I couldn’t help but be struck by this quote:

Venezuela’s parliament has approved a law that lumps in toy weapons with videogames and bans the import, production or sale of both groups of items within the country.

The law was approved late last week and will go into effect within three months, reports Russian news agency Ria Novosti. The law features strict penalties of up to three to five years of incarceration for each offense. Previous reports also claimed that campaigns would be launched to warn about the dangers of videogames and that Venezuela’s consumer protection society would have full decision making abilities over what games to ban.

On BoingBoing, a 26-year old Venezuelan gamer named Guido Núñez-Mujica has penned an article detailing his distaste for the new law, even in the face of government harassment that could emerge from his public denouncement.

Some excerpts:

“This law makes selling video games to anybody actually worse than giving real guns or cigarettes to a minor, or even forcing him or her to work, as you get less jail time and lower fines if you do any of those things.”

“These games are a cherished part of my life, they helped to shape my young mind, they gave me challenges and vastly improved my English, opening the door to a whole new world of literature, music and people from all around the world. Now, thanks to the tiny horizons of the cast of morons who govern me, thanks to the stupidity and ham-fisted authoritarianism of the local authorities, so beloved of so many liberals, my 7 year old brother’s chances to do the same could be greatly impacted.”

“But I’d rather go to jail than betray the gamer culture, partially responsible for making me the person I am today.”

Kind of takes your breath away, doesn’t it.

Guido Núñez-Mujica is absolutely right, of course. And further to the excellent points he made, I would add that a truly responsible approach to dealing with violence and the violent tendencies inherent in humans simply must address explorations of violence throughout history. You can’t just ignore it. There practically is no history without violence.

Sometimes I really do wonder what it will take to put the interactive entertainment industry on equal footing with the film industry, in terms of ratings and clout. The money’s there. Do they just need better lobbyists? The phrase “dangers of videogames” goes routinely unchallenged. I still have yet to see any research or study that is remotely compelling, much less proof and a fait-accompli assumption. Germany is the usual culprit in this regard.

Remember the snarling over Manhunt for Wii? These precious soccer moms didn’t want to see their colourfully bright Wii section corrupted with the likes of this. The stabbing and maiming with the Wii Remote, my god, what will it do to our kids?! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating for children to play Manhunt. That shit’s fucked up. I’m specifically addressing the root argument which states that interacting with violent content is worse than simply watching it. A notion I completely reject, and seems unsupported by credible research. By the same argument, Michael C. Hall would be in mortal danger of becoming a socioopath for playing one in Dexter. All acting of “violent” characters would be far, far worse than even the (naturally bad) violent videogames. Because after all, you are really trying to get into the killer’s mindset there, doing all the motions… it’s obviously damaging to a healthy mind, is it not?

I wish Guido luck. What an infantilizing legislative move. He can take some comfort in the fact that it will be practically impossible to enforce.

Or maybe all of Australia is in solidarity with these clowns.

Unfortunately, games are the new rap, which was the new television, which was the new rock and roll. And with our hyped up 24-hour news cycle, this latest threat to American morality gets a whole lot of coverage any time some moron maims his friend because he saw a move in a fighting game he just had to try.

Grand Theft Auto IV is coming out soon and as much as I’m going to love the game, the media coverage of this newly realistic prostitute murder-simulator will soon reach a fever pitch. To say that gamers are more than a little sick of shit this is a bit of an understatement. Not only do we have to deal with Jack Thompson, we have to deal with the jokers at Fox News who take him seriously and give him time on the air to forward his agenda.

Games Radar has a great article up where they take a look into the all-too-probable future:

When Grand Theft Auto IV hits at the end of this month, however, we fully expect the moral-panic machine to kick into high gear. In addition to being deeper and better-looking than the previous entries, GTA IV is one of the most convincing virtual worlds we’ve ever seen. And while the added realism makes a lot of its violence more unsettling than cool, we have every confidence that we’ll soon be seeing all sorts of misconception-riddled stories about how GTA IV glorifies and inspires horrific crimes.

In anticipation of the negative coverage, we peeked into the future (by which we mean “compared what we know about the game with what we know about mainstream news organizations”) for a look at some of the crimes that will foreseeably be linked to GTA IV in the coming months. And to save the media time, we’ve even started their stories for them. You’re welcome, the media.

Well, when the British Board of Film and Video Classification reviewed the game on June 19, saying that due to “sustained and cumulative casual sadism” and “unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone” it would refuse to issue a rating, banning it from the tiny island’s shores, Rockstar had six weeks to lodge an appeal.

That appeal has been lodged and the fight begins. By fight I mean the VAC’s chairman of appeals, John Woods, will pick some people who will then decide whether the game should receive a rating or not.

This will probably have no impact on the ESRB rating, the ‘AO’ rating that is an effective ban on publication. It does show that Rockstar is at least willing to fight the English on this, maybe they’ll take up metaphorical arms against Ms. Vance soon.

Source

Before I go off on a tear, which I assure you I am about to do, let me first admit that it sounds as though nothing of vital artistic value has been removed. Hell, I thought Condemned was boring and never finished it, which makes me completely unqualified to comment on it. So I won’t. I don’t know if the inclusion of “putting someone’s head in a vice” would make a noticeable improvement in the game, either in play or in story.

Now that I’ve cleared my conscience and presented my biases and shortcomings allow me to air the grievance that has settled upon my mind.

I know that to some of you the slippery slope argument seems tired. To some of you the whole debate over mature videogames seems pointless. To a pragmatic few the news that the ESRB is now exercising editorial control is a good thing if it keeps legislators and worried soccer moms off the industry’s back.

It is not a good thing.

It is moral censorship, plain and simple. The process by which it occurs is convoluted, companies and organisations co-operating, but the end result is the same.

The creators are limiting what they say so that the product can be released.

The clear implication is that other creators will also be forced to limit what they say so that they will be allowed to publish their work.

An atmosphere of caution is created where nobody will push too far for fear of losing the rather sizable investment the producing a videogame entails. Such an atmosphere can only be detrimental to the development of the medium.

in its ruling, the Advertising Standards Authority said: “We considered that the vivid depiction of the crashed car and burning tyre, combined with the slogans implication that people could achieve inner peace through acts of violence, was likely to cause serious or widespread offence.

“We noted Electronic Arts argument that the ad’s message was that playing the Burnout Dominator game might relieve stress and tension in real life.

“We considered the ad’s placement on the London Underground meant that it would be viewed by many, including young people.

“We considered that the images of a car that seemed to have crashed at high speed and a burning tyre, together with a reference to violence, could be seen to condone a violent lifestyle, anti-social behaviour or dangerous driving. We concluded that the ad was irresponsible.”

We told you this would get worse before it gets better. How preposterous.

Source @ GamePolitics.

Interestingly, these trailers have been hosted on FileFront since December 2006 and March 2007. Also of interest is that by saying that these game trailers should be pulled, the ESRB has implied that Dark Sector would be worse than an AO-rated game according to their own guidelines on posting trailers to the Internet:

BEST PRACTICES TO LIMIT ACCESS OF INAPPROPRIATE CONTENT TO CHILDREN

The following guidelines for implementing the Age Screen Rule are based on best practices recommended by the Federal Trade Commission in the context of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which in certain circumstances requires age verification before collecting information online from children.

Please adhere to the following best practices to limit access of inappropriate content to children under the age of 17 (18, in the case of Adults Only) The online age gates must ask the age of the web user in a neutral manner and must employ reasonable steps to prevent users under the age of 17 (or 18) from changing their age to be older once they have initially been prevented access to the website.

2. Acceptable forms of age verification include inserting an age or date of birth field on the web page where access is provided to a demo or trailer, or collecting credit card information in connection with a transaction prior to allowing access to the demo or trailer. When asking for a user’s age or date of birth, companies must provide either an open text field in which consumers can type their age or date of birth or a drop down bar with a full selection of age or years.

3. Allowing the user to only enter their age starting with age 17 (or 18) is not permitted. In addition, categorical age verification is not permitted. This happens when a user is asked to select one of two categories (e.g., User Under 17 or Adults) or asked whether they were born “on or before,” or “after” a certain date, leading the user to think that there’s a significant difference in what they select. Similarly, check boxes, such as “Click here if you are at least 17 years old,” are not acceptable.

4. As part of the neutral age screening process, web sites cannot mention the minimum age required for access to the demo or trailer, either on the age screen page itself or in a message appearing after age information has been submitted. Language such as “Error: You must be 17 years old or older to view” is not within the spirit of the Age-Screen Rule and is only likely to encourage a child to falsify his/her age. It is recommended that a company drop a session cookie, disable the back button, or take other reasonable measures (e.g., redirecting the user to the home page, etc.) to prevent users from clicking back and re-entering an older age.

Notice that there are provisions for showing AO-rated trailers.

Now, since this content has been up for months, it seems that the ESRB has suddenly decided that it should be exerting a lot more control over what goes on in the videogame sphere. I’m curious to find out what’s going on in their heads. Do they think that infantilising the videogame industry in order to silence out-spoken moral crusaders is a good thing? Are they starting to believe all the “think of the children” bullshit? (Ed. – what do you mean, ‘starting‘?) Have they been infiltrated by Jack, the boogey-man of the videogame industry?

Source.

-UPDATE-

Add the Gears of War and The Darkness trailers to the bonfire list of trailers that have received take-down ‘requests’. Although it appears that the notice to 2K about The Darkness was more of a caution to insure that age-gates were properly in place.

Patricia Vance, Chief Censor (formerly President) of the ESRB, has said that this was standard practice. It was hard to hear the rest of her comments as the bonfire of inappropriate videogames behind her was crackling really loudly.

Send your respectful letters full of righteous indignation here.

I guarantee we haven’t heard the last on this. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

The current system of industry regulation is apparently insufficient to the task of keeping games out of the hands of children. The parental lock-outs on all systems of the current generation of videogame consoles appears to likewise be inadequate, relying on the parent’s vigilance to set-up and maintain.

Given these facts only one course of action seems reasonable. It should immediately be made illegal for anyone under the age of majority to play or view any videogame, either in part or in entirety.

It should be made a felony for any parent or caregiver to allow their charge to view or play videogames. It should be made a felony for anyone to sell, display or advertise videogames to children. Any child found in possession of any videogame should be subject to immediate and thorough psychiatric evaluation, to last no less than one month and no more than one year, to ensure that they have not been damaged beyond the possibility of a healthy, normal life. Those found incapable of being productive members of society should be immediately remanded to the custody of a mental institution.

Only this, admittedly extreme, measure will ensure that our children are safe from any possible undue influence from videogames while respecting the average videogame player’s rights and enjoyment of the medium.

It is regrettable that children must be denied this excellent hobby, especially since there are currently several games that are marketed and designed exclusively for this tiny segment of the videogame playing populace. Unfortunately, videogames made expressly for children are indistinguishable from videogames made for adults, despite the presence of prominent rating labels and content descriptors. Parental controls built into the Xbox 360, the Wii, and the Playstation 3 are never activated. There is no other alternative except to make sure that absolutely no videogame at all should fall into the hands of our most precious commodity, our children, ever.

I fervently hope that you will all join me in taking this issue to our legislators. Only by making sure that no minor can access any videogame at any time, under any circumstances can we make sure that the industry continues to cater to it’s largest demographic while safeguarding our children.

Ban children from videogames! Won’t someone think of the children?!

According to an article over at 1up, Manhunt 2 is, in the words of Take Two, “temporarily suspended”. I’m guessing it has something to do with some controversy or other.

Maybe they’re going to use this time to apply pressure to the ESRB and the BBFC to get the rating lowered, or applied as the case may be. Perhaps they’ll use their considerable clout to attempt to force Nintendo and Sony to allow the first ‘AO’ game on their consoles.

Most likely there are coders now, working deep in the bowels of the game, pulling out bloody chunks of gore with pliers in an attempt to get the game down to an ‘M’ rating here, and any rating at all in the land of the Anglos. They could be shoving bunnies by the dump-truck and flowers by the metric tonne in there for all I know. I’m not Nostradamus. I’d be speaking in cryptic, crappy rhymes if I were.

The fight over whether you should get to choose, as a responsible adult, what media you consume continues. In this corner we have Take Two Pres. Strauss Zelnick declaring:

The Rockstar team has come up with a game that fits squarely within the horror genre and was intended to do so. It brings a unique, formerly unheard of cinematic quality to
interactive entertainment, and is also a fine piece of art.

Surprisingly, in the other corner we have Nintendo’s official policy on game publishing:

*Please note that Nintendo does not sell or license games that carry the ESRB rating “AO” (Adults Only).

(Source)

I searched like hell to find an equivalent stance from Sony, maybe there is one but it’s likely in Japanese and Nihon go ga hanase masen. (I don’t sling the lingo.) This is the best I could get:

It’s currently our policy not to allow the playback of AO-rated content on our systems,

(Source)

That means that it’s irrelevant whether or not stores will stock it as I naively assumed previously. Neither Sony nor Nintendo’s going to publish it at all. Not without censoring it first. Turning an ‘AO’ rating into an effective ban.

That upsets me greatly. Especially since my own experience has shown me that the average gamer is closer to middle-age than a diaper.

I guess the real question is: What can we do about it?

Ye olde fashioned letter writing campaign seems to be the only available option. Write these guys and show them that there is a market for ‘AO’ games.

Nintendo’s Mailing form thingy
Sony’s Mailing form thingy

Hopefully we can convince them to turn ‘AO’ into a valid rating as opposed to a de-facto ban.