By nearly unanimous vote, the New York State Senate has passed a new bill governing the sale of video games in the state. Having already been approved by the Assembly earlier this week, the bill is now on its way to the governor for final approval.
This latest attempt by lawmakers to make themselves look tough on supposed bad influences on America's youth is, as usual, pointless and unfounded. The primary features of the bill include making the already-pretty-much-universal ESRB ratings on video games mandatory, making the parental controls which all current-generation consoles already have (you guessed it) mandatory, and establishing a governor-appointed board that will meet twice a year to talk about video game violence's effect on the youth of New York.
Will lawmakers ever realize that self-regulation is best, and that it's up to parents to decide what their kids play? Probably not. In the meanwhile though, (even though it's already passed both houses of legislature) if you're in New York and don't like seeing your taxes wasted on such pointless bills, please, speak up about it.
The UK government has just announced something similar, making PEGI ratings compulsory and establishing a "UK Council for Child Internet Safety". Good old governments chasing rather irrelevant issues to look like they're doing something .
This is absolutely silly. Have these people forgotten that the plague of Divorce in this country has had a much greater influence on teen violence, drug addiction and crime?
I have been playing video games since Pong first hit the market (Don't guess my age, please. I am the ripe old age of 40). I played Atari, ColecoVision, Coin-Op, and PC games since the Comodore VIC20. Also, I am a husband, parent, Veteran, and college graduate. Everytime I turn around these fanatics try to blame typical human behavior, in this case: violence, on some current form of entertainment. They also tried to make the same argument about Dungeons & Dragons, back in the day.
The fact is, there are much greater influences on teen self-esteem than video games as it relates to teen violence. As I mentioned, Divorce, Parenting Style, Birth Order, Education level of the parents, Culture, socio-economics, peer group, gender, etc., contribute more profoundly to the self-esteem of teens in this country. A crappy piece of legislature isn't going to change any of this.
Its too bad that our elected officials, as well as the ones in New York, fail to recognize the depth of the issue they are facing.
Just out of curisosity: How do the young kids get the violent games in the first place? First off they need money, and they need to get to a place to get their game. Now considering this isn't difficult for a 16- year old but a 10 year-old or younger? That's a problem with the parenting, not the game.
"I want to be clear. This bill does not prohibit the sale of any video to anyone," the Senator said. "This simply says that every video game sold in the state of New York simply should have a rating consistent with what the ESRB does presently in a voluntary way... it does work."
So...Why the bill? If as you say, it does work, why even create another law which doesn't affect anything more?
Gaming is no more of a bad influence than music, tv, movies, books or any other entertainment. Plus, there's only one person who has the right to judge if its "bad infleuence" for their kid: The parents.
In the prior decades it was rock and hippie music was a bad influence. Than it was comic books and graphic novels. Than it was some TV shows, than it was some movies. Now its games. In the future who knows, maybe they'll find Forums and Blogs to be bad influence.
At least you guys have an restricted / 18 years and over only rating for video games. No such thing exists here in Australia, if a game can't be put as high as restricted to 15 year olds its banned.
I hate being coddled by the government.
Typical, the inept government shows its inability to deal with the true sources of crime and cracks down on something that doesn't need to be cracked down on at all. The only reason they do this is to pretend they're actually doing something when in actuality they're not doing anything at all.
You know what? Bills like this make me angry and want to hurt people. I think we need to form a Senate commity to looking to senate commities that make bills that make people want to hurt other people. And lets make it manatory that twice a year that someone meet with other people and decide which bills will make me hurt people and vote them down.
Because, you really wouldnt like me when im hungry. Wait thats not right.
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