Illinois vs GTA. Proposed bill straight banning sale of "violent" games.

FAST6191

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Illinois (home of Chicago) saw a bill proposed/reintroduced that aims to ban games depicting certain acts, ostensibly in response to a bump in carjacking numbers. There is an existing law banning sale to minors (potentially dubious in and of itself but eh) but this would go for everybody.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/platfo...o-games-carjackings-evans-operation-safe-pump

How this will play out is unknown. Most generally considered lawmakers vs computer games a done deal back in 2010 when the US Supreme court said do one as games are free speech to a 2005 California law, case was Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association ( https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-1448.ZS.html for those that fancy some dry legal documents, many videos available if you prefer less dry).

Anyway Marcus C. Evans, Jr. is the offending party, has a D after his name if you care about such things. Bill is HB3531
https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/Bi...ocTypeID=HB&LegId=132549&SessionID=110&GA=102

Synopsis As Introduced said:
Amends the Violent Video Games Law in the Criminal Code of 2012. Changes provisions that restricts the sale or rental of violent video games to minors to prohibit the sale of all violent video games. Modifies the definition of "violent video game" to mean a video game that allows a user or player to control a character within the video game that is encouraged to perpetuate human-on-human violence in which the player kills or otherwise causes serious physical or psychological harm to another human or an animal. Modifies the definition of "serious physical harm" to include psychological harm and child abuse, sexual abuse, animal abuse, domestic violence, violence against women, or motor vehicle theft with a driver or passenger present inside the vehicle when the theft begins. Makes conforming changes, including repealing a Section concerning the labeling of violent video games by video game retailers.

GTA was specifically mentioned by one of the main people that worked with the guy above as a problem as well.
https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/g...o-v-ps4-ps5-xbox-one-series-x-pc-sale-banned/

For the record the American Psychological Association (a group that largely governs psychologists, confers titles and and is definitely the main one in the US) has continued to reaffirm that there is "insufficient evidence to draw a causal link" between games and activity.
https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2020/03/violent-video-games-behavior
More generally
Violent crime stats, including historical
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fbi-data-increase-murder-violent-crime-2015-n654436
Game industry revenues
https://nycdatascience.com/blog/student-works/analysis-of-video-game-sales-from-1980-2016/
A wiki but has some nice charts https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Video_game_industry

Edit. Changed title to say sale of; they were not going to be all "bring all these games so we can burn them".
 
Last edited by FAST6191,

FAST6191

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Well that's a tad concerning, and by concerning, I mean people seem to be pretty open to just reacting to problems with a law that bans something which is definitely not the way to go about it.
Personally I can't wait for someone to get busted smuggling in copies of virtual guns and drugs rather than the real deal.
 

Deleted member 514389

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Beating a dead horse...

The people that suffer the most with these games, are those making them.

I don't play them.
However there is no link between increased agressiveness and vioVGs.

Man.
Stupidity. Ignorance. Cecil Adams was right.
Takes longer than anticipated.

Edit: *poof*:
There is no evidence that violent video games have any negative effects on humans ("cause people to become violent"). While there are examples of video games influencing the behavior of culprit individuals (such as the perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre), studies have consistently found no link between aggression and violent video games,[501] and the popularity of gaming has coincided with a decrease in youth violence.[502] Nonetheless, the moral panic surrounding video games in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, alongside isolated incidents and legislation in many countries, likely contributed to proliferating this notion.[503] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions#cite_note-503
https://www.journalofplay.org/sites...ticles/10-1-Article-4-Teaching-us-to-fear.pdf
 
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DinohScene

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Videogames makes people violent! -Baby boomer generation
Television makes people violent! -Silent generation
Radio makes people violent! -whatever generation produced the generation that grew up with radio technology.

It's a never ending cycle :')
 

Plasmaster09

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I did a project in college about violent media and its influence on behavior. in almost every study that I found, they concluded there was no causal relationship between the two.
IIRC they technically did find a relationship (or rather, one between violent media and aggression levels)
however they found one that was comically small and only a microscopic amount larger than the gain from doing literally anything at all ever
and a decent amount less than sports
Videogames makes people violent! -Baby boomer generation
Television makes people violent! -Silent generation
Radio makes people violent! -whatever generation produced the generation that grew up with radio technology.

It's a never ending cycle :')
Books make people stupid! -ancient philosophers that clearly had more than a few screws loose when it came to everything EXCEPT philosophy

ngl boomers just should not be allowed to govern modern technology
at all
the only people that should control the use or availability of a product are the ones that actually understand it
 
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MikaDubbz

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Banning is obviously not the answer. Now if they want to focus on scrutinizing the rating process, I think there might be something to look into there. It is a tad concerning how lenient ratings can be when it comes to violence while nudity and sex is considered so much worse and raises ratings so much quicker for some reason. San Andreas is completely fine to have the M rating with all of its over the top violence and language, but as soon as they found some cut pixels resembling breasts was hidden away in the game, it has to become an AO game? Ok, brilliant priorities on display there.
 
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FAST6191

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Videogames makes people violent! -Baby boomer generation
Television makes people violent! -Silent generation
Radio makes people violent! -whatever generation produced the generation that grew up with radio technology.

It's a never ending cycle :')

You missed comic books, films, jazz, rock and roll,
https://www.cbr.com/comics-code-authority-crazy-rules-comic-book-superheroes/

https://www.classichollywoodcentral.com/background/the-hays-code/

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/in-depth-features/music-censorship/



Books make people stupid! -ancient philosophers that clearly had more than a few screws loose when it came to everything EXCEPT philosophy
I am not sure about that one.
Most times I go looking (ancient Islam, ancient Rome, ancient Greece, even more classical civilisations, various parts of medieval Europe, China, Gutenberg press era in Europe, India...) it is usually more can't let the peasants have literacy/understand sacred text's language lest they realise we are making it up as we go along and come for us.
It is still a ban for dubious reasons.
 

Arecaidian Fox

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Hey, I know what'll solve this. How about a central body that gives out ratings for games, based on content? It'll be great, you just submit the game and it gets rated, then when it releases publicly, there can be selling restrictions for age and folks will be able to make an informed buying decision about the product! It's amazing, I'm sure no one has ever thought of this.
 

DinohScene

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Books make people stupid! -ancient philosophers that clearly had more than a few screws loose when it came to everything EXCEPT philosophy

ngl boomers just should not be allowed to govern modern technology
at all
the only people that should control the use or availability of a product are the ones that actually understand it

It's not just the babyboomers.
It's every person that blames something they don't understand for problems.



We ought to ban everything but our birthday suits, it's ruining Homo Sapiens as a whole!
 

ChaosEternal

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Huh, thought I had seen the last of this sort of thing. Don't these guys know that it's the far-left's turn right now? That being said, I guess localized bans are better than browbeating developers into making global changes to their games, so maybe we could swap those guys for these guys. At least that way you could still import uncensored games.
 

Wolfy

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Personally I can't wait for someone to get busted smuggling in copies of virtual guns and drugs rather than the real deal.

It's funny that we live in a world, where drugs are starting to become legal, whereas video games are still being treated as the "cause" for violence, as opposed to all the factors of life that are being quietly ignored.
 

chrisrlink

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I did a project in college about violent media and its influence on behavior. in almost every study that I found, they concluded there was no causal relationship between the two.
true cause those people willing to commit those crimes are probably sick in the head already just watch carjackings have no decline or even get worse by banning GTA
 
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ShadowOne333

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Society as a whole is devolving.
It's like the 90s all over again. Do these people ever learn, or even think about looking back a bit?

I swear, people are usually fucking stupid when it comes to things like this.
It has been proven over and over again that violent media for entertainment has zero shit to do with real crime.

But then again, it's a resurgence of idiocy in society that shines through every generation, just now instead of soccer moms, it's idiotic politics.
 
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