Vote for Your Favorite Political Hypocrite
By Stephany on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 2:01 PM PST In Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Game Related Laws, Gamer Life, Games, Games Industry, Portable
Politicians have always been known to flip flop, try to pass foul laws, bow down to underhanded special interest groups, commit adultery with hookers, interns and Marilyn Monroe, and a whole host of other unscrupulous shenanigans since time began. However, with the success of the gaming industry causing a complete change in the world’s lifestyle and choices, comes new fuel for politicians to add to the ever growing firestorm of outcry over violence in video games.
GamePolitics has been tracking “the nexus of politics and video games” for over the past three years, and I must say they have done a bang up job of it. Today, while perusing their site, I came across a nice little poll they are conducting on who is the Biggest Political Hypocrite. The five listed below are the ones I pulled from their site, and GP felt that these five were the ones that stood out more than others of their ilk.
- Boston Mayor Thomas Menino (D): Mayor Menino led a 2006 movement to have ads for GTA: Vice City Stories removed from public transportation and got the local transit agency to commit to never again carrying an ad for an M-rated game. Now he is at the center of a legislative proposal that would equate violent games with pornography. In between attacks on video games, Menino hopes to lure game developers to set up shop in Boston.
- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R): The man who signed California’s 2005 video game into law, and ordered the state to appeal a 2007 ruling by a U.S. District Court judge that the law was unconstitutional, is himself the star of many a violent movie. What’s more, he appears in character in several violent games based on the Terminator films.
- Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D): Gov. Sebelius threw her support behind an unsuccessful 2006 attempt to legislate video games. Earlier this year it was revealed that Gov. Sebelius’ son John created a Grand Theft Auto-like board game called Don’t Drop the Soap and marketed it from the taxpayer-funded Governor’s residence.
- New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D): During his 2006 election campaign Spitzer railed against video game content, saying, “Nothing under New York State law prohibits a fourteen-year old from walking into a video store and buying… a game like ‘Grand Theft Auto,’ which rewards a player for stealing cars and beating people up. Children can even simulate having sex with a prostitute…” As everyone now knows, it was the “sex with a prostitute” part that brought Spitzer himself down in 2008.
- British Labour MP Keith Vaz: Vaz got into the video game violence debate in 2004 when a 14-year-old constituent, Stefan Pakeerah, was brutally murdered. Vaz alleged that the controversial Rockstar title Manhunt inspired the crime. A Scotland Yard investigation, however, established no such link. Vaz would go on to criticize Rockstar’s Bully and Manhunt 2 games. While he has attacked the make-believe crime of video games, Vaz, as documented by the BBC, carries significant real-world ethical baggage.
As of this post, Gov. Eliot Spitzer has the lead with 686/1508 votes. You yourself can vote by clicking through the link below. Oh, and for those who did not “get” the photo caption above, it is a Futurama reference.
Thanks: GamePolitics.com
“California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R): The man who signed California’s 2005 video game into law, and ordered the state to appeal a 2007 ruling by a U.S. District Court judge that the law was unconstitutional, is himself the star of many a violent movie. What’s more, he appears in character in several violent games based on the Terminator films.”
That doesn’t make Arnold a hypocrite as neither his films nor his games were rated for use by children. The law he supported would NOT have outlawed the creation and sale of such violent video games. It simply would have forbidden the sale of such games directly to children, a audience for whom they were not rated anyway.
The real hypocrites on this issue are the game industry lobby which for P.R. purposes likes to claim that their violent video games aren’t targeted and marketed at children. Yet, the game industry fervently opposes all efforts to legally rein in such sales to children because they know damn well that they make huge revenue from the purchase of those very games for play by children. I personally don’t support government censorship of entertainment content in principle, but the video game industry needs to stop its hypocrisy on this issue. It can’t legitimately claim that games that are rated M are only targeted at adults when it produces and distributes promotional material which shows children playing such games as Microsoft has done with Halo. Ask any teacher and they’ll tell you that significant numbers of children are playing m-rated video games based upon what they say at school. You can also find plenty of children playing m-rated games on XBOX Live. If the video game industry really wants to show that it doesn’t market its m-rated games to children, it needs to do more than pay some idle lipservice to the issue when opposing laws to regulate game sales to children. It should run regular public service announcements in the media advocating that these games are not for play by children as the alcohol and tobacco industries have done for their respective products.
You can also see 4th graders watching movies like The Ring, and Saw 1-4, etc on any given weekend. Is this the movie industry’s fault? No it isn’t.
Saying that, please note that I am not condoning kids watching R rated movies, listening to uncensored rap music, accessing porn via the internet, or playing M rated games. Parents need to be responsible enough to “block” unwanted content from entering their homes. If they would not allow their child to watch violent programming or listen to vulgar music lyrics – which they can just look at the packaging on both of these forms of entertainment and SEE that they are RATED – then they should also be able to take their blinders off and see that games are rated too.
You also have to blame the retailers just as much as the parents. A movie theater will not allow certain ages to watch movies not intended for them without a guardian or the show of ID, same with Tobacco and Alcohol. Therefore, the stores should monitor their employees and train them to ask for ID before allowing said games to be purchased. Maybe they should also train these employees to educate the buyer as they purchase the game. So, if a parent and their 13 year old walk up to a counter with GTA IV in their hands, the person at the register can politely ask the purchaser if they were aware that this is an M rated game. If the parent buys it anyway, then the buck is passed and the parents have no one to blame but themselves. Try getting an employee at Best Buy making minimum wage to do this though… unless a “fired on the spot” policy was implemented a situation such as that would be useless.
As far as public service announcements are concerned, I find that to be overkill. Alcohol and Tobacco are one thing, but entertainment is a whole different monster. Yes, there are the “I’ll have to block you” commercials, and something along those lines would work, but if you start issuing public service announcements for video games, and putting them in the same category as booze and cigarettes, you would have to also do the same with movies and music and I do not see the record companies nor Hollywood doing that any time soon.
It seems strange to me that politicans and countless others cannot seem to recognize video games as just another form of entertainment like television, books, movies, etc… These mediums in their infancy also struggled with the same types of issues, but they were eventually overcome to a degree. As video games become more popular and the generations that now accept video games as just another form of entertainmment, will change how video gmaes are seen over times. Video games are becoming more and more popular with over 400 studios in the US that will easily double in number in the next decade.
Andy Williams
GameJobHunter, Inc.
Get a video game job at http://www.GameJobHunter.com