NY Bill Pushes Warning Labels And Mandatory Demos For Mature Games

Having solved all of New York state's actual problems, Assemblyman Brian Kolb is moving on to imaginary troubles that happen in the pretend world of video games. Kolb recently introduced a bill to add new warning stickers to video games. Kolb's proposed law would require video game stores to keep "adult" games in a locked cabinet and would require demos of all adult games, which essentially means establishing a different rating system than the ESRB's.

The bill reads, in part:

"The legislature hereby finds that the youth of New York state are entitled to grow-up in a positive setting and be shielded from graphic violence and offensive depictions now found in video games. It is a well known fact that children between the ages of seven and seventeen play video games for an average of eight hours a week. A subset of video games feature violence, gore, and illegal activity, which has raised concern among parents, educators, child advocates,medical professionals, and policy makers."

Should the bill pass and be enacted, objectionable games would carry a warning label reading:

"18+ WARNING, SALE OR RENTAL TO ADULTS ONLY. MAY CONTAIN EXPLICIT DEPICTIONS DESCRIPTIVE OF OR ADVOCATING ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING:

* COMMISSION OF A VIOLENT CRIME
* SUICIDE
* SODOMY
* RAPE
* INCEST
* BESTIALITY
* VIOLENT RACISM
* RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE
* SADO-MASOCHISM
* SEXUAL ASSAULT
* SEXUAL ACTIVITY
* MURDER
* MORBID VIOLENCE
* ILLEGAL USE OF DRUGS OR ALCOHOL"

Here are the questions the bill raises to me: If this law was to pass, who would get to decide which games get the sticker?

Why should a game like Halo 3, which some would say features "Morbid Violence" carry a sticker warning against sodomy?

How many of the things on the list have been shown in PG and PG-13 movies?

Should kids be warned about the contents of Shakespeare? How about The Bible? Because both contain these things and more.

Have you ever, in your entire life, played a video game for sale in the U.S. that featured Incest? Bestiality? I haven't, but if you can think of one, please leave it in the comment section. (You having a crush on Ecco the Dolphin does not count.)

If there's essentially no Bestiality in video games, I can only assume it's include in this list because the author either 1) doesn't know anything about video games. 2) is trying to be as hysterical and inflammatory as possible, or 3) all of the above.

In conclusion, this entire law sucks. And, it's almost certainly unconstitutional. I wish our elected officials would stop wasting their time and our tax money on these purely political "OMG! Games is teh badz!" style bills. Just govern, guys. Keep the streets repaired and courthouse lawn watered and leave us alone. We'll raise our own children, thanks.

/rant.

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Seriously? LOL

A sad day for humanity indeed, when parents fail to control what they let their kids expose themselves to we turn to the law to do it, but nobody ever pushes it as the parents responsibility. Furthermore they clearly aren't aware of modern circumstances, these aren't the times they grew up in, kids are going to be exposed to this like it or not, they seem to think they're somehow cushioning it, when in actuality they're making it all the more appealing to the kids who are too young to be playing such things since its now "forbidden".


Just my opinions of course, but my god these politicians who do this sort of thing are so self-righteous they think they're going to save all of the adolescents of America, its pitiful.

Jack Thompson is probably beating off to this in a restroom somewhere.

So, they put that entire label on the game? Every single description "might" be in the game. You'll just have to buy it and find out!
"The legislature hereby finds that the youth of New York state are entitled to grow-up in a positive setting and be shielded from graphic violence and offensive depictions now found in video games."
I hope they die. They world doesn't deserve this stupidity.
Because, you know, movies never contain any of this (or more for that matter). Neither does music. These people need to take a look at the real world and listen to what people are saying. They're representatives. Represent the damn people and stop making laws just for the hell of it!

They shouldn't feel the need to rate these games because ESRB is apparently doing crappy. Of course they aren't, parents now just seem to be as illiterate as a five year old. A giant M for Mature rating is slapped onto the front AND THE BACK of the box. It even has descriptions of what's really in the game (unlike this bullshit ratings system).

Ugh, I'm sick of ranting. Here, let Adam Sessler spell it out for you

That is all.

Oh gawd,

it was hard enough getting my mom to buy Fallout 3

now i have no chance

I was at the video game store the other day and some kid (about 8 years old, if I had to guess) was trying to buy 2 games. The clerk looked at the kid's dad and said she couldn't sell them to the kid; she'd have to sell them to him.

The Dad asks "What's so bad about Rock Band & Grand Theft Auto?". Clerk answers that Rock Band is rated T for lyrical content and GTA has several depictions of excessive violence, sexuality, drugs, animal cruelty and a ridiculous amount of other illegal activities.

The Dad's reaction? "Oh.. they don't know what they're talking about". He then paid and gave both games to the kid.

... It's people like that that cause the lawmakers to waste their time making these ridiculous laws. People need to learn to parent their kids; in my example above, the warning did absolutely nothing to change the outcome, even though it was obvious that the dad never did his research to see what was adequate for his kid.

Omfg, another NY Bill...

Just what does the state of New York have against gaming anyway? Last week we brought word that their government is trying to pass a "Warning Labels For Games" law requiring "mature" titles to bear a sticker warning that the game may contain incest and bestiality. And now this: Democratic Assemblyman Steve Englebright is trying to pass a law requiring retailers to post a warning sign that games can cause seizures in people with epilepsy.

Um, Mr. Englebright, any video game I've ever heard of already has a warning about photosensitive epilepsy on the packaging. (Check out the example above, from the inside cover of Spider-man: Friend or Foe for the 360.) Also, there isn't any proven link between epilepsy and gaming -- even in the 3% of epileptics who are sensitive to flashing lights.

Here's the text of the Bill:

Around 1 in every 130 people is diagnosed as having epilepsy, whereas only 1 in every 10,000 have Photosensitivity Epilepsy. Among people with epilepsy, only an estimated 3-5% have seizures triggered by lights or patterns. Photosensitivity Epilepsy most commonly affects children.

This Bill would require that a warning be placed upon every video game warning people of the dangers of Photosensitivity Epilepsy.

Here's how epilepsy.com feels about epileptic kids playing games:

Playing video games is an extremely common pastime for many children, and they often play them for long periods of time. Because epilepsy is a common disorder, it is not surprising that some children will have their seizures while playing video games, just by coincidence. How often this happens, and to what extent the games trigger the seizures, if at all, is not known.

Presumably, Assemblyman Steve Englebright gets paid for his job.

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Sooner or later, we're not even going to be able to see the box art because they're going to need 600 different labels on the game saying what COULD be in the game, weather the sticker is realevent to the game at all.

Am I the only one here that thinks that Grand Theft Auto has as much "societal usefulness" as the Anarchist Cookbook?

The Anarchist Cookbook, while being freely available on the internet, is a banned book. It is banned because it teaches stuff like explosives manufacture, and the only people who could possibly find it "useful" are criminals and terrorists. Grand Theft Auto is a "fun game" about shooting police officers, fuucking hookers and committing murder. Yes, I know they have the right to free speech to publish this $hit, and I have the right of free speech to tell them to shove it up their asses.

Am I the only one here that thinks that Grand Theft Auto has as much "societal usefulness" as the Anarchist Cookbook?

The Anarchist Cookbook, while being freely available on the internet, is a banned book. It is banned because it teaches stuff like explosives manufacture, and the only people who could possibly find it "useful" are criminals and terrorists. Grand Theft Auto is a "fun game" about shooting police officers, fuucking hookers and committing murder. Yes, I know they have the right to free speech to publish this $hit, and I have the right of free speech to tell them to shove it up their asses.

Nope, you're not. I bought GTA:SA on a whim one day at Wal-Mart merely because it was $10. I got home, played it for an hour, and took it back. I lied and said it couldn't be read in my computer, just so I could get that $10 back. I did, however, enjoy the story of GTA:VC. But as far as it being useful, I'm in the same boat as you. The game doesn't offend me or anything of the sort, I just think it's pointless. I didn't even like GTA4. The only appeal to GTAwas the free-roaming "do whatever the hell you want" atmosphere. Once I bored of that, the game was useless to me. Not to mention the replay value blows, hard.

Nope, you're not. I bought GTA:SA on a whim one day at Wal-Mart merely because it was $10. I got home, played it for an hour, and took it back. I lied and said it couldn't be read in my computer, just so I could get that $10 back. I did, however, enjoy the story of GTA:VC. But as far as it being useful, I'm in the same boat as you. The game doesn't offend me or anything of the sort, I just think it's pointless. I didn't even like GTA4. The only appeal to GTAwas the free-roaming "do whatever the hell you want" atmosphere. Once I bored of that, the game was useless to me. Not to mention the replay value blows, hard.

It's not so much that it's "OMG this game is teh best evar!". It's more that they are willing to have government make and use a flawed ratings system. Actually, more of a warning label.

I'm assuming they'll put this label right above the ESRB label on the back that says exactly what is in the game?

No doubt that's exactly where they'll put it.

I mean, Wal-Mart even has ads that play over the PA system that talk about how parents should check the ESRB rating of the games they purchase for their kids to make sure they're aware of what they're getting. We can't really make it any more obvious. And a big fucking sticker is not going to make it any more noticeable. The ones that don't care will still buy the games for their kids regardless.