Banning Violent Games Tops Conservative's To Do List

[Wargamer]

The problem we have here is, brace yourselves kiddies, this system already exists!

The other day I was buying a copy of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood for my friend as a Christmas present (also for myself - good teammates / opponents really improve the game) and I was waiting behind a woman and her child, who was no older than 12, whilst the woman behind the desk sold them an Xbox 360.

What game did the little kid want? Why Grand Theft Auto of course!

Now here's the thing; GTA is an 18 game. That's "R" for people in Crazyland (yes, I watch The Big Picture. ). That means it is ILLEGAL TO SELL THE GAME TO ANYONE UNDER THE AGE OF 18! However, and here's where the problem comes in, it is NOT illegal for some dipshit failure of a mother to buy the game, willfully ignorant of its themes and content, and hand it over to a boy whose testicles haven't even dropped yet to play on unsupervised in his bedroom.

Honestly, I had to restrain myself from telling that woman what a failure of a parent she was right then and there!

This is the flaw in this legislation; the problem is not that there is no law to prevent children buying unsuitable games (there is, in Britain anyway), it is that parents don't give two shits - they're still in "games are kiddie toys" mode and they don't so much as glance at the rating. This has been going on for YEARS! The original GTA came out on Playstation in December 1997. This means I was 12/13 years old myself when I was bought it by my grandparents. Personally, I don't think that game was really a bad influence on me (anyone who has seen how laughably bad the graphics are will see it is less graphically violent than most kids TV shows of the era, and I never really acknowledged the foul language) but games are becoming more and more realistic, and just because people didn't bother to pay attention when I was a kid doesn't mean it's okay to do so now.

 

[Nocta-Aeterna]

A female anti-feminist in politics?

Unless I know even less than I thought about feminism, I can safely say my brain just broke....

YOUR brain is fine.

Her brain is fucked up.

A lot about feminism is bullshit, the same with any movement. An awful lot of feminist agendas (In the more retarded, self-obsessed groups) are about putting women first not seeking equality between men and women.

One could say that the more self-obsessed groups lost sight of the movement's original goal.

Spoiler: nicely illustrated here, courtesy of Humon

 

[Thyunda]

The problem we have here is, brace yourselves kiddies, this system already exists!

The other day I was buying a copy of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood for my friend as a Christmas present (also for myself - good teammates / opponents really improve the game) and I was waiting behind a woman and her child, who was no older than 12, whilst the woman behind the desk sold them an Xbox 360.

What game did the little kid want? Why Grand Theft Auto of course!

Now here's the thing; GTA is an 18 game. That's "R" for people in Crazyland (yes, I watch The Big Picture. ). That means it is ILLEGAL TO SELL THE GAME TO ANYONE UNDER THE AGE OF 18! However, and here's where the problem comes in, it is NOT illegal for some dipshit failure of a mother to buy the game, willfully ignorant of its themes and content, and hand it over to a boy whose testicles haven't even dropped yet to play on unsupervised in his bedroom.

Honestly, I had to restrain myself from telling that woman what a failure of a parent she was right then and there!

This is the flaw in this legislation; the problem is not that there is no law to prevent children buying unsuitable games (there is, in Britain anyway), it is that parents don't give two shits - they're still in "games are kiddie toys" mode and they don't so much as glance at the rating. This has been going on for YEARS! The original GTA came out on Playstation in December 1997. This means I was 12/13 years old myself when I was bought it by my grandparents. Personally, I don't think that game was really a bad influence on me (anyone who has seen how laughably bad the graphics are will see it is less graphically violent than most kids TV shows of the era, and I never really acknowledged the foul language) but games are becoming more and more realistic, and just because people didn't bother to pay attention when I was a kid doesn't mean it's okay to do so now.

Hold on a second. How do you know the mother hadn't had an hour-long chat with the kid about the dangers of the game beforehand? How do you know she wasn't going to supervise him? You're assuming a lot, and you're just making us look bad. My thirteen year old brother played GTAIV on its release. It was bought for me, but we had no qualms letting him play it. He's no worse for wear. Neither was I when I played the first Grand Theft Auto. And I wasn't even as old as you were. So, y'know, just because a mother allows her children to play a violent videogame does not say she's a bad parent.

Are you saying that kids should be stopped from reading violent novels and watching violent films too? Because if so, I'd have to disagree with you yet again.

 

[Orange643]

A female anti-feminist in politics?

Unless I know even less than I thought about feminism, I can safely say my brain just broke....

YOUR brain is fine.

Her brain is fucked up.

A lot about feminism is bullshit, the same with any movement. An awful lot of feminist agendas (In the more retarded, self-obsessed groups) are about putting women first not seeking equality between men and women.

One could say that the more self-obsessed groups lost sight of the movement's original goal.

Spoiler: nicely illustrated here, courtesy of Humon

All modern feminism is is women proclaiming that they're somehow superior to men and deserve more rights than men. Because somehow the sad fact that men have oppressed women for hundreds of years give them the right to do the same thing to men. Why can't both sexes just be equal?

 

[Kinokohatake]

Banning Violent Games Tops Conservative's To Do List

Yeah, fix that title, Greg.[/quote]

Banning Violent Games Tops Skeletor's To Do List

There fixed it.

 

[kikon9]

These kids didn't go out and buy the games themselves. They MIGHT have bought the headset with the $50 allowance their spoiled little brat ass gets every week, but they didn't buy the game himself.

Headset but not the game..?

What the hell are you talking about, lol

Technically, they can't buy the game if it's rated M. They need their parent to buy it or at least have their parent with them in order to buy it, and given how spoiled some kids are today, it's probably the former.

 

[FaithorFire]

Banning Violent Games Tops Conservative's To Do List

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Reading the rest of Schlafly's resolutions leaves me equally stupefied. You think it's that important that Good Friday become a State Holiday? Or that it's worth writing a law against companies who "discriminate against the Boy Scouts"? Really?

Source: Townhall.com [http://townhall.com/columnists/PhyllisSchlafly/2011/01/04/new_years_resolutions_for_state_legislators/page/full/]

Permalink

I'm not sure you or this crazy woman understand the meaning of the word "conservative".
"Conservative", by definition, implies a desire to embrace policies or values of the past. Prior to the 60s era of LBJ, the mass censorship of a medium, ANY MEDIUM, would have been seen with disgust. This lady is not a conservative, and is clearly a Right-Wing progressive. Supporting total censorship and mass government control in favor of Left-Wing or Right-Wing ideologies is a relatively new thing in America.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

Won't go through. You can't define violent let alone extremely violent and it isn't the governments place to raise a child. She's just another crazy conservative trying to use more power than she has.

I question everything about that crazy woman.

 

[Thirsk]

I don't get the 'graphical' part when people rage against videogames. When I was 10 or 11 I read a childrenbook, and it was a childrenbook meant for kids my age, where it was about Merlin the wizards younger years. The part I want to mention is a part where his wife (yeah, he had a wife and had sex with her in this book.) got ambushed by saxons that discovered that she was pregnant and raped and murdered her brutally, when merlin found her cold corpse the body of the unborn child was halfway stikking out a hole in her womb so he could see the pretty grim and well-described scene.
The reason I mention this is because it was extremly morbid. The book was pretty popular. AND NO ONE was making a fuzz about it. Even though it contained imagery extremly dark and grim that I have never seen anything similar to in a videogame.

And now you've turned into a homicidial maniac, haven't you?

This leads me elegantly onto my point: this discussion would be relevant in a parallel universe where kids actually took harm from playing violent videogames.

 

[Snotnarok]

Yeah don't let them see anything bad so when they actually get out in the world (mid thirties) they just are horrified by how horrible everything is and how people treat them. Sheltered lives are great.

 

[deth2munkies]

I don't know, is it abusive to try to prevent us from fucking up our only planet?

...everyone has a different mental maturity.

So yours is around age 14 where you think you can make uninformed judgements about everything and be automatically right?

 

[TheAceTheOne]

She can try all she wants. I have a feeling I'm not alone when I say that us gamers aren't gonna roll over and take it.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Kinda both. I'm not going to start watching Fox News, but I have started listening to Rush Limbaugh.

D'aww.

Come on.

If you are sick of liberal media portraying conservatives in a bad light, you shouldn't really look for conservative midea to redeem the ideology - they do a FAR better job of painting themselves as total unreasonable lying dishonest... you get where I'm going.

Not that I'm a die-hard liberal, I have a lot of conservative and even authoritarian view, but I wouldn't go listening to Rush Limbaugh... or Glenn Beck... or Bill O'Reilly... or, the crown jewel, Sean Hannity.

This coming from a non-American most of whose experience comes from watching Fox, MSNBC and the Daily Show.

Sean Hannity. He has less journalistic credibility than my cat...

But I saw Rush stand up for what he believes in with the video games thing. A lot of people in politics would just jump on video games because it's the "cool" thing to do these days. He's earned my respect.

 

[lovest harding]

The problem we have here is, brace yourselves kiddies, this system already exists!

The other day I was buying a copy of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood for my friend as a Christmas present (also for myself - good teammates / opponents really improve the game) and I was waiting behind a woman and her child, who was no older than 12, whilst the woman behind the desk sold them an Xbox 360.

What game did the little kid want? Why Grand Theft Auto of course!

Now here's the thing; GTA is an 18 game. That's "R" for people in Crazyland (yes, I watch The Big Picture. ). That means it is ILLEGAL TO SELL THE GAME TO ANYONE UNDER THE AGE OF 18! However, and here's where the problem comes in, it is NOT illegal for some dipshit failure of a mother to buy the game, willfully ignorant of its themes and content, and hand it over to a boy whose testicles haven't even dropped yet to play on unsupervised in his bedroom.

Honestly, I had to restrain myself from telling that woman what a failure of a parent she was right then and there!

This is the flaw in this legislation; the problem is not that there is no law to prevent children buying unsuitable games (there is, in Britain anyway), it is that parents don't give two shits - they're still in "games are kiddie toys" mode and they don't so much as glance at the rating. This has been going on for YEARS! The original GTA came out on Playstation in December 1997. This means I was 12/13 years old myself when I was bought it by my grandparents. Personally, I don't think that game was really a bad influence on me (anyone who has seen how laughably bad the graphics are will see it is less graphically violent than most kids TV shows of the era, and I never really acknowledged the foul language) but games are becoming more and more realistic, and just because people didn't bother to pay attention when I was a kid doesn't mean it's okay to do so now.

Hold on a second. How do you know the mother hadn't had an hour-long chat with the kid about the dangers of the game beforehand? How do you know she wasn't going to supervise him? You're assuming a lot, and you're just making us look bad. My thirteen year old brother played GTAIV on its release. It was bought for me, but we had no qualms letting him play it. He's no worse for wear. Neither was I when I played the first Grand Theft Auto. And I wasn't even as old as you were. So, y'know, just because a mother allows her children to play a violent videogame does not say she's a bad parent.

Are you saying that kids should be stopped from reading violent novels and watching violent films too? Because if so, I'd have to disagree with you yet again.

Sorry to break in, but I just want to say something.
My problem with this situation is not that the mother either did or didn't talk to the kid, it's that GTA at it's basis is adult. It's not just a game where there's a lot of violence. It's a game series that by its very nature deals in incredibly adult themes, it's a game that honestly deserves the mature rating for being mature. Games like God of War receive a Mature rating for being immature (at least when it comes to sex and violence, the story was quite mature beyond sex and violence).
By my standards, I wouldn't let a child play GTA simply because it's thematically mature, not just violent.

I'm kind of awkward as I don't believe games will affect children, but I'd rather keep a child on developmentally positive path (with games that foster more positive things, Viva Pinata is a great example of showing a child how to care for an animal without being an educational game). I also find a lot of JRPGs tend to be good for children (and by children I mean 10-14) as well as they tend to be rated T but also have serious issues in their plots, which can lead to an honest and serious discussion (something that more children need with their parents). I mean Lost Odyssey has a scene with a dying mother and her two children, emotionally powerful and something a child can easily relate to (as two of the affected characters ARE children).
I think Japanese studios are amazing in the respect that they aim for a wide audience and still deal with serious things (Enchanted Arms has an openly gay character, albeit a stereotypical one, Lost Odyssey talks a lot about death, even Chibi-Robo, an adorable Gamecube game rated E10+, deals with the serious familial issues of economics and divorce)