BestBuy is taking steps to making parental decision making easier. According to Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, Best Buy Co. Inc. and Common Sense Media are teaming up to provide a new online rating system. This tool will be in addition to the ESRB rating system already in place. Best Buy hopes to better educate parents on videogames. Titles will be rated for childhood development standards and age appropriateness. Violence, profanity, and sexual content will be clearly listed.

BestBuy.com will provide user comments and reviews from Common Sense Media on video games, and plan to also implement the rating system for videos in the future.

Will two rating systems actually help parents make better decisions as to what their children are playing considering the original is on the whole ignored? In the end the responsibility to choose what children should and shouldn’t be playing is still a parent’s prerogative.

Gamepolitics.com is reporting that the Entertainment Software Association has named Michael Gallagher as its new top boss. Gallagher replaces co-founder Doug Lowenstein, who left the organization earlier this year after taking a few parting shots at the industry and game journalism in general.

Gallagher comes to the ESA having formerly served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information under President George W. Bush. Gallagher brings years of beltway insider experience to the industry group at a time when it is increasingly under scrutiny from federal lawmakers and the press.

The full article and comments from industry leaders can be found here. The full press release from the ESA is here for those who want to drill through it.

The Roanoke Times ran a story today about a video game based on the recent Virginia Tech shooter rampage called V-Tech Rampage. While there have been few if any real links to the aberrant behavior of the shooter and gaming, this is not the first time a video game has been created after a horrible incident. Those interviewed by the Times were understandably upset and outraged at the amateur video game title.

The interesting twist reported both in the Times article and one of the originating sources – Dennis McCauley’s Gamepolitics.com – reports that the game’s creator is in effect blackmailing those who are upset by asking for donations to comply with taking the game off of its hosted website Newgrounds. Despite a response from creator Ryan Lambourn of Australia that indicated the request for donations was a joke this incident adds another stain to the public debate surrounding freedom of speech and video games.

The ESA and other video game groups have yet to issue a public statement condemning this game and identifying that it is not a commercial product or endorsed by reasonable people anywhere.

Chris Vizzini, owner of the the community website, Gaymer.org, has applied for a trademark of the term “gaymer.” He’s primarily doing it to prevent other online entities from profiting from it. The trademark won’t make it exclusive to him though, which is too bad. That would at least eliminate one more degrading insult from the standard twelve-year old’s vocabulary.

 

Jack Thompson is a very confused guy. He recently sent an e-mail to Wendy’s CEO, Kerri Anderson, wagging his finger at the company for their most recent business dealings. Why is he going after a fast food chain of all things? Well, it has to do with a line of Kids’ Meal toys featuring Wii-related products. Do any of these products represent violent video games? Well no, but since Rockstar is releasing a version of Manhunt 2 for the Wii, that means the popular burger franchise is guilty of promoting a “murder simulator,” as he puts it.

To summarize:

- A example of a violent game is Manhunt 2.
- Manhunt 2 will be released on the Nintendo Wii.
- Nintendo made a deal to distribute Wii toys through Wendy’s.
-Wendy’s received a “shame on you” e-mail from Jack Thompson.

Since you can connect Manhunt 2 to Wendy’s, the only logical conclusion is that Wendy’s is giving away bloody butcher knives and snuff films as part of their newest promotion to children. That’s pretty much the only way I could see Jack Thompson having more than a slight issue with the fast food company.

Look, if they release a game where the main objective is to eat Wendy’s for every meal, I could see a respectable person of the law community (Jack, sit down) having some issues with the fast food chain. But attacking a company because they decide to sell toys for a product that is also aimed at children makes no sense. I could also connect Manhunt 2 to my toaster, but I don’t think my toaster is going to corrupt my mind. I already threw away the toaster that did that…

Man, I could go for a Frosty right about now.

The debate rages on–do video games make people violent? Do they pose a threat to society? Should we wear clothes in public?

While the answer to the last question is an obvious yes, the first two have caused problems for a number of gamers around the country, and even the world. We do throw around stories about this ad nauseum (that means “to the point of being sick” for all you non-Latin speakers), but anyone wanting to get a sense of a very educated debate can read about the one that took place at Stanford last week, hosted by XFire.

Both sides went at it, with topics such as whether or not Congress should regulate game sales, whether violent video games should be aimed at teens, and whether or not the ESRB’s rating system actually keeps violent video games out of the hands of children.

I can’t pretend I don’t have an opnion about this, so I won’t. Let’s try not to let a ten year-old play San Andreas, but at the same time don’t pull kids out of school for playing Counter-Strike, okay?

So we told you earlier that Jack Thompson lost his mind and added Gawker Media, parent company of Kotaku.com, to his latest series of lawsuits. Yes I know Jack losing it is old news but bare with me. Well as quickly as it began, it’s all over, as soon-to-be-sued Florida District Court Judge Paul Huck has tossed the case. What’s interesting is that the case wasn’t dismissed based on its content, but rather on Jack’s inability to follow filing procedures.

Here’s a fun game, lets examine this the Thompson way: Jack’s suit got dismissed because he didn’t obey the procedural law. This means Jack is a lawbreaker. Video games cause people to break the law. OMG Jacks been playing video games!

Here Jack why don’t you try this.

Well, Wacky Jacky is back at his old antics again. He filed an amended complaint in one of his many pending lawsuits today, in which he added Gawker Media and Kotaku.com as defendants. I’m not going to cite the entire legal document for you (I read it, and trust me, none of you should have to), but I will quote this, since it shows exactly how Jack’s mind works. “What followed this screed by Mr. Crecente at Kotaku.com, owned and operated by Gawker Media, was a rather stunning but predictable response from the bloggers who are video game industry lemmings who are attracted like moths to a flame at Kotaku.com.” First off, I believe that rather than bloggers, he means commenters. Second, to describe fans of games as lemmings is just funny. Video game fans may be the harshest critics of their chosen medium. Thompson even specifies in the complaint that he wants a jury trial, which sounds suspiciously like, “I want to make all the defendants incur travel costs so high that they’ll have to settle with me.”

My best wishes to Gawker Media and Kotaku as they battle Wacky Jacky. Hopefully, you guys will beat him down (if it ever sees the inside of a courtroom) and shut him up.

Like many legislators, Bill Heckroth, a freshman Democratic state senator from Waverly, Iowa, is up in arms over video games. However, he doesn’t want to ban a Rockstar title, or blame games for a school shooting. He wants his fellow legislators to stop playing games during legislative sessions. “That just doesn’t look real professional,” says Heckroth. ‘”The whole gallery was full of kids. I could hear them chitchatting. …They’re talking about everybody playing games on their computers. I looked down and there were a lot of people, clerks as well as senators, with solitaire, stuff like that.” All the senators and clerks use state-issued laptops to track legislation and communicate with constituents. Apparently, they also use them to pass the time with Solitaire and Bejeweled during slow discussions on the floor. Senate Minority Leader Mary Lundby, R-Marion, a 21-year Statehouse veteran and occasional video gamer says, “Freshmen are always shocked by what goes on. Next year he won’t even mention it. He’ll probably be playing games.” How ironic is it that some legislators want to ban videogames on one hand, and on the other they’re playing away on their laptops?

Earlier this week, we told you about a study conducted by the BBFC that showed that gamers actually don’t mistake games for real life, just in case you didn’t already know that. Now the ratings organization is looking to review their classification policy. “That’s one of the reasons for this research,” said BBFC spokesperson Sue Clark. Clark went on to say, “when you watch a film you actually have less control than when you play games. It’s easier for you to lose that sense of reality. One of the key conclusions of this report is that interactivity actually helps players distance reality from adult experiences in games.” So, instead of the ‘murder simulators’ that we’ve been told our games are, it appears that they are actually LESS harmful than movies. My question is, why is it that no one listened to us gamers when we were saying this years ago?