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Gaming plans spur industry action
3/19/2006
 

          US gamers are being urged to oppose moves to impose legislative regulation on the computer games industry.
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), which represents game producers, wants US gamers to register to vote and to lobby against new restrictions.
Democrat Senators Hillary Clinton and Joseph Lieberman are backing the Family Entertainment Protection Act, which would restrict the sale of some games.
Violent and sexually explicit games are currently self-regulated and age-rated.
The ESA has set up a website that aims to get gamers involved in politics.The website, the Video Game Voters Network, highlights a range of research and academic opinion downplaying suggestions that violence within games is linked to real-life crime.
It also includes a list intended to dispel commonly-held myths about US gamers, often stereotyped as stay-at-home teenagers and social recluses.
The site says that the average game player is 30 years old and has been a gamer for more than nine years.
The age of the average game buyer is 37, according to the website.
Senators' anger
Mrs Clinton and Mr Lieberman, along with fellow Democrat Senator Evan Bayh, announced their intention to restrict access to explicit games at the end of 2005.
Unveiling their proposals in December, Mrs Clinton said: "It's almost routine in popular games for players to spray other people with Uzis, to drive over pedestrians, to kill police officers, to attack women, and in some cases even to engage in cannibalism.
"It is up to adults whether they wish to expose themselves to this type of violence and pornography. But we have 40 years of research to tell us that violent media is bad for our children."
Under the terms of the proposed legislation retailers would be legally barred from selling restricted material to minors.
Gamers apathetic
Pro-gaming activists welcomed the ESA's move, but expressed disappointment at general reaction to the launch of the Video Game Voters Network.
One blogger on the gaming website Joystiq bemoaned the lack of initial interest in the site.
"Maybe the nature of our hobby breeds lazy, politically inactive citizens," wrote Vladimir Cole.
"Maybe gaming's big weakness is that those who pursue it most avidly tend to be least likely to be informed on important political issues because involvement in virtual worlds means detachment from the ugly real world?"
Another poster, called Probot, said gamers need to focus on disproving suggestions of links to real-world violence.
"We shouldn't be concerned with [the] free speech debate because we've already won it. The focus is on whether video games cause aggression and whether that aggression is harmful," he wrote.
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