The Hill is reporting 2 members of the House of Representatives have introduced a bill requiring video games to carry a warning about the violence contained in the game. I was under the impression that the ESRB rating already covered this. The problem with this bill is ANY video game with violent content will carry this warning if it has a rating for violence. This means if this bill passes, games like Ratchet and Clank would carry the same warning label as Grand Theft Auto.
I have survived many years of working in a game store and the level of education among the employees and parents has risen when it comes to the content in games. We, as employees, explain the rating to people shopping and ID for M ratings on games. In the current store I work at, and they go as far to fire employees who sell M rated games to people under 17. Even when I worked for a locally owned store we still provided that level of education because its bad business not to. Having gone through all this in trying to help customers the one thing I learned from it all is parents don’t care. The parents who do heed the warnings of the employees do so ONLY out of guilt, not concern. They feel like the employee is shaming them into not getting something that is crazy violent for their children, and most of them don’t even feel that and tell us, “Meh, I don’t Care.” And who cares? This decision is for the parents to make. I can help them find what they need for their family but it’s not my place to impose my morality on them any more than the Government. My personal favorite response from parents is, “I know I shouldn’t get it for them but i’m going to anyway. Does that make me a bad parent?”
This new legislation also made me ask another question. The scientific evidence, the Representatives refer to in their quotes, only says video games are to blame? Where are the warning labels for movies and TV? They adhere to a similar standard in a rating system but they aren’t being targeted by this? Why isn’t the government so concerned about the movies I show my son AS WELL as the video games I let him play?
The industry has made a lot of improvements when it comes to handling violence and mature rated content in video games and the people who want to make legislation like this really are showing how much they don’t get it. My recommendation to them would be come spend a few days in the video game store I work at as an observer and see what we are really all about. It’s not the morally bankrupt, fear mongering, den of evil, people who introduce this kind of law make it out to be. But what do I know, I just work there.
If you have a different take on it, or have anything to add sound off in the comments below.