Insomniac CEO Ted Price has weighed in on video game legislation in an interview with Shacknews:
I think video game legislation has no place in America. It saddens me to see legislators stomping all over our First Amendment rights for their own specific interests.
We're going through what every other entertainment industry has gone through, and that's being the temporary scapegoat for society's ills. I think that we as an industry do a fantastic job of policing ourselves, we have one of the most effective, if not the most effective rating system in any entertainment industry right now.
It won't be until we have more gamers running for office that this will calm down. It's something that we'll weather, because we are right, what we do is defensible under the Constitution and shouldn't be regulated by the government.
As GamePolitics has reported previously, in 2006 Price filed affidavits with federal courts which were considering video game laws in Louisiana and Minnesota.
The well-known developer recommends that gamers contact their elected officials to express their feelings on video game legislation.
Comments
Re: Ratchet & Clank Dev Expresses Resistance to Video Game Laws
The part I agree with the most out of Ted's comments is that this fear-mongering by politicians, parent groups, and certain insane lawyers will just have to be weathered out until the "gaming" generations take power. They don't necessarily need to be the politicians though, they just have to the majority of the voting block. Politicians fear nothing more than not being re-elected.
Tea and cake or death! Tea and cake or death! Little Red Cook-book! Little Red Cook-book!
Re: Ratchet & Clank Dev Expresses Resistance to Video Game Laws
Like Ted say, people are looking for a scapegoat, a scapegoat where people THINK that it won't fight back against the attacks.
Ted also stated that we're just like every other industry in the past that was given a lot of shit until people started to understand about that one industry.
"We may be human, but we're still animals" -Steve Vai (World's greatest guitarist!)
Re: Ratchet & Clank Dev Expresses Resistance to Video Game Laws
Agreed 100% with Ted.
There is no proof that "violent" video games or any video game cause harm. After all, video games are protected by the First Amendment, and if you’re going to infringe on a Constitutional right like freedom of speech based on the claim that the speech in question is “dangerous”, then you better damn well show absolute proof of that. It’s NEVER been done.
If there is a danger so clear and so threatening to the American people that causes these self-righteous politicians to step on the First Amendment, wouldn’t any rational thinking person have to believe that the danger would have to be so obvious and clear that there would be no argument against it? Especially since you’re directly contradicting a Constitutional amendment.
We, the American people, have not been given any valid reason to believe that this abridging of our freedom of speech is necessary. There just simply isn’t any evidence at all of any danger from “violent” video games. This “protection” from “violent” video games isn’t needed or wanted for that matter, but please feel free to use everyone’s tax dollars for protection from things like a 10-foot storm surge from a Category 3 or greater hurricane or the fuselage of a 747 airplane entering our workplaces or our homes.
-Back in Black from a forced hiatus by Hurricane Gustav.
Geaux Saints, Geaux Tigers, Geaux Hornets. Hell will stay frozen over for quite a while since the Saints won Super Bowl XLIV.