Recently, the House of Representatives Committee on Energy & Commerce held hearings on violence in video games. Naturally, the star of the show was Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (GTASA) – a game with a "Mature" rating meaning nobody under 17 should be allowed to buy it. In his attempts to vilify the game, Rep. Cliff Stearns (R., FL) showed a video clip containing mostly player-influenced game-play. By this I mean most of what he showed was not required by the game. He showed wholesale massacre of civilians, a plane flying into a building (*gasp* 9/11 *gasp*), killing people with a sniper rifle and a cut scene involving a drug transaction (the only clip that is actually relevant to the required game-play). So Rep. Stearns and his cronies announced that GTASA should be regarded in the same light as porn. Well, yeah – you have to be 17 or older to buy GTASA, and 18 or older to buy porn – because so much changes in a young mind in the 365 days separating the 17th and 18th birthdays.

Whatever, what gets me is the crusaders brought out "experts" to back up their claim. One of them was Dr. Kim Thompson, professor of (not kidding here) Risk Analysis and Decision Science at Harvard (again, not kidding at all). You can take a class, or better yet major in Risk Analysis and Decision Science at Harvard. It’s probably a BS degree – heh heh, get it? So anyway, Dr. Kim believes that… oh hell, I can’t say it any better than the original article:

" For an example of how this woman’s mind works, she has stated before that the game-play of Pac-Man is "64% violent" and at this very hearing tried to denounce the ESRB’s ratings by saying that "60% of games rated E (age six and up) by the ESRB reward players for ‘injuring other characters." Yes, this includes Mario, for he jumps on turtles which apparently incites youngsters into fits of carnal rage."

Basically, the US House of Representatives (a body of people that includes a few self-professed ‘gamers’ – one of whom couldn’t stop talking about how much he loved Pong!  Yes, Pong for Christ’s sake!) has no clue about that which they are being asked to govern. They think it’s a travesty that a child could go to Wal-Mart’s web site and illegally purchase GTASA because of the apparent lack of age verification. Nevermind the fact that Wal-Mart employs the same age verification techniques used by the online porn industry to keep minors out. But kids aren’t looking at porn, right!? They’re playing GTASA and developing the urge to kill people, have unprotected sex with hookers, fly planes into buildings and generally destroy civilization as we know it. Of course, parents have absolutely nothing to do with raising these kids, that’s why the government needs to get involved. And I thought it was the Democrats who wanted to run peoples’ lives. I guess when it’s classified a moral issue regarding apple pie and family values, the Republicans have to jump on the bandwagon.

Hearing Impaired Editorial at Gaming Horizon

technorati tags: video game, grand theft auto, san andreas, cliff stearns, kim thompson, violence, stupidity