I know that ‘Regal’ cinemas have been pretty strict with checking IDs, I get carded EVERY time (usually this is after I sit in front of the theater playing the deuces wild (poker) machine until five minutes after show time).
Hey cookie, I’d worry if I were you. Many psychotically deranged murderers and serial killers, as well as repeat sex offenders start off by torturing animals. Get that kid checked out. ;D (no but seriously, I hope you discipline him when he pulls the tail)
Anyway, my point is that kids will deal with these things in their life inevitably. Banning the sale of a violent game to kids is fine, but it just creates the idiotic illusion that this ban is actually doing something. I swear, there should be a psychology test and a preparation course for being a parent.
“If your kid fucks up, it’s YOUR fault, not your government’s, not the neighbour’s, not the teacher’s, not the TV’s. The government can try and help, but your kid is your responsibility.” Damn victim culture.
Actually, according to “The Threatening Storm” by Pollack, Saddam Hussein used to walk around with a metal bar he’d heat white hot and impale animals with. All at the tender age of 10.
Is using “The Threatening Storm” in any context the official Q23 way of ending a thread?
“Kenneth Pollack, in ‘The Threatening Storm’, explained that MOO3 isn’t as bad as Tom Chick made it out to be. End of discussion.”
Heh, I just started reading it steve, and that anecdote comes from the first few pages. But if I’m now responsible for ending this thread, that’s probably a good thing for all concerned.
Oh and one other thing…
Nazis.
I don’t think this bill is actually law yet. If I’m reading the Washington state government’s legislation tracker correctly, what has happened so far is that the bill passed the House by a vote of 81-16. I think it has been introduced to the Senate, but that’s all. I’m assuming, therefore, that this bill isn’t ready for the governor’s signature yet.
He doesn’t pull the cat’s tail to be mean, he just isn’t done petting the cat. But yeah, me or his mother do make him use the ‘time out chair’ (it’s a chair we hit him with till he shapes up).
And who exactly is fooled by idiotic illusions? Certainly not us, so who is? The government is.
Look at airport security: ‘Did you pack your own bag?’ Is ANYONE but the rule makers fooled that this does anything at all?
So: this law is passed, it does nothing to us, but we can always hold it up as a defense against cencorship ‘You don’t need to ban this, we have the laws!’ Also game sellers hurt the cause by selling these to minors, how long can we keep pointing to the ratings system as a defense when no one pays it any mind?
Yes parents need to police their own damn children, but WE shouldn’t be denied things because of their failings.
Okay, what’s the “real problem” then? If you dont’ support the sale of these games to minors, what’s the problem with criminalizing the act? Obviously retailers have little interest in obeying the ESRB guidelines voluntarily.[/quote]
The problem is that this is the first step down the slippery slope toward criminalizing the distribution of M rated games to minors by ANYONE, including parents. What if I was the father of a 15 year old, and I felt like he was mature enough to play Vice City? The next logical law (since lawmakers have nothing to do but make more laws in order to justify their existence) after this is to make it illegal for parents to let their kids play M rated games. Are they gonna throw me in the slammer if I let my boy play GTAVC? Opposition to this law is a buffer against further ridiculousness. ness.
Oh, please. You people with your slippery slope hysteria. Adults are still able to buy tobacco, alcohol, guns, and pornography, even though they’re legally proscribed from children. Where’s you’re slippery slope there, Bob?
How on earth is that “the next logical law”? One function of government is to set limits. You can own a shotgun, but not an M60. You can drive 65 on the highway, but not 75. You can buy beer when you’re 21, but not 20. You can buy pictures of naked 18-year-olds, but not naked 14-year-olds. You can drink a martini, but you can’t smoke a joint. It’s all about where we draw the lines and there have been precious few lines in the video/computer gaming industry because it’s so young.
The real danger, which people like you completely obscure with this canard about ‘oh no, the government is going to ban GTA3!’, is that retailers will shy away from stocking mature titles and developers will gravitate towards more sanitized content. And, frankly, considering the crap that passes for mature content these days – BMXXX, Postal 2, Soldier of Fortune 2’s goofy petit guignol – I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing.
Of course, if you were just trolling, Bob, consider me hooked.
-Tom
Oh, please. You people with your slippery slope hysteria. Adults are still able to buy tobacco, alcohol, guns, and pornography, even though they’re legally proscribed from children. Where’s you’re slippery slope there, Bob?
[/quote]
Tobacco is well on its way to being economically banned with how heavily it’s being taxed. And no, I’m not a smoker.
Alcohol was once banned by constitutional amendment. And we know how well that worked out. Am I the only one here who thinks there’s such a thing as too much law making? The number of laws already on the books would overflow most libraries. And it’s never enough apparently.
How on earth is that “the next logical law”? One function of government is to set limits. You can own a shotgun, but not an M60. You can drive 65 on the highway, but not 75. You can buy beer when you’re 21, but not 20. You can buy pictures of naked 18-year-olds, but not naked 14-year-olds. You can drink a martini, but you can’t smoke a joint. It’s all about where we draw the lines and there have been precious few lines in the video/computer gaming industry because it’s so young.[/quote]
Ever notice how everytime the sales tax in California gets bumped another quarter or half a %, they say it’s a “temporary” thing to pay off [insert natural disaster here]? Then those taxes never come off the books. People let it slip by. Slippery slope. Isn’t it true that the 55mph speed limit was enacted as a measure to save gasoline when OPEC screwed over the country in the 70s? Notice how that never came off the books? States found that handing out speeding tickets was quite a lucrative revenue stream. But people let it happen and it stuck. Slippery slope. So if I can extrapolate a bit, Washington puts the law on the books. Next year, some other wacko kid with irresponsible parents shoots up his 8th grade class. The law’s not harsh enough! Make it stronger!
Oh I’m totally with you there. But I don’t see how my position against this Washington law obscures the issue?
Actually…am I? I’m not even sure if I am – I do strange things on Friday evenings. Like take the bait on people trolling about negative reviews that I write. Must be the buildup from lack of sleep over the course of the work week.
To be absolutely fair, guys, GTA is pretty violent. Excesively, in fact.
Vice City is worse, with a ton of putrely gratuitous sexual content thrown in for good measure. In Vice City you can:
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Take optional missions to kill greater and greater number of gang members in a certain amount of time with a chainsaw, auto-shotgun, M60, flamethrower, etc.
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Take plot missions that involve sticking up a bank and killing the SWAT team that comes in after you.
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Improve your taxi business by blowing up rival taxis.
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Purchase a strip club so that you may spend money on a variety of increasingly stripped dancers. With patrons jerking off.
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Pick up hookers in the ghetto, make use of their services, and then kill her afterwards to get back your money.
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Rob various stores and shops at gun-point for some quick cash.
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Take a mission to sell drugs in the guise of an ice-cream vendor.
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Own a porno film studio, and take various related missions.
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Take a mission to photograph a transvestie senator role-playing with one of your porn actors. Killing cops along the way.
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Go to the wealthy areas and kill rich people and loot them of their money.
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Take a mission to murder someone at an airport.
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Take a mission to bust a convicted felon out of jail, killing police along the way.
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Vandilize shops at a mall to make them pay you protection money.
And many more.
Can someone tell me where I can find mythical scale that objectively separates “gratuitous” violence from “necessary” violence? I think I could make a mint with it!
Yeah, but in Master of Orion I can destroy an entire planet! GTA doesn’t come close to that level of violence.
As Scott Udell used to say, murder is for adults, genocide is for kids.
Everybody knows that wars are OK. I’m sure it was a just war and your Death Star approach was a deterrent to future alien threats.
Troy
This seems like such a non-issue to me. It’s already illegal to sell lots of things to kids. As Ben pointed out, computer game retailers don’t self-police as well as movie theaters do (I don’t know how easy it is to get into an “R” movie if you’re 11 years old, but I’m pretty sure you’re not getting into an “X,” and GTA:VC sounds like an “X” to me). It’s pretty natural for the community to want to step in and do something about it.
And for the Chicken Littles in this thread, I’ll note that nobody is getting “thrown in the slammer” over this, nor are the child purchasers or their parents being punished in any way. Nor does the law forbid an of-age parent buying the game for their kid if they think the game is okay. Lastly, as Tom pointed out, the slippery slope argument is way off base here. Courts all the way up to the US Supreme have had no difficulty saying “It’s okay to restrict sales of such-and-such to children, but not adults” (see various porn decisions).
And whoever it was that said “Look at the 55 MPH speed limit–it never came off the books!!!” should try driving any of the desert highways in southern California. You can legally go as much as 75 between here and Vegas. If memory serves, there are highways in Montana with no limit at all.
You don’t need a “slippery slope” argument to point out that this law is an obvious attempt to play on public sympathy for police officers to create a law that otherwise would not have passed. This law did not have enough votes until the word “violence” was defined to mean “attacking any realistic representation of a human figure wearing a police uniform.” So what we get is a law that cost a certain amount of taxpayer funds to pass which in effect only prosecutes the sales of games which show policemen getting shot, but has no effect on all other games which feature realistic gory violence towards everyone else on earth besides police officers. Either exposing kids to violent imagery is bad for them or it isn’t. Claiming that seeing a cop shot is more traumatic than seeing someone else get shot is based on sentimentality, not research or logic, and the result is a lousy law and a waste of tax dollars.
There were no speed limits, but after a bunch of fools started using it as the “Montana-bahn”, getting into accidents, and saying things like “no officer, I thought it was safe to drive at 130mph down this freeway”, they enacted a 75mph speed limit.
Oh, and while the speed limit on I-5 is 75mph, everyone ignores that. Hell, my nickname for I-280 between San Francisco and San Jose is the Daytona 280, because when I drive it, there’s light traffic and its going at 85 (including me).
I dunno. It’s been the law since well before 9/11 that killing a police officer is a more serious crime than killing “everyone else on earth besides police officers” (at least, here in CA). This could just be a reaction to the rise in games (or rise in profile of games) featuring cop-killing themes. I don’t know that it really has that much to do with 9/11.
This is a good law. Apparently, the games industry isn’t policing itself very well. I don’t see a lot of people selling porn videos to minors, but people sell these games to them all the time. If the only way to stop it is to set up big fines and such, then so be it. Kids should NOT be buying GTA:VC. That doesn’t mean there aren’t kids that could play it…if their parents think it is ok, AND police it properly (meaning explain things to them). But otherwise, no dice. Kids shouldn’t be playing it.