|
|
| Game On |
May 9, 2006 |
By Danny Bradbury
The Grand Theft Auto video game franchise has always been controversial. Critics decried its violence and anti-social message, while many players took the “It’s just a game, lighten up” tack.
Then Grand Theft Auto: Vice City hit the shelves. The game awards points for killing prostitutes. For many, this product and others like it simply went too far, and critics took aim at manufacturers in court. Mirroring attempted legislation south of the border, Canadian provinces are writing video game ratings into law to prevent inappropriate sales to minors.
But with titles targeting players in their twenties and adult games increasingly online via Web sites and file sharing networks, some argue these moves are simply ineffectual political posturing—and legally questionable at that.
Elaine Ivancic was no fan of violent or sexually explicit video games. But her core issue was not moral considerations, rather the resources they consumed. As director of British Columbia’s Film Classification Board (FBC), Ivancic watched her team spend hours trying to evaluate video game content. “With a film we might spend three to four hours, and have three people reviewing it,” she said. However, reviewers spend 10 times that working through the intricate levels of a video game and surfing Web sites for related cheat codes, as these may open up hidden game features or levels.
This overhead meant the Board could only evaluate games about which it received specific complaints.
However, the Board’s operating structure changed recently. Like most classification boards in Canada, the FCB had maintained its own film rating system, but in January 2003, B.C. harmonized its system with the rest of Canada, except Quebec, through the Interprovincial Film Classification Consul of Canada (IFCCC). It decided to move toward a five-tier scale in line with an existing voluntary classification scheme called the Canadian Home Video Ratings System.
“In the midst of doing that policy work with our colleagues, the issue of video games became a hot topic,” Ivancic said. Consumer groups in B.C. pressured the government to crack down on violent and sexually explicit games, and a more formal ratings system was clearly needed. The IFCCC met with the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), which specializes in rating video games, and provincial members agreed to adopt its system.
B.C. amended its film legislation to include video games, and the regulations implementing the ESRB ratings as part of the amended Motion Picture Act are currently being written. Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Ontario have also legislated the ratings, and New Brunswick’s legislation was in its second reading at the time of writing.
Real violence
The clamour for such moves has been aggravated by media attention following real-world incidents that may have been linked to game play. In January, a copy of the game Need for Speed was seized as possible evidence at the scene of an alleged Toronto street race in which taxi driver Tahir Khan was killed.
Parental groups are not the only ones upset by video games. The Sex Workers Outreach Project USA (SWOP-USA) has called for a boycott of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for its depiction of prostitute murders. Executive director Robyn Few, in the middle of a campaign to stop violence against prostitutes, worries street workers are especially prone to attack. Vice City sends the wrong message to a society which already perpetuates the idea that street prostitutes’ lives don’t matter, she said. “It is expressed here, where you get more points if you murder a prostitute. We want this to stop.”
Take Two Interactive, the company behind the Grand Theft Auto series, is rarely out of the headlines for long. Manitoba’s biggest video game controversy in recent times centred on another of its titles, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The game was originally given a 17+ rating by the ESRB, but this was upgraded to an 18+ Adults Only rating when hidden, sexually explicit content was found in an Easter egg in the game. Easter eggs are bonus features or scenes accessed by a code or specific series of actions and are common in the gaming industry.
“The difference here is that the link was removed from their code so the player couldn’t access the feature,” said Mike Katchabaw, assistant professor at the University of Western Ontario specializing in games development. “But a programmer enabled a new link into that code and released a patch to modify the installed code. So then when you played the game it was accessible.”
The change in rating was bad news for Take Two, which didn’t return calls from Backbone. The two most mature ESRB age ratings may only mean a one-year difference in age, but there is a huge difference when it comes to sales. An 18+ Adult Only rating means retailers either have to put the game under the counter and ask for ID, or avoid stocking it altogether, said Henry Huber, chair of the Manitoba Film Classification Board. In this case, most chose the latter option. “The chain stores won’t deal with something that’s an adult product,” he said. The rating essentially made it a niche title for adult video stores, until Take Two released a new version of the game with the offending code removed.
Chris Bennett, a lawyer at Vancouver-based Davis & Company specializing in the video game industry, argued the whole thing was overblown. “You have to go online and get this complicated modification and the instructions to unlock it. This stuff is pretty well locked up and hard to get at. Is it fair to make a big fuss about it?”
Legislation questioned
The same question could be asked of video game legislation in general. Given the nature of the product, the effectiveness of such legislation comes into question. An adult is involved in most video game purchases anyway, according to David Cole, president of games-market analyst DFC Intelligence in San Diego. And what about games distributed online? We accessed the mature version of the promotional game Running Scared: Welcome to Grimley from Newline’s Web site by verifying ourselves as George Bush, using the White House zip code. The game features sexually explicit scenes.
“The retailers support the ratings and they want the product in their stores to be rated. Online, it’s much freer. It’s not defined as in a retail environment,” said Patricia Vance, president of the ESRB. As far as Manitoba’s Huber is concerned, online games are a federal problem because Manitoba doesn’t have jurisdiction over Internet content.
“A lot is focused on retail, and in the future you’ll see a lot more distributed online,” DFC’s Cole said. “A lot of [the current activity] has to do with politicians being able to say that they’re promoting family values and fighting moral decay. How effective it’ll be is a different story.”
This is especially true as downloading or streaming of content gains popularity. Bill Gates has predicted that the next-generation Blu-ray disk format is “the last physical format there will ever be. Everything’s going to be streamed directly or on a hard disk.”
Legal uncertainties
Parents must shoulder some responsibility, said Eric Robinson, Manitoba’s Minister of Culture, Heritage and Tourism. “The regulations that we as a government have adopted are meant to be more guidelines for retailers and for parents. So it’s a joint responsibility that is being called for in that regard.”
But the guidelines were already there. “It doesn’t change anything materially,” said Danielle LaBossiere, executive director of ESA Canada, the trade association representing Canadian computer and video game publishers. “All these programs are in place and the ratings system has been in place for a long time.”
In 2001, the ESRB, Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and the Retail Council of Canada launched the Commitment to Parents code of practice for retailers as a pilot project in B.C. Now rolled out across Canada, the code requires retailers to observe the ESRB ratings when selling games. They must also display signage as part of the “OK to Play? Check the Ratings” campaign, designed to educate parents. Major retailers, eager to be seen as responsible while maintaining a lucrative mature games business, were already doing what the legislation has tried to enforce.
When the Canadian legislation first appeared on the horizon, ESA members decided not to oppose it, even though they fought legislation in various U.S. states on the grounds that it violates free speech. Perhaps this was because Canada represents just US$1 billion of the US$12 billion North American video games market, or more likely because of a fundamental difference between the U.S. constitution and our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The Charter protects the “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression,” along with the freedom of association. But section one of the Charter qualifies the freedoms as “subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic country.” In other words, the government can restrict freedoms if it can demonstrate that it is for society’s good.
A province may point to studies showing a link between violence and video games. A litigant could equally point to other studies showing the exact opposite, in a continuation of an old debate about violent media that has never been absolutely resolved.
Constitutional challenges involving commercial expression (including commercially sold games and films) have mostly failed due to the application of section one, said Bennett’s colleague, Davis & Company partner Tim Chick, meaning a games publisher or industry association would be unlikely to win such a suit, unless it got very lucky.
This seems to protect the governmental right to legislate age ratings for films and video games. However, said Eric Gross, partner practicing in video game law at Ontario-based Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP, a claim could be made that restricting sales of games (or films) to minors violates that minor’s freedom of thought or expression. Chick agreed this could be true if the game had an option for online play, because it could violate the freedom of association outlined in the Charter. The government would then have to prove that restricting the sale of a game is necessary for a child’s welfare.
“I think that if a 13-year-old challenged the law you would have a very interesting case,” Chick said, especially interesting given that such a challenge could equally apply to legislated age restrictions on Canadian film.
Open debate
Perhaps no one will ever settle the question of whether violent video games make children violent, but maybe it isn’t simply that—or the children—that are a concern. The top 10 rentals, according to industry site Gamedaily, boil down to three genres: run and gun, boxing and battling cars. Have politicians asked why our gaming community cranks out titles focusing on the death drive—the need to fight and kill—often using formulaic models that overlay new graphics on hackneyed concepts? Have they asked why there is such demand for them, or what it means?
“Look at Japanese games. They’re interesting and innovative games that you’re not seeing coming out of North American developers,” said Katchabaw, who teaches an ethics module in his games development class. “It’s a mystery, what’s going on, and why we’re seeing these differences in games being released.”
When Microsoft advertises Combat Flight Simulator with the slogan “as real as it gets” what is it really saying? And although we understand intellectually the difference between real and not real, what does our game play say about us?
|
|
|
| Top 300 Issue |
 
|
| Gadget of the Week (Canadian) |
|
Boost your cell
ARC Wireless Freedom Blade
Mobile data and voice are great, as long as the signal is strong. And while mobile networks are pretty good these days, road warriors quickly discover that dead zones still exist.
more>>
|
| Gadget of the Week (Japanese) |
Sounds of Japan
Why record just the visual when you can capture the sounds as well.
more>> |
| Backblog RSS feed |
Click to subscribe  |
|
sponsored by 
