Sparks Fly at Video Game Hearing on Capitol Hill

[Double_Blade]

Just as you think that the horrors will vanish, you thought wrong.

Sparks Fly at Video Game Hearing on Capitol Hill

Yesterday's hearing before the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection was a contentious one, especially for the video game industry and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Among witnesses, ESRB president Patricia Vance came under the heaviest fire. It was clearly a day on which the assembled members of Congress opted to use the bully pulpit to drive home their collective frustrations with the video game industry.

Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-FL, seen at left) opened the hearing by paying homage to the creativity, fun and educational value of games. For the industry, it was all downhill from there. Stearns, like virtually all of his committee colleagues, was harshly critical of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Stearns also called on the FTC to make a full report to Congress on its recently-completed Hot Coffee investigation, a theme that was repeated by other subcommittee members during the hearing.

Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX), who identified himself as a Civilization IV fan, chimed in on the FTC-bashing, calling the organization "tardy" in reporting to Congress. Barton added, "I am fed up with games like Grand Theft Auto being marketed under false pretenses."

Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) was also angry. "I guess I thought the FTC would have had some more teeth than they apparently have... I'm not at all happy with the consent decree... In essence there are no consequences. None... I would like to have thought that (Take-Two and Rockstar) would have been able to be fined for millions of dollars for the trash they put out across this country."

Testifying about the rating system, ESA president Doug Lowenstein said, "It may not be perfect, but we have really made a commitment to working with parents." Lowenstein also showed a video clip of several non-controversial best-sellers, including Tiger Woods Golf, Age of Empires III, and The Sims 2. The committee seemed to grow impatient with the ESA video, however, and it was ended prematurely.

Lowenstein repeated a line he has used to good effect previously, saying, "Defining this industry based on its most controversial titles would be like defining the film industry based on Kill Bill, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Natural Born Killers..."

ESRB president Patricia Vance raised a spirited defense of the ESRB system, saying, "Nobody takes these issues more seriously than we do." Vance's testimony, however, did not play as well when the ESRB president took verbal shots at two witnesses scheduled to testify after her - Harvard's Kim Thompson and Dr. David Walsh of the National Institute on Media and the Family (NIMF). Thompson, of course, was co-author of a recent study which found that ESRB content descriptors were inconsistently applied. Walsh gave the ESRB a failing grade on his organization's 2005 Annual Video Game Report Card.

For her part, researcher Kim Thompson suggested that the ESRB might do well to actually play the games which it rates (the ESRB relies primarily on game publishers to tell the ratings body what type of content games contain). Thompson added she would like to see the ESRB reveal how it performs the mechanics of the rating process. She also took issue with Patricia Vance's criticism of her research and definitely landed some blows.

"For the record," Thompson said, "I would like to emphasize that the ESRB has never provided any scientific basis for its allegations about flaws in our methods and we were very surprised to see the ESRB make such statements. We ask the ESRB to provide evidence of this assertion and we believe their assertion of 'flaws' in our methods is a very serious scientific allegation."

"The ESRB in my opinion should focus much more on insuring the quality of its information and less on promoting its rating system... and finally one of the most important things the ESRB needs to do is distinguish real, peer-reviewed scientific studies from non-publicly available market research that it commissions."

Witness Dr. Warren Buckleitner expressed support for the ESRB system, saying, "As researchers we need to raise the level of dialogue by citing references and trying the games ourselves first-hand, observing real kids, and grounding our opinions in firm data."

During his testimony, Dr. David Walsh of NIMF, among other points, expressed concern about the upcoming Naughty America game and raised alarms about a possible alliance between the video game industry and the porn business. Commenting on the recent Sex in Games Conference, Walsh said, "Last week, for the first time ever, there was a meeting between video game developers and the pornography industry." He also called for a universal rating system for all media. "The present alphabet soup is just confusing," he said.

During the questioning which followed the witnesses' prepared testimony, subcommittee Chairman Stearns grilled ESRB boss Vance over how games get rated, why there are so few Adults Only (AO) ratings, and whether there was an inherent conflict of interest in relying on content submissions by publishers in the rating process. Although Vance held her own, Stearns' sharp questioning of the ESRB president was a clear indication of Congressional mistrust of the industry and its rating process.

 

[KagePrototype]

It'll be ok in the end; eventually all these people wil die out and our generation will take their place.

 

[Laivasse]

Sounds ugly as all hell. The meekness of Doug Lowenstein and the Electronic Software Association really annoys me. What does he really think he'll achieve by showing a video saying 'lol sorry about all the nasty games guys, look here's a video of The Sims 2 and some fluffy sheep and meadows'. A stance like this means the games industry will be perpetually backpedalling in the face of criticism. It's no point pretending that obscene and violent content doesn't exist in games. It does, AND IT SHOULD. They really need to grow some teeth and take the debate to a philosophical level, instead of flinching and hugging their dollars nervously to their chest.

It's also infuriating that the ESRB should be attacked along the lines of 'you don't play the games you rate', by a lobby of people who have even less clue what the games are about.

The fundamental problem here is that games are still seen as media for kids, no matter what rating they are sold under. The average age of gamers has matured, but the attitude of most of the world towards gaming hasn't matured with it. Subjective as it is to do so, I tend to rate good games as having superior creative value than most movies and maybe on par with novels. Half Life 2, Planescape, Fallout 2, then Road Rash 2, Rings of Power, The Immortal etc back in the day...these left as much as an impression on me as most any book, and for longer than any movie ever has. But soccer moms and whatnot have never been encouraged to think about the artistic and creative implications of gaming, instead being scaremongered into a 'OMG BAN THIS FILTH THINKUVDERCHILDREN' mentality. Until attitudes change this bickering over ratings is just academic, because it's eventually going to pop up again in some form or another.

 

[Reaktor4]

****ing busybodies. these morons are spreading like weeds.. i wish i could just pop every one of their god damn heads off..

 

[Jintor]

Yeah, it's a beautiful thought.

I still don't see what the big problem with San Andreas is. So it's a crime simulator. You let the last couple of incarnations through your net - what's the big deal with it suddenly?

 

[Laivasse]

Yeah, it's a beautiful thought.

I still don't see what the big problem with San Andreas is. So it's a crime simulator. You let the last couple of incarnations through your net - what's the big deal with it suddenly?

San Andreas had nipples.

Even worse...UNLOCKABLE nipples. :O

 

[Reaktor4]

well you could only see the bottom third.

 

[Laivasse]

Oh right. Then I guess it had unlockable pelvic thrusts.

 

[Ome_Vince]

It'll be ok in the end; eventually all these people wil die out and our generation will take their place.

yeah, and our generation will undo all the laws they worked so hard to get
That will spawn an entire generation of frustrated old people... :smoking:

 

[AçкяØñ]

It'll be ok in the end; eventually all these people wil die out and our generation will take their place.

the coolest quote ever.

 

[MultiVaC]

Once again, idiots are using the 'Hot Coffee incident' as ammunition when they really have no idea what it really was. You need a mod to unlock it, this must be obtained over the internet or created yourself. It's not part of the actual game, it's unused files. ESRB doesn't rate stuff that's not in the game. What even worse, the Hot Coffee minigame part made the game rated AO, while the blowing cops' heads off with an M4 and watching the blood spray out like a fountain part was just fine. They should let ANYTHING go in M-rated games, they are made for adults, and every retailer I've been to asked me for an ID when I went to buy an M-rated game.

 

[theotherguy]

It'll be ok in the end; eventually all these people wil die out and our generation will take their place.

that's exactley how I feel. I cannot wait to see the day when gamers become the generation in charge...but by that time we'll all be complaining about those crazy kids and their direct-brain stimulation pornographic/violent games! why can't those kids play in front of a computer screen like the good old days?

 

[Double_Blade]

Like I had said, truth will be revealed in due time...

The people including that old ****** Jack Thompson, uses "Hot Coffee" as an excuse like wikipedia had stated,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_coffee_mod

Jack Thompson, a lawyer and anti-video game activist from Florida, was one of the first to criticize the game for its recently found content. Thompson believes that violent media such as video games are one of the main sources of violent crime in America and has lashed out against Rockstar on several occasions for previous games they have developed. Thompson has made negative remarks about gamers and once compared the head of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), Douglas Lowenstein, to Hitler. He has also dared the video game industry to create an ultra-violent game of his specifications and has done some verbal sparring with the game-related webcomic, Penny Arcade.

This is what I call total 100% ******, 100% Non-Christian.

I think, the time for him to make amends is over, too late to make amends now eh?

 

[jverne]

that's exactley how I feel. I cannot wait to see the day when gamers become the generation in charge...but by that time we'll all be complaining about those crazy kids and their direct-brain stimulation pornographic/violent games! why can't those kids play in front of a computer screen like the good old days?

hahaha....so true!! :cheese: