Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Yee to Gamers: "Quiet Down!"

This week, game-hatin' politician Leeland Yee sayeth:  "Gamers have got to just quiet down... Gamers have no credibility in this argument. This is all about their lust for violence and the industry's lust for money. This is a billion-dollar industry. This is about their self-interest." (source)

The bad news for people like Yee who don't understand, play, or relate to modern interactive media is that they are getting older, fewer, and farther between.  But these same Luddites of contemporary culture are old enough to remember when rock and roll, comic books, or pinball machines were blamed for the same set of social ills.  So really, they should know better - and if they demonstrate otherwise, they have no credibility in this argument.



Wednesday, January 16, 2013

First they came for the videogames...


"Obama also aimed to thaw what the White House called a "freeze" in scientific research of gun violence by the Centers for Disease Control. And he urged Congress to bankroll the CDC to do research into possible linkages between violent video games and other media images and real-life violence, to the tune of $10 million." (source)

Maybe you don't like guns (2nd Amendment).  And maybe you don't like videogames (1st Amendment).  But what will happen when the government wants to regulate something you do care about?  Who will speak up for you?