Last week, GamePolitics broke the news that the ultra-conservative Eagle Forum had filed a "friend of the court" brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of Calfornia's bid to have its 2005 violent video game law reviewed by the justices.

The rambling brief sought to link video games with everything from school shootings to poor grades to sudden death.

The group, founded by conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly, wades back into gamer space tomorrow when video game critic Arthur Ally appears as a guest on Eagle Forum Live, a radio show hosted by Schlafly.

Ally bills himself as a morally-responsible fund manager. In December his Timothy Plan investment fund issued a list of 30 "most offensive" video games, including the likes of World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online and Halo 3.

Ally also rather famously criticized Army of Two for "somewhat homo-erotic undertones between the two main characters."

Ironically, the conversation between this pair of would-be censors airs at 11:00 a.m. Central Time on Independence Day.

Watchdog group the Parents Television Council lashed out at Target this week during the retailer's annual shareholder meeting in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

According to a PTC press release, Bob Sherman, director of the organization's Chicago grassroots chapter, called out Target executives over a 2008 secret shopper sting. In that operation the PTC says that minors were able to purchase M-rated games 41% of the time at Target stores. Sherman told the execs and assembled shareholders:

On average our volunteers, all between the ages of 11 and 16, were able to purchase video games rated ‘M’ by the ESRB for mature content 36% of the time.  Target stores fared worse than the average – underage children were able to purchase M-rated video games at Target stores a stunning 41% of the time.  Parents have the right to expect that age restrictions for adult entertainment products will be enforced at the retail level...

Target represents families to so many consumers.  Your advertising and community good works reflect how Target is embedded in our lives.  The Parents Television Council is eager and ready to work with you to address this industry-wide dilemma.

Sherman and the PTC also slammed Target for selling mature-themed DVDs to underage buyers.

In contrast to the PTC's numbers, the most recent secret shopper survey conducted by the Federal Trade Commission found that underage buyers of M-rated games were successful only 29% of the time at Target.

He has been one of the video game industry's most aggressive critics in the past, but GamePolitics has learned that Boston Mayor Thomas Menino (D) will partner with the ESRB on a public service ad campaign designed to raise parental awareness of the video game rating system.

The campaign, unveiled in Boston by Menino and ESRB President Patricia Vance, will feature T.V. and radio ads as well as outdoor print ads. Of the media blitz, Menino said:

Parents want control of the media that comes into their homes, and the entertainment that their children enjoy. That’s why it’s so imperative that we educate parents about useful and informative tools like the ESRB ratings and rating summaries, so they’ll be empowered to make informed choices about which games they deem appropriate.  I’m proud to be educating parents in our city about the tools at their disposal.

With today's news, Menino joins a number of high-profile elected officials around the country who have partnered with the ESRB on game ratings awareness campaigns over the past several years. Given Menino's track record as a video game industry critic, the turnabout is especially significant.

In 2006 Menino led a campaign to have Grand Theft Auto ads removed from public transit. In 2007 his office flirted with video game legislation authored by Jack Thompson. The Boston Mayor's video game bill was eventually submitted to the legislature in 2008, but died in committee.

Menino, who earlier this year touted Boston as a game industry-friendly city in an effort to attract jobs, is running for an unpredecented fifth term as mayor.

Media watchdog group the Parents Television Council has applauded Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's decision to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to review a federal court decision striking down California's 2005 violent video game law as unconstitutional.

While video game industry lobbyists and video game consumer group the Entertainment Consumers Association criticized Schwarzenegger's decision, PTC President Tim Winter (left) praised the California appeal in a press release:

There should be no question that unaccompanied minors should be kept from purchasing adult video games that research has shown can be harmful to them, just like there are reasonable restrictions on other products that can cause them harm. This California law was designed to enforce the video game industry’s own voluntary retail guidelines... Our own research found that video game retailers sell M-rated video games to minors 36% of the time.  Clearly, this law is needed...

The [video game] industry doesn’t follow its own rules, and they don’t want a consequence for violating them.  Video game retailers, developers and publishers actually profit when their age restriction policy is ignored.  This creates an inherent and unworkable conflict of interest.

We hope that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case and rule in favor of the families and children that this California law was intended to protect.

Winter is referring to the PTC's 2008 secret shopper survey, which found that underage buyers were successful at purchasing M-rated games 36% of the time. A survey released by the Federal Trade Commission earlier in 2008 found only a 20% success rate for underage buyers.

FULL DISCLOSURE DEPT: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics.

A pair of German researchers claim that violent video games are a creation of the U.S. military.

Writing in the latest issue of Current Concerns, Renate and Rudi Hänsel call for a ban on violent game and echo the military conspiracy theme espoused in the U.S. by followers of fringe political figure Lyndon Larouche:

During the nineties the killing simulators, employed for hand to hand combat in the US army and police, were released by the Pentagon to be sold for private use on the public markets. As a consequence the computer and video game industry that had co-operated with the Pentagon from the very beginning, boomed. Since then the so-called killer games have wreaked havoc among children and youths.

The US army’s electronic training programs for killing people must be taken back to the US barracks, where they came from. They have to disappear from civil society altogether. They may be appropriate for the purpose of national defense or fight against crime; they have no place, however, in children’s rooms or in living rooms.

In addition, the Hänsels relate violent games to school shootings and quote German and Swiss political figures who have called for a ban on such products.

Oddly enough, they also harken back to a post-World War II German ban on war-themed toys.

GP: Thanks to longtime European reader Soldat Louis for the tip!

Via Spong comes word that video games are not especially well thought of in the British House of Lords. In a recent debate on age verification, Liberal Democrat Baroness Walmsley (left) commented:

Knives, guns, certain games and DVDs, alcohol, solvents and gambling are all very harmful and can destroy young minds and young lives.

To be fair, the Baroness qualified her remarks somewhat:

While the illegal sale of all these products concerns me... I believe that the sale of weapons is the most dangerous.

With the national debate over the use of torture raging on, could a steady diet of violent entertainment color some Americans' view of what has euphemistically been dubbed "enhanced interrogation"?
 
Writing for the liberal-leaning Huffington Post, Kari Henley opines:

If we are going to truly come to terms with abiding by moral codes against extreme acts of violence, we first have to start in our own living rooms... We say we "don't f**#$ torture," yet Grand Theft Auto is our favorite video game.
 
Let's face it: Americans are repeatedly exposed to serious scenes of violence when we go out to the movies, watch nightly TV shows, or unwind with video games, all of which drastically decrease overall sensitivity to violence.

To be fair, Henley’s views on the supposed desensitizing effects of violent entertainment appear to come primarily from the claims of longtime video game critic Dave Grossman. After spending a few paragraphs on violent TV and movies, Henley returns to video games:

What about these modern X-Box and online video games? While I happen to enjoy the "G" rated Wii, over 11 million people are spending their time engrossed in the World of Warcraft or Grand Theft Auto where the point is to go around and kill people in a calculated way. Tell me again why this is supposed to be fun and relaxing?
 
It's time to put torture in its place as unacceptable, period, both in our nation's military practices, and in our nation's entertainment standards.

-Reporting from San Diego, GamePolitics Correspondent Andrew Eisen...

When an arch-conservative chats up a guy who thinks he detected homo-erotic overtones in EA's action shooter Army of Two, you just know that video games are in for a beat-down.

Eagle Forum president Phyllis Schlafly (left) is scheduled to interview Arthur Ally, president of the Florida-based Timothy Plan, tomorrow at noon EST on the Eagle Forum Live radio program.

Schlafly is a longtime opponent of gay rights and Ally bills himself as a morally-responsible fund manager. In December Ally's Timothy Plan issued a list of 30 "most offensive" video games, including the likes of World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online and Halo 3.

A promo for the program on the Eagle Forum site reads:

Do you know detailed information about the content of the most popular video games? Join us as we talk with the president of an investing firm that has done extensive research into the video game industry.

Conservative T.V. talking head Glenn Beck has entertained the notion that video game violence leads to the real thing, but in the aftermath of Sunday's triple cop slaying in Pittsburgh, some critics are drawing a connection between Beck's on-air political rants and accused killer Richard Poplawski's horrific rampage.

The Daily Beast reports that the 22-year old Poplawski is a white supremacist and conspiracy theorist who harbored fears that President Obama will seek to establish some type of "new world order" and remove guns from private citizens.

Poplawski is also a Beck fan:

The alleged killer posted a YouTube clip to [white supremacist site] Stormfront of top-rated Fox News host Glenn Beck contemplating the existence of FEMA-managed concentration camps... Three weeks later, Poplawski posted another Youtube clip to Stormfront, this time of a video blogger advocating “Tea Parties,” or grassroots conservative protests organized by Beck and Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich against President Barack Obama’s bailout plan...

David Neiwert, a veteran reporter on right-wing militia movements... explained that by co-opting conspiratorial rhetoric from the farthest shores of the right, mainstream conservative talkers can inflame the passions of paranoiacs like Poplawski to a dangerous degree...

 

"What it does is unhinge fringe players from reality and dislodges them even further. When someone like Poplawski hears Glenn Beck touting One World Government and they’re gonna take your gun theories, they believe then that it must be true. And that’s when they really become crazy.”

In the aftermath of last month's horrific school shooting rampage in Winnenden, criticism of violent video games by German government officials has been on the rise.

In the latest political attack, Bavarian Minister of the Interior Joachim Herrmann (left), a frequent critic of violent games, upped the ante by likening such games to illegal drugs and child pornography.

Herrmann made the charge in a Tuesday press release (Google translation) which was issued to coincide with the government-sponsored German Games Award as well as a video game conference in Munich.

German GamePolitics reader David Ziegler provides this translation:

The statement contains the usual accusations that "such games are one of the causes for youth violence and also for school shootings, where images from killer games become reality",and that "more and more children are getting mired in this virtual world of violence", so that "they have no time left for school or job training,  and are lost to our society".

 

However, this time, he's taking it a bit further. The last sentence states: "In regards to their harmful effects, [violent video games] are on the same level as child pornography and illegal drugs, the ban on which rightly is unquestioned"

However, a second German official, Commissioner for the New Media Thomas Jarzombek, criticized Herrmann's remarks:

The comparison is completely inappropriate... anyone making such statements is unqualified to participate in any further debate [regarding the] protection of minors from harmful media.

GamePolitics reader tibuka, also German, adds:

[Herrmann's] statement was released on the same day as the first German Videogame Awards ceremony took place in Munich. In return, all important German game-associations (G.A.M.E., BIU, ESB) released statments of their own, demanding an apology.

The fallout from this month's horrific school shooting in Germany continues with President Horst Koehler (left) backing a call to ban violent video games and movies, according to AFP.

The news service reports that Koehler made his comments on Saturday at a memorial service in Winnenden, where the rampage began. More than 7,500 people were in attendance, including families of some victims of the shooter, 17-year old Tim Kretschmer.

From Koehler's remarks:

All Germany mourns with you... Each child is born innocent, and when a child dies, it is hope and the future which dies too... [there should be restrictions on] the innumerable films and videogames of extreme violence, with their display of dead bodies...

Earlier, families of five victims had written to Koehler and Chancellor Angela Merkel, demanding that violent video games be banned and teens restricted from access to guns:

We want something to change in this community, and we want to help so that there can be no second Winnenden... We want killergames to be banned. Games, whether on the Internet or on the PC, in which the goal is to kill as many people as possible deserve to be forbidden. The same goes for all violent games which are, in their structure and presentation, very realistic and very bloody.

GP: Thanks to GamePolitics Forum mod Hannah for the translation of the remarks by the victims' families.

UPDATE: A German-speaking GP reader believes that Kohler's remarks do not go as far as to call for a ban on violent games, although the AFP report indicates otherwise. There is a lively discussion on this in the comments section - worth a read.

The head of Germany's police union in the state of Hesse has called for a ban on violent video games in the wake of a horrific school shooting earlier this month.

Echo Online cites comments made by Heini Schmitt, head of the Hessen German Police Union (DPolG):

It is known that in every situation in which a violent rampage (Amoklauf) has occurred, the perpetrator has had a remarked addiction to so-called killergames. The manner of the deed is astonishingly similar to virtual examples.

 

For him, the fact that roughly a third of children and youths "regularly and addictively escape into a virtual world" sets off alarm bells. Age restrictions for such games are often ignored.  There is admittedly no proof "that these frequent escapes into virtual killerworlds can contribute to such insane deeds", said Schmitt, "But neither can the role killergames be completely dismissed." 

 

When a chance to remove a probable cause exists, it must be used, insisted the chief of the national police union. "The world would be no poorer if there were no more killergames."

GP: Thanks to GamePolitics Forum mod Hannah for the translation!

Yesterday, GamePolitics reported that British newspaper the Daily Mail had raised serious ethical questions about the conduct of Labour MP Keith Vaz in relation to a court case involving a political donor.

The coverage of Vaz, who has been the U.K.'s most vociferous video game violence critic over the years, prompted an unsolicited comment from Jack Thompson.

Thompson, of course, is the most strident of video game critics in the United States and one might be forgiven for assuming that he and Vaz share some common cause. Not so, apparently. Of Vaz, Thompson writes:

I had my own dealings with MP Keith Vaz regarding the Stefan Pakeerah matter. I found Vaz to be deceptive [and] unreliable...

 

He's a political opportunist... I wish he would get the Hell off the video game issue.  People like him don't help us. Boris Johnson, on the other hand, is credible, in my opinion.

The disbarred Miami attorney also questioned Vaz's ethics. Although GP asked, Thompson did not provide any specifics as to what may have soured his relationship with Vaz.

Stefan Pakeerah was a 14-year-old constituent of Vaz's who was murdered by a 17-year-old wielding a claw hammer in 2004. Rockstar's Manhunt was newly available at the time and Vaz has sought to link the game to the killing ever since. Thompson, of course, is no friend of Rockstar's, either.

Boris Johnson is a British conservative who is currently the Mayor of London. As GamePolitics has reported, Johnson has made comments linking illiteracy and knife crime to video games.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's advisor on knife crimes has called for a tax on violent video games, reports the Telegraph.

Richard Taylor (left), whose 10-year-old son Damilola was stabbed to death in 2000 made his comments to to the Brown Government's Home Affairs Committee.

Also coming in for Taylor's criticism were rap music and American cultural influences:

Violent games are “too cheap” and taxes on them should be “very high”, Mr Taylor told MPs.

He told the Home Affairs Committee: “I have young people who I mentor and I see them go up and buy the games and it saddens me that they are being able to have such a negative impact...”

Mr Taylor also told MPs that he was concerned about the content of much rap music.

“It is creating more of a problem because of the language that is used. It is language that, as a father, I would not allow my children to hear. To me, there is a lot of negativity that comes out of this music, especially that which is coming from America.”

Is this guy stubborn, or what?

South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson continues to be the sole roadblock to the introduction of an R18+ classification for video games Down Under. Movies already enjoy such a rating.

Oh sure, things seemed to be looking up last November when he welcomed a public debate on the merits of an R18+ rating pending “some minor changes” to a discussion paper introduced by the Standing Committee of Attorneys General (SCAG). But four months later, Atkinson has yet to make those changes.

In February, GameSpot Australia polled the nation's attorneys general and found that, indeed, Atkinson is currently the only A.G. still opposed to the introduction of an R18+ rating. His colleagues support a public consultation on the matter but are stuck waiting on Atkinson.  Said Victorian Attorney General Rob Hulls:

I fully support there being consultation on this issue, but ultimately the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General (SCAG) is waiting for the South Australian Attorney to agree to consult on the matter.

GameSpot AU recently contacted Atkinson’s office to inquire about the holdup and see if there was an ETA on the revisions.

Discussions are continuing between the [South Australian] attorney general's office and the SCAG Secretariat about amendments to the discussion paper.

In other words, Australian gamer friends: Don’t hold your breath.

If Atkinson ever stops dragging his feet, the finalized discussion paper will be released online and survey the public’s opinion on the introduction of an R18+ classification for Australian games.

-Reporting from San Diego, GamePolitics Correspondent Andrew Eisen.

Last week GamePolitics reported that some Nebraska librarians were under investigation by State Auditor Mike Foley (R) for - horrors! - purchasing a PlayStation 2 and Rock Band set for use in the library.

Foley's final report on Nebraska's library system is now out, including his findings on the video game issue:

[Library] Commission employees have occasionally provided their own personal game consoles for trainings and demonstrations...

GP: Now that's dedication, a quality that government bureaucracy is so good at beating out of its employees. No good deed, as they say, goes unpunished.

The purchase of gaming equipment is a questionable use of public funds. It is common
knowledge that children enjoy games and toys, so there appears to have been little need to
purchase the games.

GP: Wait - kids like games, so the library shouldn't buy them? Does that mean they should expend their budget on things that people don't like? WTH?

Moreover, none of the games purchased were so complicated or out of the ordinary as to require the Commission to demonstrate their use to library staff and others...

GP: Because absolutely everyone who walks into a Nebraska library - including older librarians - has an innate sense of how to set up and play Rock Band or Dance Dance Revolution? Thankfully, the Library Commission defended it employees against the Foley-crats:

Gaming equipment and games have become increasingly popular and in demand resources for library programming and service. The Library Commission purchased game equipment in response to requests from Nebraska librarians for demonstration and instruction. The Library Commission’s actions in acquiring gaming equipment and a few representative games are proper and in accord with the agency’s state statutory mission and its purposes in introducing new technologies, techniques and providing information and instruction in the use of these technologies.
 

GP: Bureaucracy... Grrrr...

Via: Nebraska State Paper

UPDATE: Cornfed Gamer has a terrific report on the situation with lots of additional details.

There was a good bit of high-fiving in the gaming community last week when the U.S. 9th Circuit Court upheld a lower court's ruling that California's 2005 violent video game statute is unconstitutional.

But author Jonathan Salem Baskin (left) takes a dissenting view.

Writing for Information Week, Baskin likens the video game industry lobby to the NRA. That is, victorious but perhaps not entirely blameless.

Approaching the issue from a marketing background, Baskin has an unusual take on the potential influence of violent video games:

How is it that companies spend billions each year to expose people to 15- and 30-second snippets of advertising, and then expect them to be influenced to change their purchasing habits, yet 12 straight hours of intensive, immersive, video game violence has no effect?...

As for the merits of industry self-regulation, well, I'd say they've been dicey, at best. Check the stock market for proof.

Images and ideas matter... So I think it's rather disingenuous for the video game industry to claim otherwise. A better approach would be to acknowledge that lots of the stuff isn't appropriate for kids, and really work to make it impossible for them to get their hands on it. For real.

Winning court battles like the one in California puts them in the same league as the NRA or, going further back in history, the cigarette lobby. How long was "the jury out" on whether smoking was causally bad for you, even as its defenders coughed themselves into early graves?

As GamePolitics reported on Friday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court has upheld a lower court's ruling that California's 2005 video law is unconstitutional.

The Parents Television Council has now weighed in on the decision. The Los Angeles-based watchdog group criticized the 9th Circuit's ruling and called upon PTC members to support State Sen. Leland Yee's call for an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a press release, PTC President Tim Winter (left) said:

Let’s be clear on what – exactly – is going on here: The video game industry has established a policy to ‘protect’ children from a harmful product, yet they file lawsuit after lawsuit to oppose any enforcement of that same policy... The only motivation for the industry to sue is to keep collecting blood money from kids who aren’t supposed to be able to buy these games without their parents present at the time of purchase.

There are very responsible retailers out there – Wal-Mart and Game Stop come to mind – who take their obligation not to sell these games to kids very seriously.  Yet industry representatives claim this law is unfairly biased against them... If the industry actually followed its own rules, then this law would have absolutely no financial impact... 

Shockingly, the Court’s ruling claims that there isn’t enough research to support that children are affected by video game violence.  Yet countless independent studies confirm what most parents instinctively know to be true: repeated exposure to graphic sexual, violent and profanity-laced video games has a harmful and long-term effect on children...
This federal court decision is a disgrace and should be of great concern to all parents – not just in California but across our nation.  We applaud State Sen. Yee’s efforts to see that this decision goes to the U.S. Supreme Court...

Despite assertions from some quarters that violent video games played a role in the February, 2008 shooting rampage at Northern Illinois University, CNN reports that shooter Steven Kazmierczak had a troubled mental health history and was obsessed with the Saw series of horror films.

Games are not mentioned by CNN, which reports that it was granted access to a copy of the NIU investigative report by an author who claims to have obtained it from a law enforcement source.

GamePolitics readers may recall that, in the days following the shooting, disbarred Miami attorney Jack Thompson alleged a violent game connection and threatened to sue NIU for records relating to Kazmierczak's supposed use of violent games.

In addition, Illinois legislator Rep. Robert Pritchard (R) blamed violent video games while absolving guns in the rampage.

From the CNN story:

Kazmierczak was known as "strange Steve" to roommates, studied the Virginia Tech and Columbine massacres and idolized the sadistic killer in the "Saw" horror films, according to documents from the year-long investigation into the NIU killings.

The still-unreleased police file on the shootings, which also left 18 students wounded, shows that 27-year-old Kazmierczak had been hospitalized several times as a teenager for psychiatric issues and had a history of suicide attempts...

freshman suitemates recall him as being obsessed with infamous figures such as Adolf Hitler and Ted Bundy...

GP: As we have pointed out in the past, Kazmierczak was 27 at the time of the NIU rampage. Even if he had been a fan of violent games, no age-based content restriction would have applied to him.

But, the fact that games were mentioned in connection with the NIU killer once again reinforces GP's theory that games will invariably come in for blame when mass shooters are under 30 (see: How Old Is Too Old For Game Blame).

UPDATE: Our old pal Jack Thompson writes in to remind us (and call me a "lying son of a bitch" in the process) that there were reports that Kazmierczak played the first-person shooter Counter-strike.

Note to Jack: we've already covered that several times here on GamePolitics.

Today's story, however, is about the CNN coverage of the NIU investigative report which mentions only Kazmierczak's mental health issues and his affinity for horror films.

THANKS TO: GamePolitics reader Jason Bentley for the tip!

Between the food, the football, the commercials and the schmoozing, it's unlikely that the topic of video game regulation will come up at President Barack Obama's White House Super Bowl party this evening.

But if it does, at least two of the Congressional types on his small, bipartisan guest list have some background on the issue.

In December, 2007 Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) stood with Dr. David Walsh of the National Institute on Media and Family as Walsh zinged the video game industry for what he referred as "an ominous backslide."

Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), who is known for almost never missing a vote, proposed a 2005 Congressional resolution directing the FTC to investigate the Hot Coffee scandal. In 2006 he sponsored the  Video Game Decency Act, a piece of legislation which ultimately failed to pass.

Perhaps more interesting than the (admittedly unlikely) video game angle is trying to decipher the formula used by the Prez in determining his guest list:

• 11 Democrats, 4 Republicans
• 5 from Pennsylvania (Steelers?)
• 2 from Arizona (Cardinals?)
• 1 from Illinois (Obama's old Senate partner)
• 1 each from Minnesota, Maryland, Michigan, DC, Alabama, Connecticut and New Hampshire