Illinois Videogame Law Moves Forward

The ongoing trend of legislating the sale of video games moves forward. Gamasutra has news on the Illinois law currently moving through the legislature, which apparently has "overwhelming support". From the Illinois debate: "An industry that is making so much money selling these things to your children is dealing with things like decapitation, defecation on people. There's vivid pictures of nudity. It's an industry that needs help being policed..."

Here's my suggestion

[QuantumG]

Let's make every game 18+ by default. Then let's set up a classification board, staffed by people who actually know how to play a game, that you have to go to if you want a game which is rated for younger audiences. Then let's change this mantra of the protectorate which I hear all the time: games are for kids. Games are not for kids. Surveys have shown that the vast majority of gamers are over 18 years of age. The fact that games contain elements which are distasteful in ordinary society is no big surprise when you stop thinking about games as entertainment for kids and start thinking about them as an escape from reality for adults.

Errrrr

[schild]

Defecation on people?

I play a _lot_ of games, and I'm pretty sure there's no game out there where you can squat and take a cleveland steamer on someone.

Sure, you can pee on people in Postal 2, but that's surely what they aren't implying, or they would have used the word urinate.

No matter how you slice it, the government's (local and national) obsession with controlling what media our children see is unhealthy. Hell, I don't even know how any lawmakers got it into their head that this is somehow important.

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Re:peer 2 peer

[keeleysam]

or buying online like I do :-D

PS: Im under 18 and in IL

GoatWagon sounds good.

[DeanMeister]

This is just getting ridiculous. If the government spent half as much time getting guns off the street and making weapons unavailable to kids then half our problems would be solved right there. And I'd really like somone to point out this "defecation" game for me. If no one in this community has heard of it it's probably a terrible game anyway. Maybe game's like Grand Theft Auto wouldn't exist if they didn't have real world models to go off of. Maybe you should focus on that instead of blaming games for bringing violence to your attention.

Re:Here's my suggestion

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

That'll be about as effective as banning drinking and smoking for kids...except games, being software, can't be as easily controlled as physical objects like booze or cigarettes.

And there are a lot more "underage" gamers than underage smokers or drinkers.

Games are not for kids.

Games, like most things, are for people mature enough to handle it. I can play Halo and enjoy the strategy without going trigger-happy and without looking for a game with more gore. (In fact, much as I enjoy Halo, I find games with gratuitous gore very distasteful.)

Surveys have shown that the vast majority of gamers are over 18 years of age.

Ehheh. Right. Surveys show that the vast majority of people are over 18 years of age. I mean, you're comparing what, a group from roughly 10 or 12 to 18 with a group from 19 to who-knows-where? Of course you'll get more in the latter.

Is there a survey that shows that there is a vastly greater percentage of gaming adults compared to the percentage of gaming teenagers? I'm pretty sure that a randomly-selected teenager is far more likely to play video games than a randomly-selected adult.

The fact that games contain elements which are distasteful in ordinary society is no big surprise when you stop thinking about games as entertainment for kids and start thinking about them as an escape from reality for adults.

Except for one thing: lots of developers treat games as entertainment for kids. And lots of teenagers like this kind of escape from reality, and are mature enough to handle tasteful games....

Patheitc

[HeavyK]

This law is so vague it would essenially ban minors from buying football games, World War 2 themed shooters or even RPGs because they contain realistic depictions of human on human violence.
If this law was extended to cover movies, music and books also it would essenically (sp?) outlaw the sale of the Bible or Star Wars films to minors. Pretty pathetic.

Re:Errrrr

[Bios_Hakr]

The "Bubblegum" crew on CounterStrike (mostly on the Tokyo servers) will spraypaint their balls (an actual, hi-rez, digital picture of each player's manberries) on your corpse. I've seen these guys actually sacrifice themselves to jump across a level and spray balls on me.

Another crew has a pic of poop in a urinal (WTF people) as their spray.

So, yes, people do deficate on each other.

Re:Here's my suggestion

[QuantumG]

My original comment specifically said that game manufacturers should be able to submit their game to a review board which could hand out classifications for ratings other than 18+. I don't want to ban any games, I want all games to be 18+ and available on the shelf until such time as the manufacturer gets a lower rating.

maybe this is good

[delirium of disorder]

Kids aren't going to stop playing video games because they legaly need mommy to buy the game for them. Its like pornography; its illegal for minors to buy porn, so they aren't able to purchase much...but the age range with the most pron downloads is probably 13-17 year old boys. I think these kinds of restrictions are a good thing because they teach kids how to subvert fascist authority. If we are to live in a free society, we need creative people who can get around the confinements imposed by parents, churches, governments, and corporations. If you give kids too much freedom yearly on, they won't know what to do when that freedom is taken away.

So...lets ban all violent video games, music with naughty words, and any images of the human body that show more skin then an Afghani wearing a burqua! For every prohibition, you create an underground. The more underground our economy is, they less the corporate glutons profit from it and the more average citizens learn to be rebels and freedom fighters.

Re:maybe this is good

[happymedium]

1. There's a deficit of incentive here. Why would POLITICIANS (let that word sink in a bit) make any effort to limit corporations' profits?

2. A society like the one you speak of would produce people as ill-informed, immature, and reactionary as you are, judging from your comment. Keep believing that all authority is "fascist." See where that gets you. Parents, churches, and governments are imperfect, sometimes painfully so, but don't tell me that "Love thy neighbor," "All men are created equal," and the like are not genuinely good ideas.

Re:since when...

[Ayaress]

H games are very rarely available retail in the US. Very few companies import them because they're just not that popular here. Where they are sold (I worked at a book store in my area that has a few of them. Even then, not even enough to get their own shelf, and in the eighteen months I worked there, I only remember seeing one customer actually buy one), they're behind the beaded curtain next to the brown-wrapper magazines, and they usually have brown wrappers themselves. Anybody under 18 isn't even allowed in the room where they're kept (this one checked ID, too), and the store I worked at had a policy posted outside the beaded curtain room that if you had somebody under 18 with you, even if it was your child, you couldn't go inside (The justification is that they'd be left unattended, but the reason was just as much to stop people from buying porn for their younger friends). The only way to get H games in most areas is at adult novelty stores, or through catalogs like J-list or Jast USA. Most such catalogs require age verification just to order the catalog, let alone anything in it. Most also require age verification and a credit card to order. Most adult stores are almost religious about making sure nobody under 18 gets through the door. They're often unliked by the local authorities already, so even a small slip can mean getting their land rezoned out from under them.