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by
Joe - jgand@pcfootball.net
7/22/04
So,
let me ask you all a question…
ARE
YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL?!?!?
I
know that I am. I know that I can’t wait for Madden 2005 to
come out and dazzle us with the tweeks that they have made. I
especially can’t wait to check out the new features in
Franchise Mode. Storyline Central looks to be a great addition
to the mix, and it should make the running of the Instigator
franchise that much easier – I hope. I’m hoping that
newspaper articles will be able to be saved in a text file so
that game re-caps could be easily transferred to a team website.
I know that this probably will not be the case, but a guy can
dream. If this isn’t the case for the game out of the box then
hopefully they will take care of it in the patch.
Ok,
now that that’s out of the way, on to today’s topic.
About
a year ago I wrote to you all about a new law that had been
passed in the State of
Washington
. The new law stated that it was now illegal to sell violent
video games to minors. The law specifically targeted games in
which violent acts could be committed against police officers.
Violation of the law would have brought about a $500.00 fine.
The
law as it was written was too broad because it did not bother to
define what a violent video game was. It could have applied to
games like Grand Theft
Auto: Vice City as well as Madden
NFL 2004. It didn’t allow that different people would have
different opinions about what games were violent and what games
were not.
Well,
that was the case until recently…
Judge
Tosses Ban on Some Video Game Sales
Judge
Strikes
Down
Washington
State
's Ban on
Selling Some Violent Video Games to Minors
The
Associated Press
SEATTLE
July 15, 2004
— A federal judge Thursday struck down
Washington
state's ban on selling some violent video games to minors,
calling it a violation of free speech.
U.S.
District Judge Robert Lasnik wrote that depictions of violence
have been used throughout the country's history to convey
important social messages, and that the Supreme Court has never
upheld bans on violent depictions under obscenity laws.
The state's ban sought to prevent minors from buying or renting
games that portray "realistic or photographic-like
depictions of aggressive conflict" in which the players
kill or injure law enforcement officers. The law included a
provision to fine retailers $500 for violations.
Lasnik
said the law was too narrow because it arbitrarily banned
violence against police officers but not other depictions of
violence, and too broad because it was unclear what games would
fall under the ban.
"Would
a game built around 'The Simpsons' or the 'Looney Tunes'
characters be 'realistic' enough to trigger the act?" he
wrote. "The real problem is that (a store) clerk might know
everything there is to know about the game and yet not be able
to determine whether it can legally be sold to a minor."
To
obey the law, he said, store clerks would tend to be overly
cautious in selling games to minors and game makers would tend
to be overly cautious in designing them resulting in a chilling
effect on free speech.
The
game industry welcomed the ruling and said it will continue to
encourage retailers to voluntarily refuse to sell mature-rated
games to children under 17, as movie theaters voluntarily check
IDs for youngsters heading into R-rated movies.
"We
were obviously really gratified by the ruling," said Doug
Lowenstein, president of the Washington, D.C.-based
Entertainment Software Association. "The judge shared our
concerns that the statute was unconstitutionally vague."
A
telephone call for comment left after business hours for Gary
Larson, a spokesman for the state attorney general, was not
immediately returned.
The
state argued that the law focused on the state's compelling
interest in curbing hostile and anti-social behavior among
youths, including violence and aggression toward law enforcement
officers.
The
ban never took effect. Lasnik barred its implementation last
summer until he had a chance to review its constitutionality.
Lasnik
acknowledged there is evidence the interactive qualities,
first-person identification and repetitive nature of video games
makes them potentially more harmful to minors than other forms
of media.
However,
he wrote, "there has been no showing that exposure to video
games that 'trivialize violence against law enforcement
officers' is likely to lead to actual violence against such
officers."
My
guess is that Mary Lou Dickerson, the author of this law is
railing in the hallways of the Washington State Legislature as
we speak. She’s probably railing against “liberal judges”
and “harmful material” and “idiot parents” because her
pet project was struck down.
And she's a Democrat.
I
will never understand why legislators don’t get that they
don’t have the right to tell parents how their children should
be raised.
I
especially don’t get why they seem to hate video games and
especially the people who play them.
Well,
that’s not true, I do get it. Unfortunately their hatred is
based on a falsehood. After the shootings at Columbine when it
was revealed that Harris and Kleibold played Doom,
all video games and the people who play them have come under
attack. Thanks to self-serving and ambitious activists, video
gamers are seen as a dangerous threat by many members of
society. A threat so dangerous that we need to be beaten so that
we learn our place and be punished for crimes that others
committed. So dangerous that we must be denied a place in
“civilized” society and made a pariah by former friends and
neighbors.
So
dangerous that we must be classified as terrorists.
OK,
that last one was a stretch, but you get where I’m going,
right?
There
are too many people out there still who look at you as if you
have just strangled a newborn baby in front of their eyes if you
let it slip that you play video games. You may have been the
nicest guy on the face of the planet before, but if they find
out you play Final Fantasy
X then all of a sudden you are Dr. Hannibal Lechter just
waiting to eat their skin. Because according to them, if we see
it in a video game then we go out and do it in real life, right?
Hey,
just because I play Madden
doesn’t mean that I am capable of leading the San Diego
Chargers to a Super Bowl. Just because I play MVP
Baseball doesn’t mean that I can start at First Base and
bat cleanup for the Boston Red Sox. Just because someone plays a
game like GTA: Vice City,
Half-Life, Tomb Raider or
Halo doesn’t mean that they are going to go around
stealing cars, nailing skanks, hitting people with crow bars,
robbing graves or shooting people from their Humvees.
That’s
not how this works and anyone who says that games influence how
people behave is talking out of their ass.
It
is my hope that someday people will wake up and realize that
gamers are not bad people. That we are not all unemployed,
unshaven slackers living in our parents basement surviving on a
steady diet of porn and Hot Pockets. That a lot of us are
responsible adults capable of making our own decisions without
some budinski sticking their noses into our private lives. That
we are law-abiding citizens who have a right to pursue a hobby
that we enjoy and does not cause injury to anybody except those
old-timers like my father who, if we were still on speaking
terms, would say to me by this point “haven’t you finished
with that silly-ass computer yet? Why don’t you be a man and
get up off of your lazy, fat, good-for-nothing ass and get a
real job?”
But
as long as there are people like Mary Lou Dickerson, Leland Yee
and organizations like Mothers Against Videogame Addiction and
Violence in the world fanning the flames of ignorance,
intolerance and hatred, I’m afraid that that time is a long
time in coming. And in the end, it is not the adults who will
suffer the most for it, but it will be the ones who these
do-gooders are trying so hard to protect who suffer the most.
The children. Because in the end, aren’t they the ones who
always get the brunt of the adults’ anger in one form or
another?
Think
about it.
Until
next time…
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