Daikokuco on January 17, 2013 at 5:14 PM

That was sarcasm right? Halo or Call of Duty are as bad as meth? CoD is making kids hang out in alleys turnin tricks for battlefield/madden nfl/super mario bros. game?

My favorite story about this issue I heard from a gamestop employee a few years back. A kid comes into the story with his mother and he wants Grand Theft Auto 3 for his 12th birthday. The clerk told the mother all about the game and the rating system. Mom’s response was “well, he really wants it” and junior got his game.

Ted Kennedy didn’t need GTA and other video games to drive drunk off a pier and let his passenger drown to death. Maybe if he’d had Midtown Maddness or Burnout(1-3) he’d have not gone for a swim and you know, let Mary Jo die. We know he played Pole Position, with hookers later in life. Not on the atari 2600 though.

Daikokuco on January 17, 2013 at 5:14 PM

Lulz. I’ve been gaming since you were a stain on the ****ing mattress, kiddo. Video Games are not, never have been, and never will be as damaging as hard drugs. Claiming otherwise based on a few anecdotal stories is beyond retarded.

You realize when people say “Evercrack” or “World of Warcrack” it’s a joke, right? Video Games can psychologically addict people, but so can movies, literature, music…any number of things.

Got any hard stats/studies on video games being more addictive than hard drugs? Yeah, didn’t think so. Stick to being a bad atheist troll; or, in terms you’ll more likely understand, GOML n00b. :)

What about video games that depict guns that hold more than 7 bulllets, or those that show “assault-style” weapons?

The very idea of regulating these things is bad and the hope of enforcing such regulations absurd.

Mental cases watching Tom and Jerry (or Joe and Mika) are the real problem.

If someone wants to blow Palin’s or the NRA President’s head off online and gets a laugh out of it I’m all for it.

Get real, people. This is exactly why the Founder’s created the Constitution so that uptight liberals and RINOs would keep their paws off of society.

no way, you think video games and drugs are equal in terms of how dangerous they are? drugs are actually harmful substances you put into your body- they cause addictions and health problems and that’s a fact. but it’s not a fact that video games lead to mass murders- that’s never been proven. so that’s why those are two different things. one is dangerous and the other one isn’t. we shouldn’t understate the dangers of drugs. sadly, too many people don’t think drugs are that bad. they don’t take the issue seriously.

Sachiko on January 17, 2013 at 4:56 PM

Total BS. I see you are an obedient little dupe of the DARE program’s baseless claims used to deceive children (who have limited reasoning skills and even less knowledge of how to verify the claims of those they are told are “authorities”).

People have died playing video games. Dehydration and starving to death. Videogamers can easily spend more time AND money pursuing their “hobby” than a recreational drug user does with theirs. Videogames are most CERTAINLY addictive (if they are any good). Ever played Civ or heard anyone talk about “Evercrack” or seen somebody become a WOW recluse?

Any metric you can come up with to claim “drugs are bad mkay”, any stupid anecdotal story, there are plenty of equivalents in video games.

Mind your own business. People like you and Matheson, who CLEARLY have no exeperience or knowledge of videogames or drugs, respectively, have no place telling other people that how they spend their time and money is unacceptable.

Or how would you like it if some useful idiot who has no first hand experience reguritates some stupid overhyped media BS like “manga and anime causes people to become awkward shut-in losers with no job prospects and terrible hygiene! There are over a million such victims of manga/anime in Japan alone! Harmful!”

how are there so many idiots in utah who voted for this creepy guy instead of the awesome mia love?! =(

Sachiko on January 17, 2013 at 4:47 PM

Gee, lets ignore the obvious here. Utah is heavily Republican and heavily Mormon. What would cause them to pick a democrat then? Something in the Mormonism most likely….something to do with “lamanites” and an immense outside pressure to the cult that forced them to publicly ammend their sacred beliefs in 1978… an ingeniune epiphany in response to terrible press.

The answer why super-Republican Utah picked the democrat is the same reason why it took about 120 years for any of the Southern States to elect blacks or Republicans following reconstruction. Persistant beliefs.

drugs are actually harmful substances you put into your body- they cause addictions and health problems and that’s a fact. but it’s not a fact that video games lead to mass murders- that’s never been proven.

Sachiko on January 17, 2013 at 4:56 PM

Good thought… You’ve just pointed out a flaw in the argument against video games. ‘Correlation does not imply causality’.

For example, we could also look at how many murderers use a given brand of deodorant, how many play soccer, or how many eat oatmeal.

Video games are consumed on a massive scale, just like the examples I listed above.

Just because two stats correlate does not mean they are codependent.

Comics are pretty violent too. Better ban them, or force them to make comics with fluffy bunnies and unicorns hugging rainbows and cuddling.

portlandon on January 17, 2013 at 3:32 PM

that’s what i always think when i see video game blaming. this blame attitude might eventually spread to comics, tv, books, etc. i read a lot of comics and am making my own. so that’s why this blame attitude bothers me.

Uh, yeah – the same party that wants minors to have unrestricted access to abortions … Brilliant.

Pork-Chop on January 17, 2013 at 3:53 PM

interesting point.

How does this differ from the war on drugs?

If the logic is that by consuming this product you will flip out and grab a gun and start shooting people…

Well I gues it points out how stupid it is to blame the inanimate object for a social problem.

Snowblind on January 17, 2013 at 3:59 PM

no way, you think video games and drugs are equal in terms of how dangerous they are? drugs are actually harmful substances you put into your body- they cause addictions and health problems and that’s a fact. but it’s not a fact that video games lead to mass murders- that’s never been proven. so that’s why those are two different things. one is dangerous and the other one isn’t. we shouldn’t understate the dangers of drugs. sadly, too many people don’t think drugs are that bad. they don’t take the issue seriously.

Newsflash, Ed, Japan, Australia, Sweden, Ireland, Switzerland, Denmark, and any other place you might consider to be a quite non violent country plays the exact same video games Americans do.

And nice attitude there, with saying “we” should push the eeeevil video game corporations to change their product by punishing them with poor sales and bad reputation. I love it when people with no awareness of an industry and who are clearly not customers in the first place say that “we” need to change it.

F’en ridiculous. Those ESRB ratings aren’t free, they can actually be quite expensive, and no private group should ever have this much power.

strictnein on January 17, 2013 at 4:40 PM

Yes… this would actually hit small software companies pretty hard. A computer to code a game? $400. ESRB ratings before you ship it? $800+…
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/10/09/psp-minis-developer-surprised-by-cost-of-esrb-ratings/

there’s already a rating system in place to rate video games, and that’s fine on its own. we don’t need more laws. parents need to restrict access to kids’ video games if the games are too mature. why do we need government to?

all this video game blaming just because adam lanza played video games? what if he watched a lot of violent movies and read violent books, would we restrict those too?

and…

how are there so many idiots in utah who voted for this creepy guy instead of the awesome mia love?! =(

I’ll need a clarification of terms.

Define the following:

Child

Minor

Kid

BobMbx on January 17, 2013 at 3:45 PM

Anyone under the age of 26. Obama’s cleared that all up for us.

would make it illegal for anyone to ship, distribute, sell or rent a video game that does not bear a label from the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) on the age-appropriateness of the game

F’en ridiculous. Those ESRB ratings aren’t free, they can actually be quite expensive, and no private group should ever have this much power.

Hard to kill zombies with 7 round clips

rsherwd65 on January 17, 2013 at 4:18 PM

Naw, ask any liberal and they’ll tell you that you kill them quickest by feeding them genetically engineered food (preferably molded into the shape of a person). Large capacity sodas won’t do the trick on the already dead.

I didn’t even know there was an A/O rating. What is that reserved for? The Leisure Suit Larry games? BTW, I bought the first one in that series for my old Apple IIGS back in the late 80′s before they had a ratings system. Ah, the good old days. When the most violent game on the market was Duck Hunt.

Doughboy on January 17, 2013 at 4:01 PM

only game to use it in a long ass time is the uncut version of Manhunt 2 which was a DD release. Now a days, if your doing porn/hentai, you just don’t send it to esrb and just sell it un-rated

Joe Scarborough disagreed on today’s Morning Joe, mistakenly asserting that the Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on the First Amendment issues surrounding video game restrictions in a conversation with Tom Brokaw.

You mean Joe was wrong…again?

More of his genius…

Joe Scarborough: Abandon Reagan for Powell

Offer an amendment to ban rap for being too violent. Let Democrats choke on their own vomit.

Archivarix on January 17, 2013 at 3:51 PM

Only if its rap rap.