and snow ski, golf, bowl, fly single engine aircraft, and just about any other hobby is in my repertoire(I’m looking now for a Ferrari 308 to restore). Many of my male friend are also very self sufficient and share a lot of other interests, and ALL of them own at least one of the new gen consoles(most of us have all 3) and play online. I’d be hard pressed to think of a peer who doesn’t play some sort of video game. Most of the gen-x age males are the first ones who have known video games their entire lives, with the first Atari 2600 consoles showing up when we were about 10-12 years old. Go back a few years many over 40 just don’t understand the entire thing. Not to mention the money we spend on the video game ‘hobby’, I must have $3000 in (current) consoles and games, and about the same in a gaming computer…
Personally I think video games(in moderation, just like every other single thing in life) actually is a huge learning asset to any child. I’m pretty high up on the ‘food chain’ in the video games skills department, but the young children of today by the age of 7 have incredible reflexes and fine motor skills and can multi-task at an amazing level. My 5-year old niece can operate a universal remote control by feel alone and can already predict the trajectory of a relatively fast moving ball with precision, let alone engage in two conversations at a time.
HOWEVER!
Politicians don’t give two S@#%s about video games, or global warming, or gun control, or speed limits…. They only follow what they see in the media news of the day. They are completely controlled by their advisers and handlers to jump on every bandwagon, regardless if it wastes millions, billions, or even trillions of dollars to chase the cult of popularity with those that vote for them. For McCain, a true war hero, (for which Hillary or Barack have never remotely close to anything as dangerous as the most innocuous single minute of rest on an aircraft carrier) to completely roll over onto the global warming bandwagon can show its power over politicians. The scary part is the absolute cowardice and sudden liberal slant of the supposedly ‘conservative’ politicians, leaving us with absolutely ZERO hope for anyone in congress or the White House caring about anything regarding the American citizen.
Every politician has completely folded to pander to the media. Watch what any major politician does or say these days, they simply run their lucrative careers and campaigns terrified of upsetting the nightly ‘news’. So if nitwits say video games are bad on the news, expect the stupidity to quickly move to politicians. What do you think the chances are that any politician who is on this particular bandwagon has ever even played anything outside Solitare on a computer or console before. These are the same morons that hold a press conference on the content of movies they have never seen before.. And they day after it stops running in the ‘news’, they never mention it again.
how do i get a kid to leave me alone