i actually thought he was a more level-headed than most of the anti-game people. he repeatedly said he respects the first amendment and isn't out to stop violent games, he just wants them to be out of reach of children, but it's not going to change.


just like kids can see R movies. parents. it's all on the parents. you can set all the laws you want preventing minors from getting to adult content, but it always slips through the grapevine.

parents take kids to see adult movies, parents buy their kids alcohol, parents let their kids smoke one of their cigarettes, and parents let their kids play adult video games.

it's not about a non-objective rating board, it's about parents decisions in raising their kids and the fact that when their kids turn sour, they have easy scape goats. This generation is video games, previous ones were rock 'n roll.

as the times change the excuses do as well, but it all has the same root. parents.

also, isn't AO just 18+

so their whole argument is that 17+ isn't enough for GTA... it needs that additional year? psh

Wow, ever time I push a button a Human Being gets Decapitated?

Jack the Ripper has got nothing on me. (light joke because Unicorn spoke my opinion better then I could)

P.S.
If you want to manage School/Public Shootings, then I think Gun Control would be the topic to go after and not Video Game Regulation.

You know I agree that wasting taxpayers money is bad, but when I look into his eyes, I see the common man. Confused, scared, and ready to try to do something about it. If he isn't the representation of the people I don't know what is.

So I'm kind of split on the issue. On one hand maybe less whiny voices on the PSN. On the other hand my kid would have to get me out of the car everytime she wants to play GTA#. Ah who the hell am I kidding I'd be in there anyway.

Really I don't know of any stores who sell to minors anyway, hell half of them think its already illegal.

Being a California native, I actually wrote to Arnold requesting that he vote against the proposition that Lee wrote being approved into law. So much for democracy, huh?

@TIMMAH It's called the ESA, also libel and slander doesn't include generalization statements. Hes not saying any one game has tities being cut off, nor in anyway would it be slander or libel if he did. In no way would it damage the developers reputation.

Yeah he makes good points and his goal of protecting the children from violent games is great but the problem is that he's not willing to take his fight to where it should be, retailers and parents, but as we all know places like Walmart have a lot of power, and god forbid they risk offending parents by telling them it's partially their fault and they should pay some attention to what their children are buying a playing.
In my opinion the parents of the columbine shooters and all the other deranged killers are just as much to blame as the killers themselves, instead of keeping an eye on their children and making sure they stay out of trouble they just let them do as they please then pull faces when their kids have just shot up a school or something, educate the parents, and regulate the omnipotent retailers.

I know that nothing that I could ever see or experience in a videogame could ever make me want to kill people. I don't think that's the issue though. These anti-gamers might be worried that other real life contributing factors (bullying, depression) in combination with the "training" we get from games makes us better killers.

My question is that if the market was saturated with porn games, would we all be trained lovers? I like to think we would.

The belief that someone should not speak about a subject until they have read all the available material on that subject is pretty ignorant. To expect someone to read the, probably, thousands of studies done on videogames is simply unrealistic. That being said, having SOME knowledge of the opposing views/studies would be beneficial for an educated opinion on a subject.

Though most of you probably have no education in the field of empirical studies, what most of you therefore do not know is that a good statistician can make a study show that there is a correlation between ANYTHING. If I wanted to show that there is a correlation between mailbag sales in Ghana and violent behavior, I could do so. That fact is what most people do not know about 'statistics'. You should always take the results of empirical studies with a grain of salt because the people running the studies often times have an agenda--in this case the people throwing out statistics that claim there is a correlation between violent videogames and violent behavior clearly have an agenda to show that correlation. Now, that goes for both sides of the argument, however, the "Grand Theft Childhood" study had no reason to cater to either side of the videogame argument and is therefore probably a better example of a unbiased statistical study of the correlation between videogames and violent behavior. I'm sure there are other unbiased studies out there, but the important thing is to know that most of the studies are biased and have some sort of agenda behind them to show a certain relationship between videogames and behavior.

In this interview, Yee does not condemn videogames or call them evil. He stands up for the first amendment and says that people should be allowed to express their views through videogames. All he wants is for a better (uncorrupted) rating system and a better system to keep mature rated games out of the hands of children. I cannot in good conscious say that he is wrong for wanting either of those things. After playing Grand Theft Auto IV, I can honestly say that I would never want my future children to play the game until they are at least 17 years old (I dont have children--lol).

WILL SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?

Seriously though, wouldn't it be better if nobody just payed attention to this twerp?

@KAPKOMI
Holy Jesus monkey balls! You made a good observation. The young people would only vote if it effected their video games.

Reading something is passive so ok? all right, all those bomb manuals i have lying around are cool then.

UN-DIS-PUT-ED.

What part of that don't you understand, Sterling!?

What offends me more than Lee's dodging of questions is that the interviewer consistently allows him to get away with the misinformation instead of correcting him. I'm not saying that he should be completely confrontational, but please point out if something is grossly wrong (i.e. no school shootings before Columbine).

Also, the MPAA is funded by six major movie studios. Conspiracy?

what really annoyed me about this video is when he is talking about the statistics he says "you didn't hear about" yeah you didnt hear about them but they were still happening the news was just not all over them like not so that means the statistics would still be there we just didn't hear about it

"It is really about limiting and restricting the sale of these ultraviolent video games to our children. Absent that, I'm not going to stand in the way of any of the gamers, and any of the game developers, from doing whatever they think..."

Wow, that's the most level-headed criticism of the video game industry that I've ever heard, and I'll happily support that notion. Hell, I don't even want my 12-year-old sister in the same room as me when I'm playing GTAIV.

Although Yee made a few uninformed points that set off red flags in my mind, I didn't see anything unreasonable in his main argument. Let adults enjoy whatever they want (within reason), and keep an eye on what kids are playing. If you give parents more responsibility in making these decisions and leave my gaming alone, everyone wins.

With that said, little Timmy will find a way to get his hands on GTAIV if he really want to play it, legislation or not.

why does every anti-video-game-lobyist sound like he has never actually touched a game?

A lot of what he says isn't wrong, just his opinion on how children need to be better protected from mature content. The problem is the way he says many things and the type of people who back him because they find video games to be the true source of all of our problems.

But, regardless of how I agree with his sentiments on preventing kids from obtaining these type of media, they will need to do this for all forms of media at the same time or nothing at all, which would in turn remove part of a child's rights to freedom of speech.

Passing a law banning the sale of video games to minors is a violation of the first amendment, which is why these bills are always shot down by the courts. The ESRB is a private organization, and you can't enforce laws based on their rating scales (the same with the MPAA). If the government took over the responsiblity of rating games, then you get into the problem of state censorship. Lawmakers need to stop wasting taxpayer money on these efforts. It's the responsiblity of the retailers to not sell M rated games to minors (and the vast majority of stores have such policies in effect), and the responsiblity of parents to monitor the media their children are exposed to.