The question that I would like to pose is: "Should the government be responsible for the regulation of videogame distribution. The reason that I chose this question is that I am very interested not only in videogames, but also the videogame industry as a whole. And, this issue is becoming of rising prevalence in recent months, with a reinvigorated series of bills attempting to regulate the sale of games, after previous failed attempts. If one is not up to date on the videogame world, you would not know how far games have come since the days of Super Mario Bros. Games have advanced very quickly in a very short span of time. Videogames have become more and more realistic, and a significantly larger amount of games feature violence than ever before. It is the topic of these more violent games, such as Call of Duty, or Mortal Kombat that have warranted regulation of the industry. To combat this issue, videogame companies actually took responsibility for their own actions, establishing the self-regulating ESRB. The ESRB, or the Entertainment Software Rating Board, was created in 1994 to review and label games that have potentially damaging content, such as crude language, sexually explicit images, or blood and gore. It seems, from politicians views, that this regulation is not enough. The bills that have been proposed, such as the "The Protect Children from Video Game Sex and Violence Act of 2003.", suggest that that the ESRB ratings are nice guidelines, but that it does very little to actually regulate the sales of more inappropriate games to improper audiences. The bills attempting to be passed hope to impose strict punishments on those who facilitate the sale of violent videogames to minors. All legislation of this variety however has been promptly shot down by the videogame industry's crack legal team.
In the government's point of view, violence in media should be treated the same as pornography. They are having trouble making this view popular however. To help back up their claim, there have been findings that show increased aggression in children that play violent videogames. This logic is straightforward, but fairly loose. The relationship between videogames and aggression and physical violence is insignificantly correlational; during the first gaming boom ('94-'00) violent crime related arrests in youths and young adults went down by over 25%. I believe that this is because violent videogames provide another vent for anger and aggression other than physical violence. And one of the key reasons legislation continues to be stopped is because such regulation is seen as unconstitutional, encroaching on our first amendment rights to freedom of speech. My personal belief, shared by the common person, is that it should be up to the parents to decide what games their children should be playing. The ESRB gives parents the necessary information to make a judgement, and I don't think any further regulation is really necessary.
Sources:
http://www.theeca.com/video_games_government
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/regulating-video-games-parents-or-uncle-sam
http://www.theparentszone.com/parenting-tips/violent-video-games-parental-or-government-regulation-required/
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/arts/television/21vide.html?pagewanted=all
