Failure to Communicate Murder, Sex & Censorship at GDC:06

Failure to Communicate

Murder, Sex & Censorship at GDC:06

by Matthew Sakey

There were so many delicious quotables produced at the IGDA's Murder, Sex & Censorship panel at GDC:06 that it's hard to decide where to begin. The entire hour was pith and wit from top to bottom. California Assemblyman Leland Yee – who earned cred for being the only anti-game advocate of multiple invitees to respond, let alone show up – was eloquent in his galaxy-sized ignorance of the medium. His fellow panelists, game designer Brenda Brathwaite, IGDA Executive Director Jason Della Rocca and University of Wisconsin professor James Paul Gee were similarly profound in their frustrated efforts to educate him. But the most sagacious quote of the debate didn't come from it.

It came from a sparsely attended roundtable on diversity issues in the games industry, when Joseph Saulter said “There will be a time when video games will be recognized as saving lives, as an avenue of escape for underprivileged kids, like professional sports have saved lives.” Saulter should know; his Urban Gaming Academy is teaching valuable skills and offering the chance for a positive future to socially disenfranchised young people in downtown Atlanta.

It's fitting that this important point was made down the hall, the next day. And as Jason Della Rocca pointed out in his opening statement, it was sadly ironic that “at this very moment Eric Zimmerman is running his Game Design Challenge on the Nobel Peace Prize.” The Design Challenge is a battle royale between top developers to present concepts for games based on extremely thorny topics – in this case, a game that could turn the head of Alfred Nobel. The irony is especially bitter given the historical circumstances. Nobel may be known for his prizes today, but in his lifetime contemporaries labeled him “The Merchant of Death.” He was reviled as a madman who made tools that increased the efficiency of murder. Nobel, you see, invented dynamite as well as Peace Prizes. Choosing to ignore the massive global benefits of the discovery, people then saw only one facet of his contribution to the world. Gaming's critics, also, see only what they want to see in the medium, despite its proven ability to provide benefit. And despite heroic efforts by the panelists, Yee left the room with the same preconceptions he had when he walked in.

Professor Gee gave a stirring defense of games as positive influences. “We spend a lot of time asking about how games can be bad for you, but not how they can be good for you… I wonder how many people have been hurt by games, and how many have been helped by games? I suspect if we split those two groups up and put them in two rooms, one would be full, and the other would contain a relatively small group of people.”

It is a startlingly valid point, often overlooked despite many examples to back it up. Objectively comparing games' potential to do harm versus the good they have and can continue to do would demonstrate compellingly that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks by a significant margin. But in order to recognize that, gaming's opponents would first have to accept that there is more to the industry's output than Grand Theft Auto . And that is not something that Yee or anyone else in his camp cares to hear. It's actually part of the problem.

It's been said before, but it bears repeating and was pointed out early in the panel by Jason: “in a way, politicans are really helping the industry sell a lot of crap games.” By hyping so-called “ultra violent” games in the mainstream media, the opposition is largely responsible for the rise of violence in gaming. The thing is, the opposition doesn't take the time to check and see if the games they oppose are any good. Postal 2 came up during the debate, as it always does. Yee mentioned it, as an example of how games (apparently all games as far as he knows) allow you to “behead people and urinate on their corpses.” But Postal 2 is an execrable game. It is derivative, unstable, buggy, sophomoric, funless, dull and ultimately forgettable in every way. And it would have been forgotten – long ago – if Yee and others would stop yammering about it. The same is true of 25 to Life , 50 Cent: Bulletproof and other such games. They're only made because they're guaranteed free advertising; they would not sell otherwise.

"To the public,” said Professor Gee, “there is only one game: Grand Theft Auto.” And it remains a bit of an anomaly. Most games deplored by politicians are bad games first and violent games second, depending on that violence to raise awareness and sell units of an otherwise worthless title. GTA is not like that. Jason remarked on the fact that it is a splendid game experience that happens to contain some pretty rough content. But he cited an interesting statistic: 90% of retail game purchases are either made by an 18+ or with one present. That means parents do know what the kids are buying. And I find it difficult to believe that a parent could hear the title Grand Theft Auto and assume it's a game about relationships. It seems that many parents should see anti-game legislation as a slap in the face. Yee, Clinton and the others who advocate these laws are essentially saying parents are too stupid to recognize not-for-kids content without the government's help.

Another of Jason's remarks, seemingly obvious, is all too often ignored: “you can't legislate good parenting,” he argued, which is really what all these game laws come down to. That is the fundamental disconnect between Yee's side and ours. Brenda Brathwaite said – and everyone agrees – that no one in or out of the business wants “M-rated games handed out in lunchboxes.” No one in or out of the business has a problem with the fact that games are rated. The issue with Yee's law, and indeed with all the anti-game legislation so far, is that it singles out the medium in a way that no other art forms are singled out.

Assemblyman Yee said several times that he's a big fan of the First Amendment. But each and every time he said it, he followed it up with the caveat that it has exceptions. It can be bypassed if a medium is shown to have harmful effects on children. The fact is, Yee did indeed seem to be very much a fan of the First Amendment… except when it comes to games – something he hotly denied when Jason challenged him on the matter. But despite his denial, he couldn't explain why he'd proposed a law criminalizing “ultra-violent” games and not “ultra-violent” movies.

There is no evidence, no real-world evidence based on large scale longitudinal research, that games incite violent behavior. The only studies supporting the claim have been short-term quantitative exercises involving only a handful of subjects confined entirely to a laboratory environment. That's hardly compelling. James Gee smacked the whole theory down with a single comment: “An emotional response to a medium does not mean that the player will take that behavior into the real world. If so, the world would be awash with violence after every QuakeCon, but that is not the case.” He added, “you see algebra, no one wants to run out and “do” algebra; but apparently if you see violence you suddenly want to “do” violence.” Reckless driving doesn't increase after monster truck rallies, either – yet another example of how Yee singles out games for censorship.

Yee has repeatedly categorized the ESRB and the game industry's self-policing efforts as “failures” because of Hot Coffee. An audience member expressly asked him about this – “given that the content was hidden and could not be activated through normal play, can you honestly say that any ratings body would have caught it?” Needless to say, the questioner did not receive a response. Yee simply repeated that the ESRB was a failure because it allowed AO-rated content into an M-rated game, sweepingly condemning the entire system for a single error that may have been caused in part by the deceptive practices of the developer.

The ESRB and similar groups rate thousands of games every year. As far as anyone knows, only one game has ever gotten past their scrutiny. That's not a “failure,” it's a blip. But you can't legislate based on a blip, and Yee knows that. Moreover, he can't get his law through the courts unless he can exercise that all-important First Amendment exception.

To this end, he slyly tried to prove that games can educate violence by saying “the military uses them to train soldiers .” If he hoped to sway anyone with that claim, he chose the wrong crowd; Jason Della Rocca was quick to respond with the actual truth: the military does use games to train, but as team-building and communication exercises, not as violence simulators. Jason even mentioned interviews with soldiers in Iraq, who'd been horrified to learn firsthand that that marathon Halo sessions did absolutely nothing to prepare them for the realities of war. As Professor Gee said, “what I learned from every military game I ever played is that I don't want to be a soldier.”

The fact that video games are also being used by the military to help soldiers recover from Iraq war-induced post traumatic stress disorder was, of course, not mentioned. Yee, derailed in his attempt to exhibit solid proof that games train evildoers, did amuse the audience with the argument that cigarettes can't be bought by kids even though there's no cause-effect evidence that they cause cancer. “Jesus! We are now limiting that kids can't have cigarettes because of that correlational data.” While this is a fact, comparing games to cigarettes is like comparing ice cream to heroin.

The thing most frustrating to game developers is the fact that the industry sees the hypocrisy and self-defeating nature of anti-game legislation so clearly, when legislators – ostensibly experts on how the law works – so consistently fail to. “There are parents,” said Yee near the end of the panel, “that just don't parent.” And that's a valid point: there are parents who don't parent. Which is shameful. But isn't legislation like this essentially a way to make it easier for parents to fail in their responsibilities? Why should a lazy parent put effort into rearing a child when the government offers tools that encourage their lackadaisical attitude?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, neither side came away victorious, or even particularly pleased. Leland Yee deserves more credit than most self-labeled opponents of gaming; not only did he show up, he genuinely believes what he's saying. He truly thinks this law will help kids, and he showed himself willing to walk into the lion's den to defend that viewpoint. He is not a crazed, publicity-hungry demagogue.

“I don't see this as enemy territory,” he said later. “My ultra-violent video game bill was never against the gaming community or the gaming industry whatsoever. I see the game industry as partners in trying to make things better for our children.” Co-op play in the matter of protecting children definitely sounds better than deathmatch.

But he also shot out of the building like it was on fire after the debate ended. One wonders how his viewpoint might have changed if he'd sat in on some of the other sessions and maybe heard firsthand what Joe Saulter said.

 

Related Resources/Links

• Discuss the article in the Anti-Censorship discussion forum
• IGDA anti-censorship initiatives
• Article: "Regulation Is Everyone's Business"
• Book: "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy"

 

Authors' Bio

Matthew Sakey is a writer and consultant. His work includes games-based learning design, curriculum design for game studies programs and research into the cultural impact of the medium. Matthew has written on gaming for Play Meter and Game Developer magazines, AOL, MSN, and others. He reviews games as “Steerpike” at www.fourfatchicks.com and consults with researchers and corporate clients interested in leveraging game technologies for learning. For more information, visit www.matthewsakey.net or email him at matthewsakey -at- comcast -dot- net.

The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the IGDA.