High Court to consider ban on violent video-games in California?

[Timber Loftis]

I'm all for it.

We can prohibit people under 17 from seeing certain movies unless they are accompanied by an adult. We can limit the drinking/smoking age. Yes, you can get around these laws -- by having an adult buy your booze for instance.

But I see nothing wrong with a law requiring a 12 yr. old to have to convince his mother to buy GTA for him.

[Chewbacca]

Movie and music age-based ratings are not leglislated, why should video games be any different? Government's attempted "role" here is redundant and intrusive.

[Hivetyrant]

Originally Posted by Timber Loftis But I see nothing wrong with a law requiring a 12 yr. old to have to convince his mother to buy GTA for him.

I agree with this.

While I strongly believe the cencorship should be the job of a parent, the process of sale prohibition just helps prevent a large (If done correctly) number of kids/teens that would otherwise circumvent the parents normally.

It's a mixed bag here in Aus where we (supposedly) prevent children from purchasing MA15+ games without parental concent, I believe it works the way it should, that is, children can' buy mature games unless mummy says so, and I think for most mature games, thats the right thing to do, as it should be up to the parents to decide until you are classified as an adult (When that is, is another debate all together)

The issue we have here in Aus is the lack of the R18+ rating for video games, some see this as a good thing, however I don't, and my reason is strongly tied to this situation:
My problem is that games that are seen as above MA15+ (which means they are technically "Unclassified" and therefore prevented from being sold) are then modified as little as possible to make it into the MA15+ bracket, the issue there is that the games are often pretty full on but labelled with MA15+ so mum and dad think its ok.

Now me? I love my gorey games, but it's becuase of that, that I know what they are like and how some of them, maybe, shouldn't be played by 9 year olds (not that there are many proven links between teenage violence and violent video games)

Anyways, for the TL;DR

Parent's should be the deciding factor here, but in my eyes, this legislation (if done properly) should help that argument, not hinder it.

[robertthebard]

So when they find out that that ban isn't going to work, since it can, and probably mostly is bypassed by parents, or older siblings buying the games, are they going to prohibit owning them? It seems like an awful lot of legislation to me to remove the burden of actual parenting from parents. Making it illegal to purchase is not going to make it illegal for them to play, only parents can enforce something like that. Seems like a lot of time, energy and money thrown into worthless legislation, and our government should have better things to do.

[Olorin]

My problem with legislating this is that it's mostly a bunch of hot air. Stores already have policies to restrict sales to young kids. Sure, sometimes employees break those policies, but how will making it a law stop that? Are they going to hire a bunch more state employees to go out to enforce this, or are they going to divert police resources?

Also, would this mean that indie developers of small flash games or app store titles would now be required to submit their games to the ESRB (and pay the associated fees)? I'm sure the ESRB would be thrilled if CA required more people to become their customers, but I don't think the government should be forcing people to do business with a private company.

Games that get AO ratings, or don't get a rating already will get the cold shoulder from almost all retailers. They can try to sell online instead--and of course the app store does not use ESRB ratings--Apple has their own screening process. I really don't see how passing a law is going to make any real change to the current situation--except perhaps to prevent some indie developers from getting games out due to high costs of going through ESRB, and bumping up the costs of games on the Appstore if CA forces all apps to go through the ESRB process.