Politicians Want Better Tools and Stricter Game Ratings for Parents

Once you have government mandated ratings, you need a government agency to oversee the program and fees and taxes to support the bureaucracy.  All in a government database of players of violent video games. 

There’s a Democrat in Utah?

Other than having slightly tweaked numbers and some different warnings, the systems are functionally the same as even T says 13+ and M 17+ above it. The warnings are hilarious though. Fear? Discrimination?

These guys blow a lot of hot air, and until it starts crystallizing, I’m going to sit back and laugh at the fail. That’s not to say we won’t need to fight something at sometime, but we’re not there yet.

OK even a major retailers like GameStop enforce this by not selling to minors with out a parent or guardian, my local small town game shop does this as well. So I ask what the in the hell can we else do? (Strong words yes, but are required in my honest opinion.)

We give parents the tools, major game makers adopt these ratings, major retailers self police themselves, not much can be done, its just feel good laws they are coming out with. (Laws that make ones feel good, might get reelected, but really do nothing to solve anything.)

About the only thing is change the games that are made, I.E no games that are considered bad by the activist and politics, but that limits freedom, or the talk of taxing the violent games, well you do that better be movies as well that are rated R and lets say unrated too. It seems like I’m being silly, but when you look at it, you can see it.

Make it clearer? How hard is to look at the letter which right underneath the EC, E, E10+, T, M, and AO it says WHAT the rating means such as adult only and WHY it gets that rating. I mean how much harder can it be to understand what a game may have if it has a AO rating? or M 17+ rating?

Video games are violent because USA society is a cut throat society which embraces violence, cheating and other more traits of a Capitalist Society.

But if there is a nipple shown in a USA magazine,.omg! america freaks out?! Yet heavy violence and gore are ok in America?? (I’m an american and I don’y get it.)

This system is nice but it’s not going to do much since there is no way to enforce, Plus with increase in PC game sales coming from Steam and Origin, you simply need a credit card (yours or parents) and put in a date of birth that allows you to download.

This whole games and real violence is very much like how people were angry at Rap and their violent lyrics. The lyrics were they way they were because that is what the artist lived through, a harsh and dangerous world.

If you want less violence in games one, get the parents on board (they buy what ever the kids want) and society needs to change.

As for the game industry- the industry do need to start looking at violence in the area of showing it more mature and less glorified. This is part of the game industry maturing.

There is nothing wrong with violence in games if presented properly, ex. Spec Op The Line. 

What i see today is that many games are caught up in what I see as the hollywood blockbuster movie games. These are fun and explosives and use gimmicks but they have not seen that there is more to games then making a CoD clone or another popular game title clone. Game industry could learn something from the Indie games with looking beyond what is the norm and see how the medium can be better. Hollywood learned many lessons when they saw how Indie movies were becoming hits to the level that make the other normal typical movies seem boring or a rehash of past over used ideas in the same boring way. They started to get more creative and open to these Indie type of movies and put money behind it.

I hope The game industry will flow this but they must be careful not to get caught up with strait profit and marketing since this will give us only non innovated games. 

violent crime in the USA is down for the 5th straight year, according to CNN and FBI.

All the comments are kind of disappointing. Only a few people really looked at why the bill is even being proposed. The system is made to resemble the European system. By doing this after a time they can say it isn’t video games since other countries are not having the same issue. 

Unfortunately all this will prove is something that we already know, the United States needs a better medical system. Especially mental health. All that is being done now is just to quite the generations that did not grow up with video games and the people that generally do not play them. 

If America wants to cull the amount of violent crimes it needs a better medical and mental health system and this will help prove it.

Based on some of the Pegi and ESRB ratings, if they had been applied to the cartoons I watched as a kid, Bugs Bunny, Woody Wood Pecker, Tom and Jerry,and a slew of others would not have been on TV due to violence.  Our society was more conservative during my childhood than it is now, yet they were allowed on TV without a Rating next to it.  Because people had common sense and knew that Bugs Bunny wasn’t going to make someone come up with their own ACME bomb and try to blow $h!t up.  When I was a kid, people didn’t complacently trust government  for good reason.  Now Government doesn’t trust people, and to make decisions for us because we’re not capable as the mindless masses.  Big Brother knows what’s best for us, if you don’t believe them, just ask them.  And I’m talking about both parties here, not just one or the other.

There are bad parents in this world, but that’s no reason for strict laws to limit more freedoms from law biding citizens so they can force those with poor judgement to comply with social norms and values of the day.  It’s like the Overton Window, and games are just one piece of how society reflects our values and norms.  Government just needs to stay out of our lives, our bedrooms, our video games, our music, and do its job to protect us from the bad guys and disasters, not from ourselves.