April 10th, 2008

Stephen King vs. Bill 1423

Sometimes I wonder how is it possible for Stephen King, the notorious "King of Horror," to get a good night's sleep, considering the (brilliant!) stuff he usually writes, but that's not the main topic now. After all, we should talk about games here, and that's exactly what we'll do. Probably you know that already, and if you don't, you'll find out now - currently, moves are taken, trying to introduce a law to ban the sale of violent (that includes horror games, of course!) games to kids, and Stephen King is against it!

Stephen King

Currently, the House Bill 1423 is being considered in Massachusetts, and if it goes through, any games depicting "violence in a manner patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community" will carry a legally enforced age restriction. Once it passes, this law will bring violent games in the same shelves with pornography, since selling them to kids would be a criminal offence...

Stephen King claims that such a law would be "undemocratic," and used a few logical arguments to prove his theory - US gun ownership laws contributed to more violent crimes than videogames, so it's not about passing through a law to turn selling games such as GTA or Doom to kids illegal.

So, what's the solution? Well, parents should "have the guts to forbid material they find objectionable" and "monitor their children’s lives," which sounds perfect to me. After all, you need laws to forbid your children things that your kids should be smart and well-educated enough to choose by themselves?