Why striking down California's game law was a good thing.

First off, people may be wondering where the heck have I been. Well the quick and dirty is I got laid off and put all my time into finding a new job, which I now have! Yay! Also I am working on planning a wedding. So free time to blog has been few and far between. I will try to get some more content up. I thank those of you who keep checking back looking for more posts.

Today, the Supreme Court struck down a California law that would make it illegal for a merchant to sell violent (Read 'M' for Mature) rated games to minors, would require labeling on all violent video games and fine merchants up to $1,000 for failure to comply with the law. Now that is paraphrasing it a bit.

Right off the cuff that doesn't sound like a horrible thing right? I mean, I think most people would agree that children should not be able to just purchase violent and obscene video games. So what's the problem then?

The problem is who decides what is violent and obscene? Based on the law, that would fall to some government entity to decide and this is where things get fuzzy. How does one determine what is too violent for children? Believe it or not, there are people out there who think Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry are over-the-top violent and should be banned. Who decides exactly where the line is drawn? Shouldn't that responsibility ultimately fall to the parents of said children. What if some parent group decided that Mario Kart is too violent by promoting reckless driving and litering? You don't think that could happen? Remember this is the country where a woman sued McDonalds because she spilled hot coffee on herself and won!

This law was redundant to the practices already in place by the ESRB and pretty much every major retailer who sell video games. Lawmakers wanted the people to believe that the industry is completely unregulated and that your children can just walk into their local retailer and buy Duke Nukem, Mortal Kombat, God of War and many others... Let us look at the three major points of this law and why we don't need it.

1) The law would make it illegal for a merchant to sell a mature rated game to a minor. Now I don't live in California. Where I do live though, I haven't seen kids buying any 'M' rated games from Best Buy, Wal-Mart, EB Games, etc. I see retailers asking kids for ID's when trying to purchase those games and have seen them turn away kids and tell them to come back with their parents. This by the way really ticks off the parents who seem to think that every video game out there is Care Bears and Pac-Man. A long time ago the ESRB stated that all merchants should not sell games with an 'M' rating to anyone under 17, and most retailers have a similar implemented policy. Send your kid into a Wal-Mart or Best Buy by themselves and see if they just walk in and buy Duke Nukem Forever. If they can, walk in there and ask why to speak to the manager and find out why they sold that game and didn't follow their policy. Chances are someone could get fired. The retailers actually do take it seriously.

Let me share a story here. A month or so after Grand Theft Auto III came out, I was in an EB Games. The manager there is a guy named Ray. A kid about 10 or 11 comes in wanting to buy GTA3. Ray tells the kid that he can't sell the game to him because he is under 17 and that his Mom or Dad would have to come in to buy it for him. This kid leaves and maybe 10 mintues later comes back with a bit of an irate mother in tow. She says that her son said that he wasn't allowed to buy a video game. Ray explains that the game is Rated 'M' and features a lot of mature content. The Mom wants to know what is so bad about this game. Ray and I then explain the first hour or so of gameplay. From picking up whores, assinations, running over grandma, having sex to regain health then being able to get out and kill the whore to get your money back. She looks down at her son and asks "Is this really the sort of game you think you should be playing?" The kid looks back and explains how his friend has it and how cool it is. Mom hands over the money, kid gets to play something he really should have no business playing.

If the parent ignores everything that says "Don't buy this game for your child", there is no law that is going to fix this situation.

2) The law would require warning labels about the content of violent video games. Do me a favor, get up, go to your favorite video game retailer and look at their games. Look at every game they have. Do you see any that don't have a game rating on the front AND back? On the front is the general rating; EC, E, E10+, T, M, or AO. On the back of the game there is another place for the rating and some descriptors for why the game has that rating. Some examples: Blood and Gore, Comic Mischief, Nudity, etc.

Then, go over to the movie or CD section. How many movies do you see with the rating on the front? Beyond that, look at the back of the movie where the rating is. Do you see a descriptor as to why that movie is rated PG, PG-13, or R? Sure CD's have that "Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics" sticker. Look at the back of the CD, where does it explain that rating? Is there just a single instance where the F-Bomb is dropped or is it some hardcore violent speech?

Basically California wants to pass a law requiring what the game industry is already doing and doing better than the movie and music industry. Not sure what a rating means, look it up on the ESRB's web site:

http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp

3) The law would fine a retailer up to $1,000 per occurance that it sold a 'M' rated game to a child. The problem here is they are going after the industry that has the highest level of complaince among all mainstream media purchases. The fact is that the game industry does a better job at keeping mature rated content out of the hands of children. Here is a link to a 2011 study done by the U.S. FTC. They found that less than 13% of underage teenage shoppers were able to purchase a 'M' rated video game. That might seem high to you. That is a drop from 20% in 2009. Compare that to the movie industry where 38% of underage shoppers were able to purchase an R-Rated movie.

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2011/04/violentkidsent.shtm

The Video Game industry does everything it can to make sure that parents are aware of what the content of their games are. They do better then all other media industries at keeping mature rated content out of the hands of underage buyers. Why is the government trying to interfere with them then? My opinion is they shouldn't.

Had the law been allowed to go into effect, it would of allowed the government to decide what is and what isn't acceptable for your children. That is not our government's job. That is the job of the parents. Although as my example above shows, sometimes parents just don't care. Be involved in your child's life. Look at the games they are playing, ask them questions about it. Educate them and yourselves and stop looking to the government to do your job.

I have decided to not cover how this law could have impacted the industry, since it was struck down there is little point in that. I have also decided to not provide my critique of the lawmakers who tried to push this upon us. Hopefully they will look at what they were trying to do and realize that the game industry is one of their biggest allies in keeping mature content out of the hands of our children.

(NOTE: I really feel out of rhythm in writing this. I might go back and re-write pieces of it. This is my first post in months and this is a bit rushed.)