GamePolitics revealed yesterday that a New York Division of Criminal Justice Services (DJCS) presentation on video game issues listed a well-known hoax site as a parental resource.
That news has apparently caused a bit of a stir among political types in Albany.
The Staten Island Advance, citing the GP article, reports that state officials will remove the hoax site Mothers Against Videogame Addiction and Violence (mavav.org) from a listing of parental resources which appears at the end of the 24-minute presentation:
One story on the hoax site, "Video Game Violence Makes Teens Aggressive," shows a phony brain scan, with the outline of a tiny machine gun superimposed on the image of a brain...
John M. Caher, a spokesman for DJCS, said officials are in the process of editing the video to yank the hoax Web site reference...
"We firmly stand by the core, overriding message of the presentation: Parents and guardians need to know the types of games that are available, and use their own good judgment to decide if something is right for their child," Caher said.
Gov. Spitzer's office referred media questions back to DCJS, which prepared the video. Prior to the GP story, however, Spitzer was squarely behind the presentation, saying:
I commend the staff of the DCJS...This presentation gives parents and educators the information they need to make smart decisions about the games their children play.
A representative for State Senator Andrew Lanza, who heads a New York legislative task force on violent games, told the Advance that Lanza had no role in the preparation of the video.
GP: We note that some of our readers mentioned the GamePolitics story in comments to the original Staten Island Advance coverage. That surely helped get the attention of New York state bureaucrats and is an example of grassroots gamer action at its finest - well done!
Comments
/golfclap
E. Zachary Knight
Divine Knight Gaming
OK Game Devs
Random Tower
This is why the industry needs to get some serous litigation on this kinda crap.
Oh sure, it may sound extreme, but given that no other methods have works, I say it's time to give Spitzer an Ultimatum. Either he backs off and publicily apologizes, or the industry lays a slander suit on that ass.
Win or not, it would be enough to get idiots like Spitzer to check there facts FIRST!
By remove MAVAV as a source, doesn't that just make it harder for the readers to detect that the video's been tainted by inaccuracies. This smells more like a cover-up on the DJCS' part than genuine intent to fix the problem.
You'll also note that they ignore the "independant" resource of the direct link to the "blue ribbon panel" in the V-Tech case. They obviously want to continue to lie to and deceive the general public about the FALSE link between criminal activity and video games. Time to bring out the Employment Axe (the Employment version of the Ban Hammer).
And of course Spitzer and the senator are too cowardly to take responsibility for their own actions.
Nightwng2000
NW2K Software
/sarcasm
except for the fact that the message of this presentation is "don't buy games, they are evil" instead of the "teach the parents" message you wish it was.
I already made edits to the MAVAV wikipedia pages today and yesterday, and I need a little help on something.Can someone upload the "resources" picture in this story to the MAVAV wikipedia page. I'm a bit of a wikipedia noob. I hope you like my wiki edits. I listed gamepolitics twice in "External Links" section.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAVAV
Then, he'll get back to playing tough guy!
However, I would not stand in front of a crowd and use deliberate fear-mongering and misrepresentation to do so. I'll leave that to a department that ironically has the word 'Justice' in its name.
However, there are still lots of false evidence in the video that still needs to be corrected >_>.
GAMERS ARE EVILZ
DEY EETZ BABIEZ AND KILLZ PEOPLEZ FOR FUN
DA VT PERSON PLAYED TEH CS
THE TERRORISTS LEANED HOW TO FLY PLANE FROM PLAYING GTA
GAMERZ MAKES JESUS CRY
WHENEVER U BUY A GAME, A KITTIEZ DIES
TERE WAS NO CRIME UNTIL THERE WAS DA GAMEZ
WE SHOW NO EVIDENCE SO WE ARE RIGHT AND ANYONE WHO DOES NOT THINK GAME IS EVIL IS WRONG AND DIE IN HELL
GAMEZ ARE THE REASON WE HAZ DISEASE POVERTY WAR
GAMERZ ARE ALL EVIL EMO PPL WHO ONLY WANT KILL
i think i left a slide or two out, but you get the gist
I'll consider it.
But at least we (grassroots gamers), got them to remove the most blatant of ridiculous lies (which is an apalling oversight). The fact that they still lean on junk science and misconception and pretend to help parents is frightening.
~~All Knowledge is Worth Having~~
Now if they can just fix some of the other stuff on there, I'd be happy. I figure if GP can get them to fix that, then maybe GP can get them to fix the other stuff too!
The power of persuasion! :)
~Otaku-Man
Don't get too cocky dennis, this is nothing. Now if we could get them to admit the virginia tech thing was false, then that would be something (well at least compared to this).
Let the comedy continue!
@ ~the1jeffy
Yeah some go to the government for right and wrong advice. Those same people ask the Internal Revenue Service to do their taxes for them and ask car salesmen to tell them what a fair price is on the car they're selling.
I guess my point is the group reading that is already has a predisposition that gaming is evil. Kind of JT groupies if you will. The nice part is it does seem to run along generational lines and the group that games is gaining more voting power than those of the "high tech is a toaster" generation.
BTW my grandmother (age 80) says, "What's this called? A Wii? This is fun!" Love being part of a family that doesn't follow generalizations. I'll get her to start a Wii bowling league soon enough ;)
December 20th, 2007 at 10:01 am
So they’re going to remove the hoax link, but keep everything else? Including the false statement that the Virginia Tech killer played Counter Strike? … Ugh, whatever. "
oh no he played counter strike mister thompson said it so it must be true and Mister thompson heard it from the killers highschool friend.....wait high school?..friend?
last i checked this kid was anti social and in college
and as for them removing the link no one besides gamers will care because the whole thing wont effect them in the damned slightest
Let compare video games to the whole comic book thing which were thought to be to violent/sexual (sound familiar?)
Comics first major hit..lets say superman was in 1938 the success drawing the attention of the vulture like lawyers then bang after a few years comic books got a little too gruesome for some people and tada The CCA was created(1954) which as of 2007 is only vaguely still around
Ok so if we use the same time line as comics video games start coming under fire about 20 years after the first major hit if we take that to be pong which came out in 1972 then lawsuits should have started building up around 1992 (which is about when doom came out 1993)
And if also like comic books it takes roughly 50 years to break free of this then we have about 34 more years of this...what fun
Yikes and that’s your future predication for today