Rep. Joe Baca Rails Against Supreme Court Decision
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
X-Men 2. X-1 ended with Magneto in a plastic prison and Xavier visiting.shrekfan246 said:
X-2 has Mags in the prison whilst Mystique inject a large syringe of liquid iron (supposedly) in the arse of a guard who works keeping an eye on Mags. After he brings Magneto his meal, Mags detects the extra iron (?) in the guards body and uses his magnetism to draw it out into 3 small spheres (one of which turns into a platform for him) which he uses to escape.
X-3 ends up with the giant brawl at Alcatraz where Jean/Dark Phoenix is killed (finally) by Wolverine (who can only get close because of his adamantium-laced skeleton and his healing factor).
All three got a M15+ ACB/OFLC (Aus Classification Board, previously Office of Film and Literary Classification. they classify and rate all books, games (video and non-video) and movies, have an R18+ rating for movies but no R18+ for video games yet), whilst Power Rangers - a show about teens/young adults in spandex, fighting monsters of alien technological and mythological basis, and driving giant combining robots - gets a blanket-rating of PG15 as the action (rather heavy for a live-action "children"s show) is arguably more than could be passed in under a G rating (such as Thomas The Tank Engine).
wait... T rating... isn't that Zelda? "Zelda is bad for health..."?
"warning... this game may give your child TriForce, sand sent your kid in to another dimension on a dangerous journey, to defeat a great evil force... and possibly give your child a harem of girls..."
WOW, I think I'd go and buy that game!~
"warning... this game may give your child TriForce, sand sent your kid in to another dimension on a dangerous journey, to defeat a great evil force... and possibly give your child a harem of girls..."
WOW, I think I'd go and buy that game!~
Never before has there been a man so absent of reason and devoid of thought, and somebody voted for him.
I don't care about what media has the best or the worst information labels. I don't care that you're clearly backpedaling, shifting the issue from "moveis and CDs have as comprehensive descriptions as videogames on the box" (Which they don't. Fact.) to "games are different because they're interactive."theApoc said:
What I care about is that one thing NEEDS to be straigthened out here: Games allow you to press buttons on a controlloer/mouse/keyboard. That's it. They relay to you different images according to what you press. You're not actually doing anything more than that. You might identify with a character, sure, but that goes for non interactive media as well, that's why people feel emotions during movies or even just by listening to a story told in a book or a song.
So your argument that since you have "control" of the actions (Within the constraints of what the game allows you to do. Constraints which are decided by the designers and are thus completely and utterly rateable as much as the contents of a film, book or any other form of passive media) this somehow changes something is moot.
Do not forget that videogames are basically extremely complex choose your own adventure books, whatever you do, has been put there by someone else for your enjoyment, so you KNOW what gamers will be albe to do, chich is more than enough for a rating to be decided.
Cause the warning labels on ciggaretes has ever done anything ever, o wait right if you hold the mouth cancer one over your mouth it looks funny, that is all.
So the Representative is complaining that ESRB labels don't give parents enough information to make choices.
Here we have a typical ESRB rating label.
Here we have a typical MPAA rating label.
These look pretty similar. Both have a large letter rating on the left side, a description of what the letter means on the top, and explanations of why it has that rating. So if Representative Baca has a problem with the ESRB labeling, then a reasonable person would deduce that he would also have a problem with the MPAA labeling. I don't hear him complaining about that, though.
But wait, the purpose of the California law wasn't to enforce stronger labeling standards anyway. It was to forbid the sales of "violent video games" (the standard for which was never actually set beyond some nebulous description, as the government disregards the games industry's self-enforced ratings, despite it being identical to the film industry's system) to minors, with fines of a thousand dollars per violation. So Baca is pretty well missing the point here anyway.
All this aside, however, the gaming industry is no more "peddling its filth to minors" than the film industry. I saw a woman bring three prepubescent children into a theatre showing of Starship Troopers, a film which shows frontal female nudity, sexual situations, gun violence, and graphic scenes of death by incineration, beheading and dismemberment. Did TriStar Pictures "peddle its filth" to those children? No; the woman brought her children there. The responsibility lies with her. As does the responsibility for what children experience and consume fall with their parents in every other aspect of life. If you find yourself unable to control what your child buys, what your child watches and consumes, especially at those "tender pre-teen years", then I suggest you immediately take some remedial parenting classes, because you are quite frankly failing at your job. And I, a social liberal, do not at all find it to be the government's duty to restrict or suppress what entertainment I may peruse, simply to prevent your child from doing so absent REASONABLE effort on your part.
In short: I don't care if it takes a village to raise a child; the parents still need to be the ones on the front line.
Here we have a typical ESRB rating label.
Here we have a typical MPAA rating label.
These look pretty similar. Both have a large letter rating on the left side, a description of what the letter means on the top, and explanations of why it has that rating. So if Representative Baca has a problem with the ESRB labeling, then a reasonable person would deduce that he would also have a problem with the MPAA labeling. I don't hear him complaining about that, though.
But wait, the purpose of the California law wasn't to enforce stronger labeling standards anyway. It was to forbid the sales of "violent video games" (the standard for which was never actually set beyond some nebulous description, as the government disregards the games industry's self-enforced ratings, despite it being identical to the film industry's system) to minors, with fines of a thousand dollars per violation. So Baca is pretty well missing the point here anyway.
All this aside, however, the gaming industry is no more "peddling its filth to minors" than the film industry. I saw a woman bring three prepubescent children into a theatre showing of Starship Troopers, a film which shows frontal female nudity, sexual situations, gun violence, and graphic scenes of death by incineration, beheading and dismemberment. Did TriStar Pictures "peddle its filth" to those children? No; the woman brought her children there. The responsibility lies with her. As does the responsibility for what children experience and consume fall with their parents in every other aspect of life. If you find yourself unable to control what your child buys, what your child watches and consumes, especially at those "tender pre-teen years", then I suggest you immediately take some remedial parenting classes, because you are quite frankly failing at your job. And I, a social liberal, do not at all find it to be the government's duty to restrict or suppress what entertainment I may peruse, simply to prevent your child from doing so absent REASONABLE effort on your part.
In short: I don't care if it takes a village to raise a child; the parents still need to be the ones on the front line.
Sorry but that is akin to saying that playing a song on a guitar is the same thing as listening to it on the radio. I am not trying to belabor the point, but interactivity does make a difference regardless of the medium. The more involved you are in the story or the performance the more it affects you. Are you trying to say that listening to Phantom of the opera on your ipod is the same as seeing it on the TV, or that seeing it on the TV is the same as going to an actual performance? Or that going to the performance would be the same as being on stage? Trust me, as a musician I can tell you there is a HUGE difference between watching a band and playing in one. So while you may not see it, my point is EXTREMELY valid when it comes to the differences between movies, music, books and video games.Thammuz said:
And that does in fact parlay into how they are marketed and how their ratings systems are designed. I never said parents weren't responsible for what their kids play, but just like smokes and sex, the people who make these things have a responsibility in how they market their products and so far most of this industry has done a REALLY crappy job.
A) Marketing and warning labels are not the same thing.theApoc said:
B) Trust me, as a gamer who has been playing games for 18 years out of my 21 of age, I can tell you, the only reason I feel different when I play games is that I don't have to blindly accept the characters' bad decisions like I would have to do in movies.
That said, it's just watching pretty lights on a screen. You're not DOING anything, and saying stuff like "games allow you to kill people" or "games allow you to sell heroine to kids" or "games allow you to jump off a building and only slightly hurt your left ankle in the landing" is being deliberately misleading. Games allow you to PRETEND to kill people, sell heroine and jump off buildings without major inconveniences, just like, you know, your own fucking mind, playing D&D or acting in a play. People who can't tell the difference are on par with Prince George from Blackadder the Third.
It's like saying playing monopoly encourages anarcho-capitalism. Monopoly allows you to roll dice and trade fake money for fake property in order to end up being the last guy with any fake money. Call of duty allows you to make a computer program calculate the collision between a bullet whose trajectory you decide and a lot of inanimate depictions of enemy soldiers managed by a built in AI.
You're not killing people, you're shooting targets in a firing range. A very complex and unusually detailed firing range, but a firing range nonetheless.