Ethics Articles
Articles: Amusement
>> = Important Articles; ** = Major Articles
Most Dangerous Games: Video Games That Inspire Serious Crimes (Free Congress Foundation, 030205)
Study: Action-Based Video Games Improve Perception (Foxnews, 030529)
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Everybody Loves Raymond is one of the most popular shows on television.
But Patricia Heaton, the actress who plays Raymond Romano’s wife, took a stand that showed she is not a woman who ‘goes along to get along.’ Enraged by the “onslaught of lewd jokes and off-color remarks,” she walked out of the American Music Awards rather than introduce a prerecorded film clip.
“I was going to present what’s called a video package -- a look at 30 years of the American Music Awards. Well, what was passing for humor basically ranged from stupid to vulgar, and I just thought, ‘I’m not going to be part of this.’ So I walked out and said, ‘Get me my car. I’m leaving,” she told The Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Frankly, Patricia Heaton delivered the best performance of that program as far I’m concerned, and I bet millions of social conservatives would agree with me.
Every American who believes in traditional values can learn a lesson from Patricia Heaton. Rather than simply accept outrageous behavior, she resisted being part of it and made her displeasure known.
The reason I bring this up is because Jack Thompson, an attorney in Coral Gables, Florida is on a mission, grounded in the law, against violent, sexually explicit video games and their peddlers.
Just last week, he caught on videotape a 10-year old boy purchasing a video game called Grand Theft Auto: Vice City at a Best Buy store in Miami.
No ID was requested by the clerk to establish the young purchaser’s age.
The Entertainment Software Ratings Board rates Grand Theft Auto: Vice City as an “M,” acceptable for players age 17 or older. Here’s a description of this video game from the watchdog group, the National Institute on Media and the Family:
“Gamer plays the role of Tommy Vercetti, a member of the mob who is on the search for money and drugs that was stolen from him during a drug deal gone bad. Perform different missions for the mob boss throughout Vice City including murdering the pizza boy, picking up hookers, killing a businessman with a golf club at a driving range, the savage murder of prostitutes...”
You get a very graphic picture of what this game is about and the absolute disregard for human life that it portrays as acceptable. It has sexual content that we cannot relate here.
Best Buy, the retail chain that sold the game, has decided that it will not ID kids. This chain is more concerned about making money than in reinforcing the moral values that are needed to maintain law and order in this country. Its webpage is written in a parent-friendly manner, but the chain does nothing of serious consequence to ensure the youth of America are protected from being exposed to the video game industry’s sleazy products.
Major chains like Target, Walmart, and Toys ‘R Us all require identification. That Best Buy, a major retailer, has decided not to take this action deserves our active condemnation.
Think I’m overreacting? You say, gangsters have long been glamorized in movies and pulp fiction for years. It’s just a game. Kids can tell the difference between real life violence and play violence in a game like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Even if, after having sex with a prostitute, you have to crush her skull with a baseball bat to have your money returned in order to ‘win’ the game?
Well, what do you tell the late Jerry Steinberg of Wyoming, Michigan, whose untimely death came at the hands of two ‘adults’ who played the game?
Back in November of last year, two young men over the age of 17 had been playing Grand Theft Auto III, a game just as bad, for hours on end at the home of a friend. Boozed up, angered at the nowhere lives that they were living, the two men had tired of video violence. It was time to stomp the living daylights out of a real person. So, it’s alleged by police that they ran their car into Mr. Steinberg’s bicycle and, together with a 16-year old girl, are supposed to have kicked Mr. Steinberg, a middle-aged man, into obliviousness. The men then went back to play another game of Grand Theft Auto III. Mr. Steinberg went to the hospital, then the morgue.
As one of the Wyoming police department officials told the Grand Rapids Press: “When we were kids, we played cops and robbers, and we always wanted to be the cops...Look at what this game portrays. The good guy is the killer.” And a four year old plays Grand Theft Auto: Vice City at the home where the two men played Grand Theft Auto III before committing their alleged crime against Mr. Steinberg.
Just last week in Oakland, California, the homicide investigators had put behind bars young men and women in their teens and twenties who had been part of a crime spree that included three killings and dozens of robberies.
As reported by KRON 4, one suspect had told police that his crew had been habitual players of Grand Theft Auto III.
One of the Oakland’s finest said, “It’s almost like the video game desensitized them to what they were doing.”
Video game playing should not be used as an excuse to prevent criminals from getting the toughest sentences possible for committing crimes like those in Wyoming, Michigan or Oakland. But Thompson says the Best Buy chain deserves to be prosecuted, having violated state and federal laws passed in the 1970s forbidding the sale of “sexual material harmful to minors.” Thompson alleges that represents ongoing criminal activity by Best Buy.
Thompson is pursuing a two-front strategy. One is to persuade a prosecutor to take on companies for marketing this sexually harmful material to youngsters. The other is to launch a civil case. But he is taking on a very rich companies that can afford the best lawyers and public relations experts that money can buy.
This week, Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA) is expected to introduce a bill in the U.S. House that would prohibit selling adult video games to youngsters under 18.
Baca and Thompson are taking on an industry that has gotten rich glorifying the worst things in life. I wish them well in their individual efforts.
What I find distressing is that there should be a lot more outrage being expressed on Christian and conservative talk radio about these games and the chains that make them available to youngsters. Nationally syndicated radio hosts should urge a boycott of chains like Best Buy until they decide to forbid the selling of games like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to minors.
The Left’s Saul Alinsky knew how to find the pressure points of corporations and use that knowledge to make them heel, even if it meant breaking laws or doing things embarrassing to polite society. Many social conservatives are not so risk-oriented. We have a harder burden because, unlike the radical Left, most of us feel an obligation to respect the law as much as possible given that we live in a democratic-republic.
How can we cause investment companies to shun putting their money with Take 2 or Best Buy? Or cause board members to become embarrassed enough to press for real reform of their corporation’s policies? It’d be great to see the mothers and fathers or even former teachers of the Best Buy executives decide to appear on talk shows and in advertisements challenging them to stop developing these violent, sexually explicit products and allowing them to be sold to minors (or anyone, for that matter). These executives deserve to be shamed.
I’d like to see it happen. I hope it will happen, but I may be too pessimistic in thinking it just will not occur in today’s society. Even so, there are still millions of us and we count. We know where we stand and we will do what’s possible. But the acquiescence on the part of too many Americans who should know better -- but don’t or won’t fight back against the Best Buys and Take 2 Interactives -- speaks volumes about the society that we have become.
The Bad Guys
Best Buy chain stores webpage
http://www.bestbuy.com/
Find Out A Store Near You To Picket
http://www.bestbuy.com/StoreLocator/searchResults.asp#results
Bradbury Anderson, Chief Executive Officer
Allen Lenzmeier. Chief Operating Officer
Fax The Corporate Offices 952-947-2195
webpage of Take 2 Interactive, manufacturers of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
http://www.take2games.com/
Robert J. Mittman (counsel for Take 2 Interactive)
Blank, Rome law firm
Fax: 212-885-5557
The Good Guys
National Institute on Media and Family
http://www.mediafamily.org/
John B. Thompson
Jackthompson@attbi.com
Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.
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All those hours spent playing video games may not be wasted time after all: A new study suggests action-packed video games like “Grand Theft Auto III” and “Counter-Strike” may sharpen your mind.
Researchers at the University of Rochester (search ) found that young adults who regularly played video games full of high-speed car chases and blazing gun battles showed better visual skills than those who did not. For example, they kept better track of objects appearing simultaneously and processed fast-changing visual information more efficiently.
To rule out the possibility that visually adept people are simply drawn to video games, the researchers conducted a second experiment. They found that people who do not normally play video games but were trained to play them developed enhanced visual perception.
Exactly why video games have this effect is not clear. The researchers said more study is needed.
They said the findings suggest that video games could be used to help visually impaired patients see better or to train soldiers for combat.
The study was published in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature and was led by Daphne Bavelier, an associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences.
Parent groups and anti-violence advocates contend that the bloodshed in some video games triggers aggressive behavior in young people, as some hotly disputed studies have suggested. They blame violent video games for such crimes as the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.
The new study did not directly address how video violence affects behavior. Instead, the experiments focused on a person’s ability to recognize and interpret symbols and letters after playing video games.
“Some people think that video games are turning kids into supergeniuses or psychokillers,” said Kurt Squire, an educational game designer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Games-To-Teach Project, who was not part of the study. “The reality is probably close to this, where people can process visual information much quicker and be able to discern between different types of information.”
Soldiers who grow up playing video games do better in processing information on a screen or operating long-range unmanned aerial vehicles that can film or photograph enemy activity on the ground, according to military experts.
“There are some very avid video gamers in the military. The people who have been playing video games all their lives seem a lot more comfortable in some of these kinds of environments,” said Lt. Cmdr. Russell Shilling of the MOVES Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.
In the Rochester study, 16 men ages 18 to 23 took a series of tests that measured their ability to locate the position of a blinking object, count the number of simultaneous objects on a screen and pick out the color of an alphabet letter. Those who played video games for the previous six months performed better in all those tests than those who did not.
In a separate test, a group of 17 who never played video games were trained to play the military game “Medal of Honor” and the puzzle game “Tetris.” After playing for 10 days, those who learned “Medal of Honor” scored better on the performance tests than those who didn’t.
Pamela Eakes, president of the Seattle-based Mothers Against Violence in America, said scientists need to look more closely at the effects of video violence on habitual video-game players.
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