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[rose]

[HALO2] - Legislation on sales of video games to minors GDC

[Phaedra]

Re: [HALO2] - Legislation on sales of video games to minors

[Clayfoot]

Phaedra, you know that Halo violence and gore isn't limited to the aliens. The marines and, lest we forget, the protaganist get killed and splattered, too. If that weren't enough, the fade-away shot often shows the protagonist twitching in apparent distress in a pool of his own blood. Anyway, is it at all that clear that children make the distinction between the sci-fi futuristic violence in Halo and the realistic, present-day violence in GTA?

With respect to children, violence in video games gets more attention because of the interactivity. In any FPS, the player participates in the violence. The in-game violent acts produce the same physiological arousal that fighting in real life produces. Repetition and rewards both increase learning, and video games offer both. Early, limited research on children suggests that playing video games increases aggressive thoughts, emotions, and actions in proportion to the amount of video game play. It may be just a correlation, but it may be that video game violence "trains" children to think and to act more agressively.

This is a good round-up of video game violence and kids:
http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers/walsh.html

Please, don't take any of this as an endorsement for government action. I opposed the V-chip when it was mandated, and I oppose government intervention here, too. It's my responsibility to limit what my child plays, not the government's. My daughter doesn't get to watch R-rated movies, and she doesn't get to play M-rated games like Halo.

This is just a message board, but it suggests why Halo 2 got rated 'M', instead of 'T'.
snopes.com: Why is HALO2 rated M?

[Clayfoot]

BTW, I would hesitatingly suggest that the way we play as beekeepers online is often much less violent or aggressive than the campaign or the wilds of XBox Live. Parts of our play might even be beneficial to a growing mind. If it could be proven that some online, interactive play was beneficial to children in some measurable way, it would certainly confound the arguments against the violence. No?

[Phaedra]

[Clayfoot]

[DreamOfTheRood]

The simple truth is that our society is becoming more and more of a Nanny State, with certain people on both sides of the Republican-Democratic chasm pushing for more regulation in the fields of entertainment. Now, I'm an old-fashioned conservative, and I think it should be left up to the parents as to what games and movies their child can and can not see or play.

However, I don't think that we are in any danger of any kind of morality code being forced upon game developers; the government isn't going to say, "There can no longer be any representation of death in games or movies." For one thing, it would be political suicide, because every one of their constituents plays games and watches movies. Secondly, the representation of death and violence is legally indefinable. Let me explain.

Most games have some form of loss, but many games - whether they be board games, card games or video games- have some representation of death in them. AD+D deals with killing fantastic beasts and is "blatantly divorced from reality." Magic: TG is involved with the same kind of thing. Yet, even Risk, RISK, has interpretive forms of death. You throw a bad row of the dice, and entire legions are wiped off the face of the earth. Furthermore, that's a game that gets played daily in the White House.

I'm probably getting off subject, so I'll stop here.

[sux0rbiscuit]

Here is my take on the matter since I work at a video game store:

I have dealt with many kids trying to buy M rated games, and I am not allowed to sell it to them, period. That is my company policy and I can get terminated for selling them the games. They must have photo ID showing that they are 18 to purchase the games from us. This rule is a complete waste of time though, because these people are just going to go right next door and buy the game at another video game store. For my companies sake, a law on this would not be that bad. Some of these games just do not need to be played by kids. Do you think a 12 year old should be sitting down playing Manhunt? Many parents do come in and buy games like Grand Theft Auto for their kids, especially around christmas, returning only a couple days later to demand a refund for purchasing such "a filth ridden game, that teaches deplorable moral values." as one irate customer said to me. A couple things can be done to improve this system to make it better for people is to retool the game rating system, because how it stands right now, there is not a very clear border between what makes a Teen rating and a Mature rating, because there is a clear difference between Halo and Manhunt, yet they deem the same rating. So my points summed up in blurbs:
1. Legislation on who buys the games is not a bad thing, because alot of companies are already enforcing it
2.Please re-tool the gaming industry
3.Soccer moms need knowledge before they come shop.

[Grifter_7]

[Clayfoot]

The rating system is problematic, but it at least gives soccer mom a chance to choose which games not to buy. For any given game, somewhere on the box, there's the rating and a few words about how the game earned that rating. If soccer mom has some idea what she doesn't want her child to see, she can use the system before she buys the game to avoid an unpleasant surprise.

I'm intrigued by the proposal to legislate ratings, in order to level the field between stores that will or won't sell 'M' rated video games to children. I'm not persuaded that this makes it a valid government intervention, but it does help in another way. Such a law would free soccer mom from monitoring her child's video game shopping. Soccer mom would be free to buy any game for her child, but her child would not be free to buy the game without soccer mom's explicit knowledge. I'm still not persuaded that this is a good reason for government intervention either (or even whether it would work), but I certainly see the appeal to parents in any political party.

[Clayfoot]

What, exactly, happens when children play violent video games? Since video games always involve repetition and rewards, it's definitely a learning environment. What effects have actually been proven in research, positive or negative? If negative, just how negative would the effects have to be to warrant government regulation, such as that for pornography, alcohol, and tobacco?

[SuperJerms]

With the Live! stuff, we again have the telecomm issues. It's neigh impossible to legislate anything related to the Internet and decency. 'Course, I'm 100% in favor of getting all 8 year old children off of live. Potentiality to scream over Live seems inversely proportionate to age.

[DiscipleN2k]

I still don't see the logic behind all of the complaints against the video game industry. The necessary precautions to keep the games out of the hands of (most of) the people who don't need to play them are already in place. We already have the rating system which clearly displays the rating in one or two big fat letters on the front of every video game currently availible, and as far as I know, it already is against the law (although horribly enforced) to sell the games to someone outside of the approved age group.

The problem isn't with the video game industry, it's with the parents. For some odd reason, parents seem to assume that it's the government's responsibility to babysit their kids for them. If someone's kids are playing a game they don't approve of, it's not the developer's fault as I highly doubt that the game's creators brought it to their house. If they're playing it, it's because the parents (or another close adult) bought it for them. The system works great for parents who are bright enough to use it.

It does bug me just a little that Halo 2 has the same rating as the GTA series, but all it takes is a little research to find out which one is more appropriate for your kid. It works the same way in the movie world. The Passion of the Christ has the same rating as Hittin' It, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that one is more appropriate for the kids than another (although I don't recommend taking the young 'ens to see Passion, either). It always comes down to the parents. Ultimately they have control over what their kids are exposed to. If they're exposed to something that the parents don't approve of inside their own home, then the parents have noone to blame but themselves.

What is it about this country and everyone pointing the finger everywhere but where it belongs. "Burger King made me fat." "McDonald's injured me with their hot coffee." "Video games are making my kid violent." I wish we could just take all of the warning labels off of everything and cleanse the genepool a little.

-Disciple

*My apologies for the lack of form in this post. I wrote different chunks of it in between tasks at work and my brain isn't functioning quite well enough to determine what belongs and what is completely random.

[DiscipleN2k]

[Fenwicked]

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing some sting operations in video game stores. When I was 14, I participated in a sting operation with the police department, where I'd go into a grocery or convenience store, and an undercover officer would be right behind me. I would try to buy cigarettes, and if they sold them to me, I'd leave and the officer would reveal themselves to the clerk, and appropriate discipline would take place. (Believe it or not, 4 out of 7 places we tried actually sold them to me. Without asking for ID or anything) I'm not saying the police necessarily need to be involved in this, but perhaps the ESRB could set up something like this. I think the rating system is great in theory, but is so poorly enforced that its actual effectiveness is laughable. As it is, it seems more like a "strong suggestion" than anything else. If there were actual consequences for the stores or store employees that sell inapropriate games to minors, then these parents wouldn't have anyone to blame but their own negligence.