The Escapist Debates with Xfire

[Russ Pitts]

The Escapist Debates with Xfire

I've been asked to participate in the Xfire debate on censorship in games. This is from the official website for the debate [http://www.xfire.com/cms/xf_censorship/]:

On April 26th, 2007 at 4pm EDT (1pm PDT), Xfire will host the fourth session of the Xfire Debate Club: The Two-Handed Sword with special guests from the worlds of gaming and politics.

At the Xfire Debate club, industry insiders, experts, and hardcore gamers battle for the final say on your favorite gaming topics.

My fellow debatees are:


California Senator Leeland Yee
ECA CEO Hal Halpin
Dennis McCauley of Gempolitics.org
Matteo Bittanti
and Dan Isett

The debate is open to the public, so I encourage you to join. It starts at 4:00 p.m. ET, and you can join by clicking a button on the website [http://www.xfire.com/cms/xf_censorship/].

I'm not sure how it's going to go, but I seem to be all set up. I was embarrassingly 20 minutes late to the "dry run" yesterday due to having been ill for the past 48 hours and subsequently losing track of time catching up on email. Hopefully I've regained enough of my wits to give these so-called "important people" a run for their money. Wish me luck.

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[Mishotaki]

it's gonna be pretty hard to join the debate, as you need to ask for an invite to the debate 24 to 48 hours in advance... being noticed the actual day of the debate is not really leaving us a chance to participate, sadly...

I don't know if i would have participated, but i would have loved watching/listening/reading it since i'm bored out of my mind after a week of being sick... but it doesn't seem to stream the debate in any form, am i wrong?

 

[Blaxton]

I just read the transcript.

Favorite part:

Dan Isett: Unlike Russ, we value a child's innocence.

a little mudslinging out of left field, eh?

Seemed like a good debate other than a few claims on either side that sounded a little iffy. I have to say, it's very hard to read that thing. Half the time the questions are asked and the answers from the last question are spilling into the new question area. Kind of confusing.

I was glad to see the Senator wasn't out there to crucify games as a whole. Seems like, when you read the gaming sites (and also a fair amount of general press), you only hear about the crazies that want to melt discs (or whatever equates to book burning).

 

[Mishotaki]

I was glad to see the Senator wasn't out there to crucify games as a whole. Seems like, when you read the gaming sites (and also a fair amount of general press), you only hear about the crazies that want to melt discs (or whatever equates to book burning).

I just checked out the transcript myself.

I think the senator's opinion was from a more political opinion that has to be weary of anything it says and tries to plug his bills as much as possible, near the end, he was becoming more interesting but, for the first few questions, he seemed to be repeating a single-liner everytime...

It was an interesting debate anyway (i wish i could use a better word here... that proves how much my english sucks) and it showed us that it's fairly hard to find a solution to help parents who don't want their childrens exposed to video games violence....

As for myself, i would think that there should be one more rating: MO (as Mature Only)
simply because the AO (Adult Only) is barely used and that most of stores are prohibited from selling those... there are somegames that should be sold to a more mature audience instead of being aimed at such a broad audience that is the M crowd.