I enjoyed reading this.
Tell me if this sounds familiar. People are complaining that a particular media is releasing immoral content that is damaging to the welfare of children. A couple of scandals gain public notoriaty, bringing the issue to the public at large. The Senate creates a subcomittee to study the effects of this media on children. A judge (or even the Supreme Court) says that the media is not convered under the first amendment. A religious group creates an organization responsible for experiencing this media, and to dole out protests and hard judgement on the media they feel to be wrong in content.
The community of media creators band together a create a voluntary ratings system by which they self-police their content. Though there was no governmental control of this ratings system, pressure was put on the retailers such that they refused to carry this media without that seal of ratings. Distributors wouldn't carry them. Shops wouldn't sell them. The creators of this content started changing and removing content in order to adhere to the code, and thus be allowed back into the merchant's shops for sale.
Does that sound familiar? All of this stuff has happened to videogames, yes. But that paragraph above isn't about videogames. It's about movies and comics. That's right, the Supreme Court once held that movies were not covered by the first admendment. And they didn't start with a ratings system. They started with codes - the Hays Code and the Comics code. Here's some things from the Comics Code that will turn your stomache:
*) Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals.
*) Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.
*) The letters of the word "crime" on a comics magazine shall never be appreciably greater than the other words contained in the title. The word "crime" shall never appear alone on a cover.
*) Special precautions to avoid references to physical afflictions or deformities shall be taken.
*) Respect for parents, the moral code, and for honorable behavior shall be fostered. A sympathetic understanding of the problems of love is not a license for moral distortion.
*) Passion or romantic interest shall never be treated in such a way as to stimulate the lower and baser emotions.
Well, that's enough of that. The movie code is extremely similar. The basic themes are flat out censorship - what you can't show, what you can't suggest, and what you can't think. I mean, you couldn't just not show adultery, you couldn't even have it... nor could you have divorce. The "sanctity of marriage" must be upheld. Sound familiar? Why is it always the same people behind this stuff.
Okay, so they create these codes. EC Comics almost goes out of business (Rockstar is an equally targeted scapegoat). They adhere to these codes for a while, and then realize that the codes are stupid, right? Well, sorta. It takes about a decade or two, but usually someone will come along with something outside the code that is worth seeing anyway (I think for comics, it was a Spider-Man comic about the horrors of drug use). They change the code, and keep updating the code, until the code itself is fairly worthless.
With movies, they switched to a rating system. The problem is, videogames started with a ratings system. There was no place to escalate to or come down from. It started copying the movie industry without having to go through the crap that it went through to "earn" those ratings. So, now we've got arguments over how accurate and useful the rating system is and people want to take control of it away from the industry and give it to the government. Big mistake.
Censorship always wins, and videogames will have to go through their teenage years filled with parental scrutiny just like all other media. The censorship will win, and eventually will be relaxed if not completely overturned. Why the people arguing for decency never seem to realize that they'll lose the war and only make them and people like them look like even bigger jerks in the process, I'll never know. I mean, do they think they are promoting decency through their own indecent acts of bigorty and fascist control?
My main concern with videogames is that the ESRB isn't turning out to be enough. People aren't stopping at the ratings like they are supposed to. They are pushing further. They believe that the crime isn't that M-rated games are being sold to children, but that there are M-rated games in the first place. They want to make the rating system extremely strict, inflating the rating system so that more games are considered indecent, and they want to put pressure on retailers to not sell these games - they are doing this ALREADY. Now they want to wrestle control away and give it to the government, despite the fact that the FCC's narrow domain is the only content the government can control... they want to broaden the FCC into a larger censorship organization that controls many types of media.
Here's the thing. Once the FCC gains control of these duties, it will be about a thousand times more difficult to get that control back. Senators like Brownback know this. It's a giant manipulation scheme designed to literally steal control from one body and give it to another one - one he gets to appoint. A lot of people don't realize that kids are legally allowed to see R-rated movies. The ratings system is just a suggestion. But woe unto poor us when that stops being the case.
It's all about control. I don't like the ESRB. I know why they are there, but I hate them. I think they are full of malarky and I don't like any ratings system which leads to prejudice against content. Just having a ratings system in the first place dictates content, but has a really bad effect when porting a game from another country with a different ratings system. Something offensive in America will have to be edited for release in Germany and Japan, while those games usually have to be edited for release here as well. The mixing and matching of ratings systems bugs the living crap out of me, and when you see people imaginary smoking because the cigarette was removed to get a Teen rating, it'd bug the crap out of you as well. Why the hell is smoking even part of a ratings system anyway? I mean, why the hell do we have R-rated moves that are released in the UK at what is essentially a PG-13. We live in a global village now, and we can't just be selfish jerks about what we think isn't appropriate.
Hmm... I got off track. Anyway, videogames have one advantage over both movies and videogames. They didn't get noticed for 30 years, and that growth has set a lot of precedent and created a lot of lawyers who can argue on behalf of the industry. They've even got lobbyists! They've got a fighting chance because they did everything right out the gate. It will very likely end in compromise, where videogames suffer, so that doesn't mean that we can just set back and let them fight the battles for you. No compromises.
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