TCS Daily: Throwing the Book At Video Games

Glenn Reynolds, the InstaPundit, argues that laws to regulate videogames is a bad idea politically and constitutionally. As a gamer myself, I've never really understood this whole argument, that somehow playing violent video games makes one more violent. Violence and entertainment have been interwoven for as long as there has been entertainment. Some of the earliest story telling on record is from Homer, describing the Trojan War and then Odysseus' dangerous journey home from that war. Many of these extremely violent stories are required reading in American high schools.

Do we really need a government agency whose job it is to assign ratings to video games? While that might be a great job for gamers like myself, aren't there one or two more important things our government should be paying attention to? Sorry, we can't address the looming crisis of healthcare because we have to rate the latest Doom game.

And what are the legal criteria for deciding a game is AO (adults only) or M (mature)? Look at the movie ratings system, which of course is voluntary, not legally mandated and regulated. There are movies that get R ratings that are fine, in my opinion, for middle teens, but PG-13's that should be only for adults. Imagine a movie in which all the women walk around the entire time in thongs and bikini tops, full of sexually suggestive (but not crude) dialog. Technically, there's no nudity and nothing sexually explicit, so PG-13 is fine, even though it could well be one of the most sexual films of the year. Or language? The movie Be Cool, which I totally disliked, nicely mocks the rules which say the F-word can only be said once in a PG-13 movie. So, one F-word is fine for middle teens, but two F-words needs parental supervision. It's ludicrous. The only saving grace is that it is a voluntary system by the movie industry, and is only intended as a guide. We don't actually have government employees counting the number of F-words in a film.

Any time there are legal definitions, court cases and law suits follow in short order. So, imagine that thong movie got a PG-13 because it was decided showing cheek in such a way does not constitute nudity. Well, someone will immediately sue for emotional and psychological distress over seeing a pair of cheeks, so the courts will then have to decide the legal status--nudity or not nudity--of butt cheeks bared by a thong.

These points would all come up in any regulation of video games. What exactly constitutes violence? In the classic arcade game Pac-Man, the title character eats ghosts. Is that child friendly? The Pokemon games are built on duels, so are they child-friendly? Are all first person shooter games for adults only? Does the amount of blood make a difference, so that killing an enemy without any blood is OK for teens but accompanying that killing with some blood is just for a mature audience? Sex, of course, has to factor in, too. So the same bared butt cheek question comes up for video games, leading to the even more absurd possibility that the movie industry's take on butt cheeks and the government's view for games is different, i.e. showing real cheeks on film is OK for teens, so long as they are bared by a thong and not something else, but showing simulated cheeks in a game is for mature audiences.

Regulation of games means having an agency of the federal government contemplating these questions, and the federal courts seeing their resources tied up in evaluating that agency's decisions. Is this something we really want to allocate federal resources for? Pretty stupid, if you ask me.