If you were a reader of many of my political rants back in the LJ days (Power Word: Thompson) you might remember when I was following the string of states trying to enact a law to ban violent video games from shelves. I also was fortunate to buy and read Grand Theft Childhood by Lawrence Kutner, Ph.D. and Cheryl K. Olson Sc.D. It took a very good look into the mechanics behind those who seek to eliminate violent video games from being created, no matter the constitutional freedom afforded in their creation. It even looked back over the past 100 years at television, radio, movies, comics, and books and how those mediums also sparked the same style of political tactics being employed today. This bill was also under consideration by Connecticut Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, and contributes to one of the reasons I oppose his election to the US Senate.

The bill, originally authored by Senator Leland Yee D-California and signed into law by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, comes before The Surpreme Court this week. This comes after the law was declared unconstitutional last year by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, along with similar rulings in many other states that tried unsuccessfully to enact similar laws.

This thing that strikes me about this is the fact that the root of people’s conceptions around video games is rooted in human psychology. A game is something one plays for entertainment, enjoyment, and even though there are games for all ages and backgrounds, games are often perceived for children more than anything. Some games have withstood time to be treated beyond that. Monopoly for instance is a game enjoyed by virtually anyone, because it was a game created to weather The Great Depression. Poker, and many other card games, are considered mostly adult games because usually it involves gambling, which is seen as an adult thing. Video games however, have been perceived as children’s toys since their creation. The largest reason is because the games released dealt in childrens topics, or were based on popular childrens franchises. Atari had a number of Sesame Steet games made for the console, many of which I played. During the NES era, a lot of games were based on popular movies, sports, racing, or other commercial properties, along with Nintendo’s first-party titles. The Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis continued these trends, but did so in better graphics and somewhat deeper realism. With each new console generation, graphics and sound became better and better, and companies started looking not only to up the ante on more realistic games, but their target demographic was aging. Those of us who grew up with the NES in the late 1980’s were not in our teens and twenties in 2000 and beyond. Our tastes in games has changed, and the industry has tried to change with them. Unfortunately, this brought about a change that our parents and grandparents did not account for when we were kids. It brought about a need for games that would place us in a reality that was similar to our own, but not real. Violence, sex, drugs, themes common to movies and television could be made into games, but then those could fall into children’s hands just like their movie and television counterparts, under the guise of friendly video games. How do you retain the ability to freely create games adults can enjoy, but not have them fall into the hands of kids who are not mentally prepared to deal with the types of situations in them? Did anyone even realize what you could do in Custard’s Revenge for the Atari 2600?

We have a video games rating system, the ESRB. It works just like the MPAA’s ratings board for movies, and the rating system used for television programming. The system works, and I can prove that first-hand, I worked at a Gamestop for one Christmas several years back. It was a written rule that if you sold a violent game to a minor, you would be fired. We also knew the existence of secret shoppers and sting operations. Even if we did not, most of us cared enough about people to never allow children to play violent games. Any parent who came up to me asking about a game for their child, I always asked the child’s age, some things they are interested in, and pointed them towards an appropriate selection. If a parent with a younger child came up to me with a M-rated game to buy, I would inform them what they are buying and if it was for the child in question. The problem does not lie with the system, it lies with politicians and parents. I had many parents insist on buying M-rated titles knowing full well what they were. Children would pressure them into buying them anyway, insisting they were mature enough to handle it. Parents hide behind the notion that games are just games, that their children are as still as naive and innocent as the day they were born. These children are not stupid, they’ve seen TVs, movies, even our own American and World history, it has been centuries of bloodshed and violence. Some even contend with their own family units fighting or abusing them. We do not live in a cookie-cutter society where children are innocent and immune to the world around them, children are actually a lot more perceptive that we take them for, and they know that an M-rated video game being kept from them intentionally must hold something important, something valuable, and they will do whatever it takes to see it, even if they have to find an older sibling or friend to do it for them. Rather, it should be a parents duty to explain these kinds of situations with their children, make them understand that the kinds of things they see in media today are wrong and often, illegal. They should be shown that it is okay to play a game that may touch on difficult subjects, but is intended to be separate from reality, not to be brought into the real world and inflicted on other people. Fantasy should have it’s own place separate from reality. They also should be taught that they can have free access to material rated above their age when they reach that age and show they can be trusted with mature content. These are jobs parents can do to minimize violence and the types of things our politicians feel they need to legislate against. They do not need you to take care of your family, they would rather penalize us all for the actions of a few rather than educate the many.

It is time that we stop our government from further intruding into our private lives simply to serve their own careers and consciences. Parents need to stop allowing video games, or any entertainment medium, from parenting for them when they feel it to be convenient. People outta take their own responsibility for themselves and their families. I cannot attend this rally they are planning for Tuesday (probably wouldn’t even if I could) but I strongly oppose those in government trying to push this through and support the industry and folks who wish to see to it that our rights stay just the way they are. Let’s hope the Supreme Court makes the right choice.