It’s Christmas-time, which surely must mean that it’s time of year for goody two-shoes parents to save us from ourselves and scare the hell out of parents that can’t afford to track every $60 dollar purchase their kids make.

The MediaWise Game Report Card was released today, with great fanfare, on Capitol Hill. You can read this relatively dry summary, or go to Wonkette to see the picture that’s worth a thousand words (NSFW) Or, to quote the Fleshbot story (with pics) which is the source of Wonkette’s blurb:

No, you weren’t hallucinating if you saw naked boobies on C-SPAN this evening while flipping channels (since it’s unlikely you were actually sitting there watching it): uncensored, unpixelated clips from the M-rated “The Guy Game” and “Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude” were shown to a bored looking audience (including Senators Joe Lieberman and Herb Kohl) as part of a National Institure for Media and the Family briefing on its annual MediaWise Video Game Report Card.

Yep, those are real, FMV mammaries and that is on fact on C-SPAN. In a perfect world, the FCC would fine Lieberman AND the media watchdogs.

While all this is going on, Buzzcut just talked about being a panel member on an anti-gaming conference panel for the Interfaith Council of Corporate Responsibility with a helpful list of the 10 Games Most Likely To Make You Kill Your Parents in a Satanic Ritual Under the Blood Moon. For those curious, the list is:

1. Doom 3
2. Grand Theft Auto: “San Andreas
3. Gunslinger Girls 2
4. Half Life 2
5. Halo 2
6. Hitman: Blood Money
7. Manhunt
8. Mortal Kombat
9. Postal 2
10. Shadow Heart
11. America’s Army (special bonus devilspawn!)

For anyone who truly cares about games and/or the first amendment, you should read Buzzcut’s article. It will fill you up with enough righteous indignation about the issue to last you a while. For example, many of them had no experience actually playing the games they gave negative ratings to:

I followed up with a simple question, “Who on this panel has played which of the games?”Burke answered first, “I haven’t played any of them.” She backed up her willful ignorance of the games by suggesting that she didn’t need to read Soldier of Fortune to know that she was opposed to its glorification of killing. “I think it’s an irrelevant question,” she concluded.

This might be why some of these games seemed to not fit with their criteria:

[Martha Burk, president of the committee] said the group picked games that were demeaning to women or depicted violence against women….

By not playing these games, this group falls into the debilitating trap of censorship. Hiding behind overbroad and inaccurate claims of conclusive evidence linking real world and videogame violence, this well-intentioned group misses what gamers young and old know—-context matters. Look at “Doom 3”, their number 1 offender. You don’t have to play that game for 20 minutes to grasp the spine of the narrative: Corporate greed and avarice has unlocked the gates of hell. You stand in path of pure evil and humanity’s last hope. Where is the violence against women? Where is the racial hate? Why is this game an immoral swamp? They didn’t play the game, so how could they answer?

And note: the organization is not trying to just keep these games out of the hands of your kid brother, they are trying to protect you from yourself:

[Burk] also added that she thought the games were not appropriate “for anyone.”

Buzzcut’s analysis of the situation is pretty spot-on. This group could be helping to educate parents about the existing ratings system, and on how to learn about games their kids are buying. They could be applying pressure on the retailers to increase usage of the ESRB ratings system, which the MediaWise group grudgingly admitted in their report card was working. Instead, they stoke the flames which scare parents. Note that Hitman: Blood Money, a game that isn’t even out yet, is on the list.

Note also that another recent game that rivaled Doom 3 in sales and allowed you to wall your lovers into your house, and paint a portrait of them as they panic, wail, and eventually die, starving to death in a puddle of their own urine somehow didn’t make the cut. Why? Because the people they’re trying to scare might own a copy of that one.

The IGDA does a marvelous job of fighting this fight for the games industry. ICCR, MediaWise and this crackpot all keep trying to make noise about getting video games censored because it’s good business for them – speaking engagements, appearances on CNN, donations from frantic parents. Any cursory examination of the law makes it clear that their fight is futile. Why? Because a game is, indeed, a piece of expression.

As surely as a good book or a painting can make you reflect and learn something about yourself, interactive entertainment offers a chance for interspection – only much, much more tangibly so. And a parent can actually watch the decision his kids make. Does your kid kill hookers, deliver pizzas or make ambulance runs? Does it occur to no one that this might be the most marvelous way yet to learn something about your kid?

Really. It’s obnoxious enough to make you think that this isn’t a parody.