I’ve been asked what I think about the video game ban in California, which I note for the partisans was sponsored by Yee, a Democrat, and signed by Schwartzenegger, who is what passes for a Republican in California. My short answer is “I’m boycotting Girl Scout cookies.”
Leland Yee, co-author of the bill, was quick to sign up the California Girl Scouts, which he then went on to repeatedly stroll out at media events in order to drum up sympathy for the bill.
In addition to the lobbying efforts for AB 450, which is the first-ever bill the Girl Scouts have officially sponsored, they will meet with their local representatives to increase the awareness of the Girls Scouts and educate lawmakers about their program.
“I expect that the entertainment industry will again spend tens of thousands of dollars to protect their own financial interests,” said Speaker pro Tem Yee. “However, we have hundreds of thousands of child advocates from across the state, including the Girl Scouts, who are calling on the legislature to do the right thing and protect the interests of our children.”
Now then, my stance is one of relative First Amendment Freedom. I’m not quite an absolutist, though. If you can show me true harm done by the way things are working now, I’m going to listen. Unfortunately for the entire debate about video games, both sides reach straight for the anecdote. One side brings up Columbine, and the other helpfully replies “I’ve played video games for 20 years, and I’m fine!”
Anecdotes are useful for illustration, but poor data to base change on. So instead we need to base our information on whatever socialogy data we can get. This data, so far, is inconclusive, though what little we have seems to suggest that perhaps the sky isn’t falling. Still, that doesn’t stop some people from trying to take whatever data they can find to twist it to support their point of view.
“Data from our national research institute reveals that the biggest fear for nearly one out of three girls, ages 8-17, was being physically harmed or attacked with a weapon,” said Rhonda Gruska, Government Relations Director for the Girl Scouts.
So that’s their biggest fear. However, are they actually more likely to be attacked? Because if that’s their biggest fear, it seems like a not entirely unreasonable one. Certainly better than monsters under the bed or clowns will eat you. And even if that’s the case, are there not more likely sources for their fear? Such as television and rap music, both of which are much more common? And perhaps, just perhaps, if they’re afraid of being assaulted with weapons, it would make more sense to criminalize the actual weapons than artificial representations thereof? Or banning abusive fathers from purchasing alcohol? Note: I favor none of the above, but all of them seem they’d solve this random data point better than banning video games.
“Of the 33 most popular violent video games, twenty-one percent feature violence against women.
I’d love to see how they counted this up. For example, World of Warcraft lets you kill female NPCs. In fact, they’ve gone to great lengths to get female art for some creatures, so that both genders of those creatures are represented – for example, you can kill both male and female centaurs in the Troll newbie lands. Does this make an impressionable WoW player more likely to attack Girl Scouts in real life somehow?
Ironically, most game feminists I know are delighted that you can kill female centaurs – most games only have the male representatives of the monsters you kill, which creates an overarching sense that this is a world where women don’t belong. Go figure.
Research has shown that playing violent video games increases aggressive behavior, thoughts, and feelings. Girl Scouts is sponsoring AB 450 because we are committed to ensuring the health and safety of youth.”
Yep, violent video games does all of the above – in the short term. In the long term, though, we have almost no evidence that the 6 million copies of GTA and 10 million copies of Doom that were sold have created an army of mindless drones. And we also have no evidence that games are somehow worse for kids than movies and music, both of which are much easier for kids to get their hands on.
Now don’t get me wrong. I think that parents should have the tools available to them to make proper decisions regarding which video games they want their kids to see and play. And I was delighted a couple weeks ago when I was carded at a Best Buy when I bought an M-rated title. They’ve apparently rigged their registers to force the cashiers to ask your age, just like when I buy beer at the local grocery store.
But what I fear is a chilling effect. Wal-mart is the world’s largest distributor of music, and that organization up and decided in the late 90’s that it would no longer sell more ‘adult’ music. The end result were artists dumbing down their music to ensure they’d be more palatable to Wal-mart. Coincidentally, the late 90’s were the longest drought of decent music in my lifetime.
If retailers start worrying that every M-rated purchase might be a government sting operation, some may opt not to carry them at all. If fewer retailers sell them, then fewer publishers will want to take chances. Laws like this have a real chance to kill any hopes of seeing more top-notch games with truly adult themes. Laws like this will nudge all games towards being kid-friendly. Given the average game player is 29 years old, this doesn’t mesh up with where the market wants the games to go.
And so that’s why I’m boycotting Girl Scout Cookies. Damn, I’m gonna miss Thin Mints.
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