The games they play

They watch the field. Cunningly, they search for an opening or for some way to gain an advantage so they can win. Other players clutter the field, some allies, some opponents, all looking for the same victory. Suddenly, a target comes into their sights, and like a well-trained marksman, they fire.

Are they playing the latest war game online? No, they’re legislators across the country, hopping on the bandwagon of denouncing the evils of video games. They say video games are corrosive to children and must be heavily regulated. Never mind that it would quash free expression. They’re doing it “for the children.”

In the blood sport of politics, it’s common for a scapegoat to be chosen or for a non-issue to be hammered for votes. Video games are the latest convenient target.

So why is there such uproar over video games? Simple. They’re new, they’re widespread, they’re filled with things that some consider offensive, and there is a belief that they’re little more than playthings for children.

The first arcade game was released in 1971 and the first home system went on the market a year later. But Congress didn’t take any notice until 1993 when games like “Mortal Kombat” and “Night Trap” would spark senators Joseph Lieberman and Herbert Kohl to launch an investigation that ended with a call for a rating system to keep violent games out of the hands of potentially impressionable youth.

The industry, of course, complied by creating the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB.) The ESRB set forth a method of self-regulation similar to that of the movie industry. The board rates games on a scale from E for everyone upward to M for mature audiences and A, for adults only.

So why has the outcry, public and political, returned in force today?

You could take the politicians at their word and say they’re worried about children. They’re worried that society is training killing machines with games like “Grand Theft Auto” or any number of firstperson shooter games.

By that logic, youth crime rates ought to be skyrocketing. There should be an epidemic of violent kids running around killing people, stealing cars and smashing crates in hopes of finding hidden weapons or ammo to fuel their murderous rampage. Society itself should be collapsing around us as hordes of psychopathic children roam the streets, destroying property and innocent lives as they shoot at eachother.

That’s not happening.

In fact, since the mid-1990s — the era in which the first games to depict realistic violence were released — reports of violent crime committed by minors has decreased.

A report from the U.S. Department of Justice said, “Recently, the offending rates for 14 to 17 yearolds reached the lowest levels ever recorded.”

In other words, the children of the generation that has lived its whole life surrounded by video games are some of the least violent children ever documented.

But if there is no epidemic of youth violence generated by video games, why are politicians like Senator Hillary Clinton crusading against video games?

It’s a sure means to get some votes from a public that hears of ultra- violent games and become concerned that they must be turning our kids into killers or at least causing some sort of harm.

Politicians are being politicians. Some have seen an opportunity, a weakness that can be exploited for gain, and taken it.

Here is the real question. Why should we care? What’s the harm of legislators regulating video games?

The harm is that the government is squelching freedom of speech, something expressly forbidden in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. They’re taking a form of speech, a form of free expression and putting restrictions on it that will only serve to create a chilling effect on the entire industry. There are some laws, for example, that have been enacted or proposed in some states that would force stores to place mature-rated video games in places that children can’t see. That will limit the industry making games that are intended for adult audiences because they wouldn’t be able to openly advertise them.

The fact of the matter is that children shouldn’t be playing games like “Grand Theft Auto: San Andres,” one of the more recent of the universally denounced games that have violent content. They aren’t meant to be played by children. And it should be up to the adults — their parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts — who give their children the money to buy a game to stop the kids before they buy.

But who wants to take that kind of personal responsibility when they can let their government take care of deciding what’s offensive or not?

— Tom Ritchey is the production editor of the News-Register and a University of North Texas journalism student.