GA tries to crack down on violent games...

[Shino]

SB 105: Violent Video Game; unlawful to knowlingly sell/ rent/loan harmful material to minors; penalties.

Relating to the sale or distribution of harmful materials to minors; to provide that is shall be unlawful for any person knowingly to sell, rent, or loan for monetary consideration an excessively violent video game or a video game containing material which is harmful to minors; provide penalties.



SB 106: Violent Video Game; display explanation of rating system; penalty

Relating to selling, loaning, or distributing harmful material to minors, so as to define a certain term to provide that a video game retailer shall display a sign explaining each rating system which appears on a video game offered by such retailer; provide penalties.


Personally... I think it's a good idea. However I think it should be ok to sell it to them with parental concent.

[Nogrick]

Yeah, but most times, getting parental consent is a kid just asking if they can buy the game. I've even seen it. Many parents just say ok to mature rated games, but they have no clue about the game. A few times at KB I've had parents shocked at the content of the game when it was described to them.

I personally would rather have an informed adult purchasing the games.

[Shino]

[GAAZ]

Yeah but you don't know what GTA is about either. To you and most others it's a game about killing cops and people for money. When in reality GTA 3 was about you lending out services to people to control gang population or influence. Rebuild society because government fails at it. As well as save your GF on numerous occasions...It's like Zelda with bad language.

So how can you judge?

[RivaOni]

ELSPA (Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association) are trying to push for legal ratings like you get with movies, as this would make as at the moment (in europe anyway) there is no official age ratings except on the likes of the GTA franchise. ELSPA have been after this for years but after last years "Manhunt murder" their pushing more than ever,

[Ultrawolf]

[GAAZ]

I think every store that sells games and movies should put their entire selection into a room and/or case. At the front of said room or case have 5 touch monitors. You choose which movie you want and robot arms go through the catalogue find your film or game and deliver it to you.

Anything rated Teen and above requires you to swipe your drivers license (Notice you license has a particled bar code somewhere on it) that contains all your information. And the store selling the product keeps a detailed database saying who what and where the product was purchased.

If a 13 year old kid then shoots someone and blames video games we then see if their parents were the ones who bought them the game. If it was we hook the fathers balls to jumper cables and help "improve" the gene pool a little. If the mother bought the game we simply skewer her with shishkabob needles to the ovaries.

If someone else bought the child the game but it's still played in the home then both parents will be anally molested by genetically engineered porcupines...You can guess where the spines are.

If the kid doesn't own the game and used video games as an easy out then like the father we "improve" the gene pool and take the kid out...Permanently.

[BWS-1]

It sucks that they have to come down to that, but when you think about it. Do you serve alcohol to minors? No, cause the law says that they aren't 21. AND also cause there are penelties in doing so.

...

Now, would you sell a game that is written ''Adult only'' on it to a teen? No, cause THEIR word IS the law. If it's just PG-13, then for the kid's sake, don't sell it if the kid is 11!!! Sure some kids can understand because they will have parents out there that will teach them the right ways, but for those kids, well, they can get their parents to go get them.

But we're talking ''losing notable incomes for doing said action'' here so ... as long as their are no penalties, or threat, they'll keep selling them to minors, ... for the industries sake! Hail to capitalism ... <_<

Those laws should be for all the US, hell, all the damn world, since we're talking about something that affects not only a groupd of people within a nation, or a nation itself, video-games are distributed all over the world, and elsewhere in the world it might be a problem as well, but EVEN if it's not a problem, HOW HARD is it to adopt a law or a set of laws that will just make sure the ESRB is respected. It's like who would honostly respect the speed limits if you wouldn't get fines to go beyong them? No one. Sadly because people don't generally see the threat itself, the threat is the finnancial penalty that could come to you from doing or not doing an action ... again, hail to capitalism. <_<

[Silver Adept]

At the same time, there is a case to be made that some children can handle the violent imagery and situations maturely, even though they are under the age prescribed for the game. Same with graphic novels - the age group is a suggestion precisely so that mature kids can read mature material, instead of being stuck playing and reading kiddie material.

The librarian can loan out trashy romance and nuclear physics to the same person, once they have the card on their own. But if someone takes out a book on ballistics and uses it to build a shrapnel bomb, we don't blame the book for the bomb, or the librarian that loaned it to him (or rather, we shouldn't - in the current world, I wouldn't be surprised if librarians were prosecuted for loaning out books).

That's not to say there shouldn't be guidelines in place - a lot of retailers I know do use an ID-checking policy on "M" games so that the kids can't just buy it themselves. And the reason that's there is so that parents are supposed to be informed about the choices their kids are making for games. So if the merchants enforce a corporate policy requiring ID-check, the parent buys it for the child anyway and bad things happen, who's at fault?

The one person who wants to blame anything else - even Canada.

[Musashi]

Yeah, we always heard that this law was being considered when I worked at Gamestop. Guess its finally been passed. We always did our part to inform parents and not sell to minors anyway though. And as for GTA III:

Kid: I wanna buy GTAIII OMG!11!!one
Parent: What do you think of this game.
Sashi: Well, its not really for kids. You know you can pick up prostitutes right?
Parent OMG11!!11one
Kid: *PWN3D*

Err...yeah, something like that ^^;;;;

And just to add...