Yet another law blow to computer entertainment

http://pc.ign.com/articles/656/656998p1.html

This is ridiculous. The "T" rating identifies a game as for youth. This game is acceptable for people ages 14 and up (or something like that)
MORONS!


Does this mean that, in California, "Advance Wars," which contains cartoon violence will end up in the 18+ section?
This inconveniences people aged around 18 as well, because they'll probably be required to show ID until they're 25 for fear of the store losing $1000.




This is just going to start a whole underground game retail thing. Sure, they'll start off with simple stuff like Doom, but the dealers... those dastardly dealers... they'll start converting our youth into M-rated-game-adicted killing machines! Then they'll start selling them even worse stuff, like Grand Theft Auto!


Honestly, they're treating computer games like drugs.

The sooner the world finds a new whipping boy for all of society's ills, the better. It's pathetic.

What about politicians?

Oh yes, I'm all for whipping politicians! :P

Isn't that, like, all of them?

First it was Rock music. Then movies. Then video games. People never learn. There ARE sick people out there who will get crazy after seeing violence, and there always will. And they will always see violence sooner or later, so these laws are pathetic.

Over here in the UK, where we've had 18-rated games seemingly forever, it's hard to comprehend what the problem is with the actual rating. The thought-process that seems to have driven its introduction is bizarre though - while it remains impossible to kill people in the real world with a deft sweep of the mouse games can't *really* count as "training", can they. I mean, after years and years of gaming I still don't know how to actually load and fire a gun... you would need a society obsessed with gun ownership, not games consoles, for that.

Get a life then, cos there's more to life than games or music.

So, it would seem you do get it. Can't control the guns, no no, must control the real root of the problem, abstract scapegoats... those silly scapegoats, always mucking things up for us decent God fearing, Gun toting, ****heads.

Down with violence, because the only way to protect our children is to keep any and all things that exist in the real world from them, so they can go through culture shock, have a raised suicide rate, and bring about a new dark age....

The less violence in game the better...and games that glorify real violent crime or anti-social behaviour should be banned outright.

They might have a law which says that you have to be 18 to buy adjust rated games, but who decides what is acceptable for a child to view, and what is not? The ESRB?

What if publishers decide to start putting their own ratings on there? And what if the stores go along with it because they want to be able to sell Grand Theft Auto 5 to anyone without fear of getting fined?

Also, the only reason the ESRB gets to rate anyhting is because retailer go along with it, and you don't need to be rated by the ESRB to sell your game online, or to sell it in stores where they don't care who rates it.

HJ... while i am sympathetic to your proposal... might i present a few things for your consideration... i mean, while that sounds good on the surface... would that would mean that banning games like...

Medal Of Honor... and all WWII fps, 3rd p shooters, board games where a plane drops bombs...

Any game derived from the Tom and Jerry cartoon series...

Deer Hunter and any animal hunting games...

should be the right thing to do... for they all fall under that broad definition of violent games...

and while we're at it... all Popeye, Bugs Bunny, and Tom&Jerry cartoons as well must be banned... as well as most of the great novels and writings of our time...


in short... if we did what you proposed above... we would ban all sorts of things that imitate real life... and only present an idyllic fantasy world to our kids...

hey... if this will work, then i'm all for it...

i just don't think that it will work...


--Mike

The game industry could show its annoyance by moving all the companies out of California.

Actually... the governement would have steped in unless the esrb was created and worked.

They gave us the chance to self regulate.

Hujiklo... So, by that logic, anything that protrays violence or crime and doesn't denounce it completly should be banned... I don't think thats right, we shouldn't ban everything that someone might find offencive. We should mark it clearly and keep it out of the reach of people who are too young to really know for sure that they are ready for the meterial... In this country that is 18 yo.

Banning something doesn't make it go away.

When we banned alcohol, what happened? It started organised crime and created the mob. Everyone still drank anyway, and all it did was bad.

Banning something should only be a course of action for something that is more dangerous to not ban. Like murder. If murder was legal, it would be a very dangerous situation. Banning murder doesn't stop it from happening, but it takes the people that are willing to do it, and makes it a lot easier to take them out of society.


Violent games don't hurt anyone. The only people who play a game then decide to emulate that game, are young children (younger than about 10) and people who are already damaged, and they can be set off by anything. There is no preventing it.

Young children shouldn't be allowed to view it, some will.. but some kids have sex with their parents or torture animals when they aren't supposed to. They use drugs and drink, there are plenty that do plenty of things they shouldn't. Drugs are banned, but they still get into it.

And I don't believe that drugs should be banned, all that does is create crimelords who sell it, it doesn't stop the sales.

Banning doesn't work, even in the case of murder, it doesn't work, but with murder, it keeps those who get caught from killing again.

Someone who does drugs is only dangerous in certain situations, and it is those situations that should be enforced, like DUI.

I'm more against the hipocrasy behind all this, it's fine to sell guns and rifles but there's a frenzy over some pixilated porn and violence.

Hehe i think this is really interesting. one eyed seems to be making only comments which try to @#!* people off or insult them. Last few i've seen from him are all like this, last time directed at me. Curious...

Mark, make us a "ignore posts from user" feature for the forum will ya? :) Thanks

[quote=DampeS8N]Violent games don't hurt anyone. The only people who play a game then decide to emulate that game, are young children (younger than about 10) and people who are already damaged, and they can be set off by anything. There is no preventing it.[/quote]

if that is true then why isn't my little brother looking for dots to chomp on and ghosts to flee from?

Violent crime is reality..any games that promote mindless violence against innocent people or animals for that matter should be banned outright. There is a massive difference between that scummy pile of puke GTA and MOH. You can't just open your door and see a 1940 Normandy beach with German soliders gunning at you but you can go outside and see people minding their own business - the same people you see in these vile games and are encouraged to run over or gun down...the supposed logic (and for some people very hard to grasp) shouldn't really need explaining.

It's pathetic that you can tell people and in particular children that there's nothing wrong doing all kinds of vile and violent things to easily identifiable and harmless actors in a graphic game but then insist it's actually bad to do it in real life to the same sort of people you've just been doing it to on a screen - it just sends out mixed signals to impressionable individuals.

Furthermore games developers that rely on these pathetic shock tactics are simply the lowest of the low with no virtue at all...not to mention no imagination.

I don't insist on banning violence but I'm completely for showing restraint and discernment where it is present in a game.

i understand where you're coming from on this HJ... just wanted to see what your opinion was on the entire topic of violence in the media...

--Mike

There are very strict state and federal laws governing the sales of firearms.

Perhaps one day the industry will wake up and develop some talent and go back to making games that were creative, challenging and innovative. It takes no talent to turn out the garbage the industry is producing where the sole goal of the game is to shoot everybody. The industry has made its bed and now it has to lay in it. They have nobody to blame but themselves.

AFAIK they are not wanting to ban anything, just restrict sales of certain types of games to certain age groups. We have been doing this with movies ever since I have been alive. We do it with DVDs, Magazines, Books.

Violent games cause violent acts? No. Usually the argument is the violence we see in games and TV desensitizes us to violence in real life.

Anybody my age or older can remember growing up watching rather mundane cartoons like Scooby Doo, Super Friends, Tom & Jerry, Bugs Bunny. Nobody was killed in cartoons back then. In shows like the Super Friencs, (or even GiJoe, HeMan in later years) violence was always shown to have consequences and shown to be wrong. Video games were all over, but unlike today they did not try and emulate reality and use realistic looking graphics or feature violence against other persons. Violent acts by kids & teens was not the norm back then and rarely in the news.

However, today violent acts by kids & teens are plastered all over the news every day. TV is filled with violence, video games have become a joke, major games seem to only concentrate on realistic looking graphics and violence against other people with no consequences for the violent acts.

Compare the crime statistics & the types of crimes done by kids & teens today with those done by kids & teens in the late 60s through the mid 70s. (Its not the drugs, drugs were actually more prevailent in use by kids/teens back in the late 60s & mid 70s and some of the drugs were even legal back then. Alcohol use was greater back then too.)

Do I think violent games are to blame? No. I think it is more of a breakdown in society as a whole. Parents today are not doing their jobs. Many kids today have no self-esteem. You go into any store and many of the teen cashiers, waiters, etc have zero self-respect. They cannot even look you in the eye when they talk to you, they are usually looking down at the floor while they talk to you.
Luckily the good kids outweigh the bad. Unfortunely a few bad ones give all kids a bad name.

Sorry, I just don't see how games "promote" violence and I've certainly never met a single person who was persuaded towards violence by a videogame. I've heard it used as a pathetic excuse by media-savvy criminals and psychopaths, but as the former would blame whatever the press was currently vilifying and the latter can be triggered by *anything* (eg songs about fairground rides) we'd have to ban pretty much everything if we were to take either group as a guide.



What seems to need explaining, to you anyway, is that no games contain actual people, innocent or otherwise, nor do they contain any animals. Hang on, what with you apparently not being able to tell the difference between reality and fiction shouldn't you be out on a murdering spree or something? I guess you just disproved your own theory.

And what? MOH isn't offensive because YOU weren't in WWII, but GTA is because you can kinda identify with the setting? So by that logic war veterans should be able to get MOA banned, right? And people who live in the country shouldn't be offended by GTA, right? I don't think you've thought this through, have you? What you've actually done is attempt to apply your own personal standards to everyone on the planet, which is just *ever so* presumptuous, trust me.



There are a bunch of separate issues crammed in here as one. Firstly there's the Daily Mail-esque "I can deal with this media but am certainly surrounded by a bunch of morons who can't" attitude, which is fairly insulting. The people who you pass in the street, who you work and socialise with - they're about as impressionable as you are. You aren't special... deal with it.

Next is the issue of kids. Kids get mixed signals all the time - dealing with mixed signals is part of being human and you're not helping anyone by shielding them from that. It's a skill they have to develop and is why Tom and Jerry can run around with meat cleavers without your children doing likewise, because it's possible to instil in them some concrete moral guidelines from a reasonably early age.

Before they reach this age I believe it's genuinely irresponsible to bathe them in violent media. I mean there was a piece in the news a few years back about a baby - and it really was just a baby - who was really good at GoldenEye. The parents just left the kid in front of the N64 and, as a result, the first mode of human interaction it learned about was shooting people in the face... totally unacceptable, really.

However, even after kids develop a moral core, you still don't want them experiencing the likes of GTA, I'd argue - not because it would "train them to kill", but simply because its themes and contents are adult, and the nature of the violence potentially upsetting. Kids losing their innocence faster than is necessary is surely something to guard against - to my mind that's the tangible bonus you get from legislation like the example in question. It's certainly not going to stop violent lunatics "going off".


Interestingly the GTA series doesn't really rely on shock tactics so much as an unprecedented level of freedom within a sandbox environ (ie gameplay), whereas it was Medal Of Honor that gave us the thoroughly shocking "OMFG! I'M ON THE BEACHES OF NORMANDY!" experience, tied to a rather generic FPS engine.


What riles me is when companies target ad campaigns for adult-oriented games at kids. I think that's the crux of this entire matter and exactly where the restraint and discernment should come into play.

I think fake violence is more dangerous to kids than realistic violence.

When I was a kid I tried to build a pit trap in the woods behind my house with wooden spikes in it. How was I to know someone might be killed when all the cartoons and such were censored so that whenever someone fell in a trap like that they survived and there was no blood?

Grand Theft Auto doesn't teach kids to be violent. It teaches them that even if they've got a tank and a rocket launcher, they're still gonna be killed by the police after they go on a rampage. And that if they shoot hookers they drop money.

Btw, studies show that the crime rate has actually dropped significantly since Doom first appeared on the scene. So I say viollent games are actually teaching kids not to be violent, and/or giving them a safe outlet for their frustrations.

Yep - carry on living in fluffy cloud land where you can just keep on passing the buck. Try and see past your own particular childhood.


In my opinion there is a threshold of violence and variations of violence that should not be crossed for the sake decency and responsibility. It's true MOH is a violent game but it doesn't glorify obscenity, the scenario is one that is never likely to be experienced in a normal person's day to day life - you don't play the part of some low life criminal - it really shouldn't need pointing out that there is never going to be a perfect solution but the will to refrain from gratutious violence in everyday settings against every day looking people should be there.
As for GTA only being special for its wide open city to explore - oh my goodness! Get real!!!! If the main idea was not to let you be a nihilistic low life scum bag it would never have grabbed the headlines and enjoyed it's huge sales because without its pathetic unimaginative theme it would be seen to be nothing but a glorifed wander-around engine. Shocks sells. Money craving scum like Rockstar rely on it.

Even though this thread is about games - the buck doesn't stop there. I don't think games period lead to a lack of empathy towards one and other...the TV industry, the paper media, the government all abstain from their responsibilites (and in turn parents) and insist negative trends are nothing to do with them - yet here we are - former civilized countries descending ever more swiftly into a living hell and all the while the sheeple want to hear sweet lies from the government lackey soothsayers and big business with their latest studies and findings that it's all hunky dory and infact better now than it's ever been - and they swallow the pill no matter how big and ridiculously shaped it is.

George Orwell must have had a time machine when he wrote about the ministy of truth and it's absurdities.

Okay if it will make you happy - it's 'good' to encourage people to partake of fictional tortures and senseless violence against highly graphic representations of every day folk - there is no contradiction what-so-ever in encouraging such acts playfully and expecting to restrain themselves from the same type of behaviour in real life. There's nothing to be worried about - the studies have told us so!

I must have been having a funny turn to have ever questioned big business and government responsibilites in the first place - silly me, I'll just switch back to automaton mode and stare at the TV.

I think its a good thing. So long as games are rated appropriately. However I'm sure many people will just cheat and get some older brother or someone to buy stuff for them.

Blaming games is passing the buck, is the point. If this new law makes passing that buck slightly harder in future then good.


You seem to totally unaware of something called black humour. I'm going to assume that this is why you can't understand that people can play violent games, taking great and gigglesome delight in shooting each of the guards limbs in turn before firing sleeping darts into his eyes (Metal Gear Solid 2 reference for you there), without feeling encouraged to act similarly in real life. I don't even own a dart gun, but if I did and really wanted to use it I'd proabably hang around a zoo in case a bear or gorilla escaped or something. Breaking into military bases and having long, tedious conversations with my support team would be quite low down on my list of priorities.

Oh and "every day folk"? So when you open your door there are a bunch of low poly people out there who do nothing but walk around mindlessly all day except for fading out of existence when they reach a certain point in the distance, are there? Perhaps you do need to give GTA a break.

Oh come on, kids go on Columbine rampages because they know the only future they have is to make $5.75 an hour at the local factory, and that the government wants them to be alive or dead, whichever is cheaper. They know that everything our society says is BS, and everything it does is based on money, and that wealth is the only moral value we follow.

Games aren't rated appropriately now, let alone after a new classification enters the scene. The ESRB proved their incompetence with the whole Hot Coffee thing.


I bet you're the type of parent that doesn't monitor their child and then blames the M+ rated game when they go and kill someone.

Because only a hypocrite would say that to someone employing reasonable logic in a debate.

"Hujiklo (Posted 2 hours ago)
Yep - carry on living in fluffy cloud land where you can just keep on passing the buck. Try and see past your own particular childhood."


Show me statistics which support your point of view. You can't. I on the other hand could show you statistics supporting my point of view, that violent games don't make people more violent.

Oh sure, I'm sure you could find a study which shows kids have mock battles after they play a fighting game. But that's all they are. And it's no different than what your parents might have done after wathcing cowboys and indians on TV. And it's no different than people getting worked up over a football game.

Playing violent games doesn't at all lead to any sort of long term violent behavior. The proof is in the pudding.

Look at the graphs on this page:
http://gr.bolt.com/articles/violence/violence.htm


Doom, Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct... all were released around 1994. All hailed as incredibly violent games which would harm our youth.

But look at the graphs! Right around that time, the crime rate began to drop DRAMATICALLY for all people between the ages of 14 to 24! Even the 25-34 age group dropped quite a bit.

The current crime rate is the LOWEST EVER RECORDED. Lower even than when videogames didn't exist, and the most violent show on TV was HOWDY DOODY TIME.

You cannot possibly claim that violent video games will hurt kids, because the statistics don't lie. We've been playing particularly violent video games since the 1990's and the crime rate has DROPPED for all the age groups that play games. If games were as bad for kids as some people want to make them out to be then that crime rate for kids should have risen, not fallen dramatically.

My brother and I played fighting games after watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

See? SPLINTER taught them to be ninja teens! NOT video games!

funny, i've been playing violent video games ever since i was six and i do not recall trying to kick blood out of someone or trying to pop a cap into someone's ass. the only thing that i did that was dangerous was pretending to be sonic the hedgehog (i ran into a metal poll and i got a huge bruise).

Was it a poll to determine if people think video games make people run into things they shouldn't? :-)

All hail to the statistics...sigh. I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the sheer gullibility of it. keep listening to your soothsayers - we've never had it so good!

Ah - and forgive me. I see now it's a question of polygons and not principle or decency! Well lets just hope they keep the poly count down in future trash games of the lowest possible virtue. My goodness.

Here's a thought.

Replace "violent video games" in your argument with "religious materials".

What if I think that religion is dangerous to my child? That it promotes hatred of people who don't follow one's religion? That it causes wars, and makes people into mindless sheep who will do whatever their relgious leaders tell them to? That it causes people to ignore scientific facts and try to remove the teaching of evolution from the classroom because it contradicts a holy text written thousands of years ago which has nothing to back it uo scientifically?

What if I want to protect my kid from this? Should the government be allowed to pass laws making it illegal to give religious texts to children who are not your own? To play religious tv shows at times when children might be watching, like at 8am on a sunday morning?

Just because you think religion is a good influence on my child, doesn't mean that _I_ think religion is a good influence on them, and I cannot adequately protect them from it without the government's help! Therefore I need laws which will put YOU in jail if you give my child a bible without my permission! It could damage their mind!

Doesn't look like such a good idea when you look at it from that viewpoint, does it.

It's not the government's job to raise your kid. And it's not the government's job to proect you from ideas and visuals and information which you don't want to be exposed to, or you don't want your kids exposed to. That's YOUR job.

Memories! I'm actually temped to go back on the game and try and make the soliders in the first part fall asleep whle listening to the speech.

Anyway, When i first got GTA:VC my cousin came round. She was about 6/7. I stopped playing because i thought it wasn't appropriate but my brother asked my Uncle and Aunty if she could play it (hes an idiot) and they said yes. When she went in i said to her that this was only a game and that she was never to try any of this stuff in real life and her reply "I'm not stupid". So even at that age she knew that the stuff in the game was just a game (although whether it screws her up in later life is yet to be seen).

Also GTA games are becoming more responcible! When i played San Andreas what i found was a very strong anti-drugs message. Also none of that "kill this guy because hes a jurer (sp?). As far as i remember they only wanted me to kill guys who were evil. So in a way they are teaching us good morals.

If you disagree with violent games, don't buy them and don't play them and don't let your kids play them until they are mature enough to make their own minds up (usually, this is about the age of 5 or 6).

No two people will ever exactly agree on what we should let our kids do, or what we should protect them from. I've watched any number of horror flicks and read any number of really gruesome horror stories when I was growing up.

Apart from me being desensitised to gore, the only way it really affected me was to

1) Accelerate my reading and comprehension skills far beyond those of my schoolmates (in particular, the violent thugs at my school).

2) Entertain me by having me work out how they made some of the really excellent special effects in films (The Fly, The Thing, The Stuff - all classics with unique special effects).

As I recall, at no point in my youth did I ever confuse fiction with reality. Even in the mind of a 12 year old, which is usually full of ideas and adventure, it just did not occurr to me that "gee, I wonder if sawing someones foot off really does look like it did on TV? Let's go see...".

For anything like that to happen, you would have had to have had a really bad upbringing and not know the difference betweed right, wrong and downright evil.

There are kids out there in the world who are neglected and abused and who will grow up to be abusive, either physically or mentally. If those kids never saw any violence on TV, on the computer, in books, then they would grow up making their own violence.

TV programmes, computer games, comic books... they all affect our kids. They affect them by stimulating their imagination and encouraging them to think about events and situations in which they themselves have not experienced in everyday life. Sure, they're never going to meet zombie aliens from Mars (well, probably!) but if they can be guided into classifying these events into right and wrong, fantasy and fiction, then that really is a very good thing.

If you can sit with your kid and say "if you even see anyone running toward you with that expression on their face, you run and you yell" after you've just watched some baddie stalking some bimbo in a cheap horror flick, then surely you've just educated your child in a very useful way?

Certain kids are not going to want to watch violent films, these tend to be the type of kids who their parents never let play in the mud (and consequently will now catch a cold or an infection for no reason at all) and have tried to 'protect' them from everything. These kids grow up badly adjusted and causes untold anguish for them as they become teenagers and young adults. Everything they thought they knew is now useless to them and they have to learn everything about the world in a few short years.


Let's not ban anything, unless it's obviously immediately dangerous. Let us instead educate people and have them make the correct decisions about what they want out of life.

Pacman left me mentallity scarred and my sister, who is my aunt and father, suffered RSI in his 8th index finger. Games are evil. mkay.

It doesn't matter. Ever heard of the Internet? Just start buying your games on-line. Problem solved.

I think it's interesting that we've seen a steady decline in violent crime since the mid 70's and a drastic decline since 1995 (according to the US DOJ) yet Videogames and Eminem still get the blame for a violent society, despite society actually being less violent.

Exactly. Imagine being able to steal car and gun down virtual police officers without actually hurting anyone, and all from the safety of your own home. I guess that when people are commiting virtual crime in a video game, they don't have time to commit real crimes aswell.

Pot calling the kettle black? Your soothsayers at your favorite Rupert Murdoch owned media outlet are not more correct than the US DOJ on the issue of crime.

Amen to that!

Soothsayers, eh? There was a time in history where we were controlled by a few with religious or restrictive "moralistic" interests, where people were afraid of what they didn't know and what wasn't there, where real news and information was restricted to the priviledged few, and where wealth was just as poorly distributed. Science was in decline and considered an offense to God, and pointless wars were fought for the interests and arguments of the upper classes.

How far we have come!

It's still mostly free up North here. I'm sure you guys can keep coming up here for your alcohol, your video games, your porn and your strippers if you're worried about it.


The Bible is actually an extremely violent book and writes of wars, slayings, rapes, murders, beheadings, crucifixtions, beatings, stonings, genocides, etc. often in explicit detail. I believe it in the interests of our children that the Government bans this book from sale to those under 18 and advises that children should not be permitted to read it under any circumstances.

If you're allowed to rest the case against violent games upon game characters being "every day folk" then we're perfectly entitled to point out how they totally aren't. You opened that particular can of worms so don't cry about it now.

Anyway, I'm off to try and get the board game Monopoly banned because, y'know, monopolies are illegal and there's totally no difference between games and reality and the principles we uphold in each.

I've played so many first person shooters that by rights I ought to be a loonie of the homicidal maniac variety but uh I'm not. Maybe it's because I was over 18 when I played them. I think that peers are more likely to incite voilent behaviour in kids than games or movies or heavy metal. Yes, I also listen to black sabbath and judas priest but haven't played them backwards yet.

Like trying to explain sight to somebody born blind.

Okay - generations weaned on sex and violence in the form of harmless entertainment will display none of the symptoms that are plaguing society today simply because it didn't affect a few of you and the fact that there has always been violence etc. - of course it's all so simple! I see that now. I bow down to your over-powering wisdom.

There is absolutely no benefit to be gained from maintaining good standards and setting moral boundaries in music,TV or games - none at all...after all, a Moral, unselfish and responsible society is a weak unhealthy disaffected society, which would be in a state of arrested development and seek to salve the malaise it finds itself in by a life-long devotion to consumerism and titilating distraction in the form of limitless entertainment.

Why only big business could benefit from such an unholy state of affairs! - perish the thought if ever it were true!!! Down with healthy moral Standards - proponents of such vile thinking should be hung..or for that matter crucified.

Like trying to make visual jokes to the blind ... of course there's more to it than "I wasn't affected thus it's all bull". However, I would question some moral Standards of today esp. some based on the Christian faith I'm afraid. Now we are danger of turning this thread bad so I'll bow out.

"There is absolutely no benefit to be gained from maintaining good standards and setting moral boundaries in music,TV or games - none at all...after all, a Moral, unselfish and responsible society is a weak unhealthy disaffected society"


Except that there is a giant hole in your argument:
How do you define "good standards" and "moral" behavior?

Who decides what is moral and immoral? What is detestable behavior, and what is acceptable behavior?

I'll give you a hint: NOT YOU.

People like you long ago had your chance to dictate what is moral, and what did you do? You stoned people. You made women wear full body and face coverings. You kept slaves. You put people in jail for being gay.

Well now clearer heads are prevailing, and the old views on morality are being pushed to the wayside in exchange for new ones.

Note I said "in exchange for NEW ones".

Society isn't becoming irresponsible or immoral. Those morals are merely changing. Whereas it used to be unacceptable for a woman to go to a beach in anyhting more revealing than a full body suit, now they can wear a bikini. Does that make them all immoral sluts? If you were Muslim, you might say yes. If yuou are American you might say no. If you were French you might say they were prudish because they don't go naked!

Morality is not as cut and dry as you make it out to be, and what you consider immoral behavior is not the rule for everything which is right and wrong with the world.

Swearing doesn't hurt anyone.

Killing police in a game doesn't hurt anyone.

Taking a chainsaw to a demon and painting the walls with his blood sure as hell doesn't hurt anyone.

If anything these things are cathartic, and reduce the stress of the person playing the game. Having taken out their anger on an imp with a chainsaw, they will then be less likely to do the same to their boss.

And just because these things feature violence and gore doesn't somehow degrade our society. It enriches it. Without violence and conflict you would have no heroes and villians. The more violent the villians, the more heroic the heroes. There's nothing heroic about rescuing someone who is being held at gunpoint with a super soaker.

Yes a brave new world! It just keeps on getting better...So principles and morals must change with the times eh? Truth yesterday is a big lie today! Follow your heart puke and drivel will show you the right path etc...An example of your vapourous, shifting morals might be that soon as your 'with it' truths and enlightened thinking shed their skin a little more, Paedophilia will be re-classified as harmless to consenting children...no doubt to keep with the 'in' crowd you'll make a good apologist for that to..you'll perhaps learn to reason that children are mature enough and can make such consenting decisions because the stats and studies say so. Or that if it happens in some persons private property then it's acceptable - no 'apparent' immediate 'in your face' harm done eh? For instance, perhaps you already accept wholesale Kinsey's lamentable, forged study on sexual perversion...it was a study for goodness sake!...no more investigation required, besides I'm nearly at the end boss.

Violence now 'enriches' society ('enriches' now there's a word that's been hijacked by double-speak) - boy are you lost. Try and pull your lips off big brother's nips for a few seconds and think straight...oh boy, oh boy! War is peace now! Ignorance is strength! Black is no longer black and simply white without the white! Straight from the ministry of truth! You are one horse that will drink from whichever trough the greater crowd drink from - no matter how evidently fetid!

Not so long ago children were getting married in their early teens, working in factories before even that, and few even made it out of childhood. By comparison, you'd say today that they are relatively safe.

The whole big brother thing is interesting for you to reference, simply because your attitude would seem to be more reflective of what it is about than someone like sswift.

We live in a violent society and one that has always been violent, and rather more violent historically than now. People have sex. Bad stuff happens. Even fairy stories are violent. Nursery rhymes are violent. At what point are you going to quit?

It's not just violence either, it's sex, right? Seeing half an uncovered boob during the superbowl has turn our children into crazed loons! Oh, won't Jesus ascend from heaven to rescue us all from our horrible wrongdoing so we can all sit in padded cells and not think about stuff or speak about stuff that might offend someone or make someone ask questions that will make you feel uncomfortable.
And it's comments like these that just lend so much weight to your argument, cos secretly all us people that aren't uncomfortable about sex or violence really want paedophiles to be free to practice their depraved ideas. You've uncovered our horrible secret with your brilliantly retarded argument.

Isn't that always the way though, you get some people trying to offer a liberal view and some conservative idiot will go to some extreme in an attempt to invalidate any kind of liberal thought. You sir deserve a job on Fox News!

The reality is this law won't make a difference to most of us initially, but if you think it through, stores like Walmart have certain strict stocking policies and lots of games get sold by Walmart. And that means less games adults can enjoy being made because publishers will be scared of losing sales.

So instead of you parents just doing your damn job and keeping an eye on your kids, or even just controlling what software they install or buy with their pocket money, the rest of society ends up losing for the sake of "the children".

All this via Schwarzenegger, a man who has starred in some very violent movies and had equally violent video games based off them. Wow!

There's no secret about sheeple bravely bleating about principles they are conveniently given encouragement and license to... Paedophilia (or the horrible secret as some like to put it) becoming acceptable was just an extreme example of the slippery slope we're well and truly on. A loose standard here, a lack of vigilance there it all adds up to a potential nihilistic nightmare.

The same sheeple who were anti-gay when it was taboo and are somehow bleating merrily about it's harmless nature today...the same goes for what's taboo today - will be almost magically transformed with deteriorating standards into harmless and perfectly normal tomorrow!

So Walmart are scared of losing its image if it sells these games or whatever - it's a side issue, the motive isn't altruism I'll bet, though it would please me to be wrong.

So you really think Schwarzenegger has no ulterior motives for coming off as a good guy now - it's salve for consciences to get him in the white house nothing more. You really believe your TV is being straight with you! Now if he denounced his past and stepped down to get his hands dirty and really publically lay into the scum who run the show, I'd be more inclined to believe he's genuine. But then he probably wouldn't even make it on to your brain-fix box, unless it was to irritate you into hating him and what he stands for.

Yes, I can see you really know me well.

The fact is there are opinions out there on loads of things, and the prevailing one at the moment is to go back into some sort of prudish society because all of our leaders are in their 50s and 60s and think it was wonderful back then.

There are things that I as a liberal person am extremely uncomfortable with about some of the recent pro-"moralist" movements at the moment, not because I am against acting in a moral fashion, but because I do not believe it is in the interests of the people for the Government to dictate how we should live. There are things that I find morally repugnant just as you would, but assuming it is not hurting others who are able to wisely decide for themselves, I don't believe it's my right to use the Government to push my views on to someone else. The Government is not there to push out a certain moral code beyond natural law and human rights.

When you support wholesale violation of someone's rights for the sake of "protecting" your children, particularly when you could better protect them yourself, then to me, that's a pretty morally wrong idea.

Ask yourself who is better to protect your children from violent video games, you, or the disinterested people working at EB Games?

Would you like it if a few people started lobbying Government to make it more difficult to do something you enjoyed because it fit their own interests? Cos that's basically what's happening every day, and supporting a stupid law like this is basically as good as saying "OK you guys, go ahead and tell me how I should live."

By the way, laws like this have failed everywhere else in the USA so far.

And gay people will keep having relationships even if you don't let them marry because it doesn't fit in with the Christian idea of marriage (which btw, read your bible, was pretty liberal.) This is of course a denial of their rights and decency as human beings based on a certain moral idea. Who does it hurt exactly? The question you should ask yourself while you let these kind of things slide by, is when will it be my turn?

> I think it's interesting that we've seen a steady decline in violent crime since the mid 70's

True enough, but there has been an increase of gang related violent crime, of the kind shown in the GTA series. Does any individual game or movie or TV show "cause" someone to commit a crime, I don't think so - at least not unless they were already seriously mentally challenged in some way. What we have done is coarsen society, made it seem OK to solve everything with conflict instead of negotiation.

Are you saying they HAVEN'T? Because if so you're just chosing to completely blind yourself to history. Are you going to call me crazy for using history as a guide like you do for statistics?



Forged? Was this study, supressed in the UK for 50 years by people like you, but done only one year after Kinsley's study also "forged"?




IF scientific studies said there was no harm in it, then there ISN'T. End of story.

That said, THEY HAVEN'T, and the idea of a study coming to that conclusion is absurd. Children don't have enough experience to know the dangers of such activities. You don't need to do a study to know that. And you don't need to do a study to know that drugs and alcohol should also be off limits until they are older.

So your slippery slope argument is bogus. Pedophillia will not become legal. The "worst" that would happen is the age of consent may be reduced a couple years, and I'd actually support that, because I think it's stupid that a guy who has just turned 18 can no longer legally have sex with his 16 or 17 year old girlfriend.

PS:

Just because an activity is revolting to you or I doesn't mean it causes harm or should be banned. I feel uncomfortable seeing men kiss, but I will defend to my last breath their right to do so, and to get married.




There are so many things wrong with that paragraph I don't know where to begin.

First of all I hate "big brother", so the idea of me suckling at the teat of big brother is laughable.

Secondly, I despise both war and ignorance. I'm a DEMOCRAT. YOU, on the other hand are clearly a REPUBLICAN. YOUR leaders took us to war for OIL, and YOUR leaders cut funding for education because all they care about is lowering taxes.

And YOU are the one drinking from the trough the greatest number of horses drink from! There're far more religious people out there like you who want to force their beliefs on others. If there weren't, BUSH, the guy who recently said GOD told him to invade Iraq, wouldn't be in office right now.

You hold your little black book up high while yelling about morality, but the reality is, your kind doesn't adhere to any sort of morals that actually matter. Gay marraige is more important an issue to you than giving everyone who wants one a college education.