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By Taylor Edelhart
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Mar. 25, 2009 |
A recent court ruling raises questions about the state’s place in restricting the sale of violent or sexual video games to minors. State legislators are scrambling to respond.
When Gallup released a poll saying that the 70 percent of teenage boys who play Grand Theft Auto are more likely to get in a fight, the organization was also quick to say that the study did not establish a link between virtual violence and actual violence, according to a 2003 Washington Post article. When Henry Jenkins, an MIT professor, wrote an essay for PBS debunking video game myths, one of the first things he mentioned is that the juvenile violent crime rate in America is at a 30-year low. Unfortunately, state lawmakers seem to think otherwise — and want to restrict our rights based on assumptions not grounded in simple facts.
A month ago today, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that California’s ban on the sale of violent video games to minors is unconstitutional. Video game industry groups rejoiced, while lawyers and state legislators argued angrily that violence is just as obscene as sex and that prohibiting the sale of violent video games to minors was just as important as prohibiting the sale of explicit pornography.
State legislators are in no position to judge and tell us what video games we will or will not play, especially when there are so many more important issues they should be spending their time and money on.
Video game purveyors are both capable of and willing to pick up where the law left off by using discretion when selling mature-rated video games to minors. Bo Andersen, the CEO of the Entertainment Merchants Association, said on Feb. 20 that “retailers are committed to assisting parents in assuring that children do not purchase games that are not appropriate for their age. Independent surveys show that retailers are doing a very good job in this area, with an 80 percent enforcement rate, and retailers will continue to work to increase enforcement rates even further.”
Some argue that kids are traumatized by violence in video games no matter what rating. Well, as it turns out, they aren’t. The Court of Appeals held that there was no conclusive proof that violent video games psychologically damage the people who play them, including minors. In fact, some aspects of video game playing are actually considered healthy. According to the Entertainment Software Association’s Web site (theesa.com), video games are now being used to treat everything from post-traumatic stress disorder to the promotion of healthy habits. Even attempting to keep up with Dance Dance Revolution will burn calories.
However, the real culprits here are the state legislators and terrified parents who seem to think that exposure to simulated violence and sexuality is a worse societal problem than actual violence and sexuality. There is no reason to fret over the bloodshed in Call of Duty when an 11-year-old boy in Pennsylvania — an avid hunter of real-life game — shot his father’s pregnant fiancée and then got on the bus for school, as a Feb. 22 San Francisco Chronicle article reported. Why worry about anything digital when our real world has enough strife and violence to last ten thousand lives in Grand Theft Auto?
While these questions may never be answered, video games are getting the respect they deserve as a viable form of art, expression and entertainment in the state of California.
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