Earlier today, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law, AB 1179, which makes it a crime to sell or rent violent or sexual videogames to minors. I’m all for keeping little people from easily accessing elicit content, but the controversy lies in the law’s definition of “violent” which is rather vague.
We don’t think games encourage criminal acts among the majority of younglings, it’s probably wise to limit the adult content delivered to them (think Hot Coffee Mod). Nintendo seems to have always backed this attitude and it could pay dividends for them in the long run. Kiddie or not, they’ve done a good job at ensuring this doesn’t happen without regulation. What do you think?
[Source: Next-Gen]
Sturek
Yep…. I agree.
I don’t need violence, I need great games. If that game has some violence in it, I don’t care. If that game has lots and lots of violence in it, I’m just disgusted and the game may be really really good, I won’t buy it.
I think the current situation over here in Germany is alright. We have an independent organisation that labels the games (similar to the ESRB) and those labels are law. That’s it.
Anonymous
If a kid is going to kill somebody because they played a videogame, then they probably would have killed somebody even had they not played the videogame. Sooner or later, they no doubt would have been exposed to something else, like a violent movie, or mabey a playboy, a dirty word, or reality, and they would have gone nuts and killed everybody. Some kids are wacky, and movies, music, videogames and comic books, at no point, come into the equation.
Anonymous
If your not allowed to sell violent video games to minors than what are you going to sell them. I mean really, ALL video games have violence except those boring childish disney games. I agree with that Anonymous person with the fact that if a kid were to kill if he played violent video games than we would kill anyway!
Hostile
Absolutely pathetic. Jack Thompson is an utter fiend.