We are the first generation to have grown up playing videogames our entire lives. From Atari to Nintendo and on down through the years, gaming has just been a fact of our existence. To us, videogames are nothing new, and we continue to play them as we get older. At this point, the majority of active gamers are over the age of 25, it is only economics that games will increasingly be designed for and sold to us, the adult gamers. So why is it that an opportunist like Jack Thompson can wield the power to incite a public backlash against a game that takes on adult subject matter even when it is marketted as such?
Perhaps it is because the word videogame itself is perceived solely as the domain of children. As Doug Lowenstein, the chairman of the Electronic Software Association, or the ESA, the group that represents the game industry, believes. In a recent keynote address, Lowenstein argued that videogames would be taken more seriously if they were called something more serious, like entertainment software. A name is just a name, but he may have a point. It is not the reality of games so much as the perception of them that has made them a target. Whether it is that simple to just call them something else, though, is another matter. There are other points in the debate that require addressing.
The argument about games being art is an old one, but we need to move past it. Art is just a word, with a lot of associated meanings. Ask people to define the word art, and you will probably get as many separate answers as people. Likewise, people can think of games however they so choose. One thing that is not debateable however, is the fact that games are a way of telling stories and conveying ideas. Different from books, tv, or movies, games empower the gamer, so the actual story is a collaboration between the developer and the player, but this in no way lessens the value of the message you take from it. If anything, it increases it. Whether or not games fit into an arbitrarily defined framework of art is irrelevant. As a medium of expression, the same first amendment rights should be extended to videogames.
Similarly, the impact of violent videogames on developing children has no place in this debate. Even the famous study that Jack Thompson frequently cites uses the language "violent media." Violent media includes television and movies, and is not limited to videogames. Nobody protests when an R-rated movie is released, regardless of whether or not the violence depicted therein may endanger young minds. It would be absurd to do so. Movies are made for and marketted to adults and children separately. There is no reason why videogames should be handled any differently.
The debate for what is accepable in videogames is ongoing, but we can't win if we don't participate. The lack of a powerful videogame lobby group makes us an easy target, politically. The ESA has time and again proven insufficient to combat the alarmism and widespread misinformation surrounding videogames. Parents and newscasters have been making outright incorrect statements publically, saying things like in Bully you play as a bully yourself, or that you are able to injure teachers. The public uproar surrounding Bully characterizes where the ESA falls short. The ESA's response to these blatantly wrong statements was minimal. A proper lobbying organization would have, at the very least, gone on the air correcting these statements. Where the ESA should have been working to reform this negative image, publicizing the actual facts, and making attempts to connect with and calm concerned parents, it was doing nothing. Either the ESA requires further funding from its members, primarily large game publishers, or a secondary lobby should be established.
One of those things has already happened. The Entertainment Consumer's Association, or the ECA, was founded recently to act as the voice of gamers such as ourselves. It is a non-profit advocacy group devoted to providing us some political protection as consumers. On the site, you can learn which states have game censorship legislation in progress and which politicians are sponsoring that legislation. The goal of the ECA is to let those politicians know that gamers are an enormous body of voters that care about keeping videogames protected by laws of free speech. You can join the ECA for about $20 as well, which gets you some extras like free issues of EGM and the positive feeling that you have done something to help keep videogames free.
It is important to note that the ESRB, the ratings system run by the ESA, has come under fire as well since the Hot Coffee mod as being insufficient to properly rate games and inform consumers. Despite this, it is arguably better for the ESRB to remain in place, as the alternative would be a rating system imposed from outside of the game industry, allowing a political group to force game developers to alter their content to get better ratings, similar to the MPAA in Hollywood.
Even though videogame censorship advocates like Jack Thompson didn't succeed in getting Bully pulled from store shelves in the United States, they have succeeded in making videogame violence a serious issue. In many different states, there are new laws regulating and outlawing the sale of certain games, the first step in the road to more severe forms of censorship. In Britain, Bully has been pulled from the shelves of several large retailers, despite actually being relatively non-violent. If we are going to avoid the same fate, we, as the first generation to grow up playing videogames, must take responsibility.
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