Cool! I get to be a FELON now!
I moved to Riverton, Utah, about two years ago. It's a quiet town, on the edge of the urban Salt Lake City sprawl. The city is torn between two worlds - it is trying to hold on desperately to its rural roots while being absorbed into the metropolitan community. We've got wars over new commercial districts going in next to horse pastures. Like many Utah communities, there are a LOT of kids, and it's a pretty safe neighborhood to let them run around in. During the summertime there's a constant ebb and flow of kids wandering from yard to yard, playing ball or biking in the street.

It's a nice place to live. It's a place where the folks in the neighborhood actually know each other, and look out for each other. I'm pretty happy here. It's a good place to raise my kids.

But I could very soon end up being one of those "dark secrets" of the community myself - an unrepentant FELON living just outside of the heart of the city. A corrupting criminal influence in their neighborhoods, sitting with them in church on Sunday, even teaching Sunday School! Now THERE is a scandal.

My crime? Apparently, I could end up being a seller of pornography to children. Not because I'd actually do ANYTHING like that... the thought turns my stomach. But our dear State Representative from my home of Riverton, Utah is pushing a bill to classify videogames as porn. Representative Hogue is trying to ammend a long-standing pornography law that very loosely classifies violence as porn.

I sell a game called Mythic Blades on my site - a 3D fighting game with all kinds of nasty little weapons set in ancient Greece. It's unrated - but according to HB257, it could theoretically be interpreted as:

* is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material for minors;
* taken as a whole, does not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors;
* is glamorized or gratuitous;
* is graphic violence used to shock or stimulate;
* is graphic violence that is not contextually relevant to the material;
* is so pervasive that it serves as the thread holding the plot of the material together;
* trivializes the serious nature of realistic violence;
* does not demonstrate the consequences or effects of realistic violence;
* uses brutal weapons designed to inflict the maximum amount of pain and damage;
* endorses or glorifies torture or excessive weaponry or . . .
* depicts lead characters who resort to violence freely.

IT IS A FIGHTING GAME. It's not even bloody. It would probably get a "T" rating if it was to get an ESRB rating (which isn't going to happen, because getting that rating is prohibitively expensive for small, indie game developers!). My personal opinion is that the violence is unrealistic and toned-down (it's very similar to Soul Caliber in that way). But thanks to Rep. David Hogue, there is a remote chance that if a 17-year-old downloads this game from my site, I could get arrested on felony charges, and go to jail. I'm sure that by paying a lot of money to a semi-competent lawyer I'd get off, but this would still be a DISASTEROUS law if it passes.

I run a site which is, in my opinion, relatively "family friendly." I personally believe that all of the games on my site would be appropriate for a ten-year-old. That might not always be the case - I have a game in development that will deal with some slightly more grown-up topics, more appropriate for teenagers (15 and up?) and adults than younger audiences. But I have no intention of ever selling a game like Grand Theft Auto on my site (I'm sure that game series, and 25-to-life, which was developed by Avalanche in Salt Lake City, are undoubtably the true targets of this ridiculous bill).

PLEASE - spread the word around folks. Write to your government leaders. Write to your newspapers. Educate your co-workers and neighbors. Take an effort to VOTE. Right now, our politicians in the U.S. and other countries are using videogames as a cheap scapegoat to beef up the "Family Values" ratings on their ticket in preparation for re-election, out of a belief that videogames are politically "safe." You wouldn't see them trying to write similar laws about, for example, movies. Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn't be pushing bills that defined nearly every movie he ever made as pornography, but he supported a bill - while not quite as bad as this one - still criminalized the sales of videogames in pretty much the same way.

Let these politicians know that videogames are not 'safe' targets of bad law! This is reaching insane proportions. Let the baby-boomers currently sitting in office know that their kids who grew up on videogames have been of VOTING AGE for quite some time now. Maybe they did such a crappy job parenting that they figure it is okay for the state to take that job away from their children --- but we have to let them know we won't stand for it.

Our hobby and industry has been coming under continuous attacks as we enter a new election year. Blame Rockstar for pouring blood into the water and attracting every political shark for thousands of miles for a feeding frenzy if you want to, but the fact is we've got to deal with it.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:48 AM (Permalink)