The Political Arena

3/12/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3

Welcome to The Political Arena, Crispy Gamer's look at politicians and the things they say -- and do --regarding the videogame industry. I often write about politics on my Web site, GamerDad.com, and at the Penny Arcade Conference, I was called upon to fill in for Entertainment Consumer Association President Hal Halpin to talk about Games and Politics. My one-hour speech went over well, drawing a capacity and standing room-only audience, and I like to think that led directly to this column.

A note on bias: I'll try and keep my own political bias out of this space. That shouldn't be difficult since the videogame debate and culture war is an issue popular with the "nanny state" Democrats and the "culture war" Republicans. Who's thinking of the children? They are, but regardless of party it looks like they're not thinking hard enough.

In case you haven't noticed we're knee-deep in the hoopla of the Primary season, and for the first time in a long time, candidates are running neck-and-neck for the Democratic nomination. In spite of the fact that John McCain has mathematically sewn up the Republican nomination, Mike Huckabee still plugs away, trying to keep his issues on the table. Meanwhile good old Ralph Nader (hero to consumer advocates, and a controversial figure accused of "spoiling" elections more recently) has thrown his hat into the ring again, clearly hoping to improve on his embarrassingly miniscule vote share percentage in 2004.

Many different issues dominate the campaign, but you're a gamer: One issue that matters to you should be videogame legislation. Will certain senators and congresspeople be able to replace the ESRB with a government-controlled ratings system? Will videogames somehow lose their 1st Amendment protection in the near future? Will store owners be arrested for selling M-rated games to minors? Will Jack Thompson (ducks) be elected to high office? Ahem. For now, let's take a look at the remaining candidates and discuss their positions on videogames and censorship. It might just influence how you vote come November.

Before we begin, we must give credit where credit is due. Dennis McCauley's GamePolitics.com covers this issue on a daily basis; parts of this article come from Ben Silverman's article on Yahoo on the subject, entitled "Play the Vote," and much of this also comes from a survey conducted by Common Sense Media (disclosure: as GamerDad, I review videogames for them).

This week we'll be covering the Democrats!

Hillary Clinton -- come on down!

"When I introduced the Family Entertainment Protection Act two years ago, I did so because I felt that video game content was getting increasingly violent and sexually explicit, yet young people were able to purchase these games with relative ease while their parents were struggling to keep up with being informed about the content." -- Hillary Clinton's response to the CSM survey.

Ms. Clinton has a fairly long history on this issue and it doesn't take a village to realize that her views should make gamers a little uncomfortable. During her husband's administration, the Clintons supported the legislation that led to the V-chip. Not a bad idea (assuming anyone actually uses it), but the rhetoric used to sell the idea was very inflammatory.

More recently, the junior New York Senator called on the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) to investigate the source of the "abandoned code" found by a hacker in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in the scandal generally known as "Hot Coffee" -- in brief, this scandal was a tempest in a teapot. A hacker was able to unlock some hidden code depicting a "sex" mini-game starring two clothed figures moving stiffly. The bottom line is that the code wasn't offensive when compared with -- say -- the marionette sex from "Team America: World Police" and the hack was very difficult to unlock. Any child able to view "Hot Coffee" is able to view just about anything on the Internet, yet Clinton used this to score points and vilify the game industry and its attempt to smuggle obscenity into parent's homes (that's paraphrased, but the outrage she displayed was vivid, real and more than a little hyperbolic).