Adding Warning Labels To Games, Proposed Bill

Recently introduced yesterday, the Violence in Video Games Labeling Act would require a warning label to be added to most video games that would say, "WARNING: Exposure to violent video games has been linked to aggressive behavior."

This bill was introduced by Frank Wolf (Republican in Virginia) and Joe Baca (Democrat in California), who in response claims that the increasing evidence of playing violent games is bad for your health. Baca stated that, "The video game industry has a responsibility to parents, families and to consumers - to inform them of the potentially damaging content that is often found in their products." He also said, "They have repeatedly failed to live up to this responsibility."

If the bill was passed, this would require games with an ESRB rating of E and above to have the warning label ignoring the fact that a game might not be violent at all. Everything below rated E, such as EC would not have to carry the label. Attempts to pass this bill has also occurred in both 2009 and 2011.

The following statement to Game Informer by the Entertainment Software Association who is a trade group who represents video game publishers in the U.S. says that:

"The Entertainment Software Association supports providing parents with complete and useful information so they can make informed purchasing decisions. The current video game rating system does so and has been lauded as the leading rating system in the entertainment industry.

Unfortunately, Representative Baca’s facially unconstitutional bill—which has been introduced to no avail in each of six successive Congressional sessions, beginning in 2002—needlessly concerns parents with flawed research and junk science. Numerous medical experts, research authorities, and courts across the country, including the United States Supreme Court, exhaustively reviewed the research Representative Baca uses to base his bill and found it lacking and unpersuasive. Independent scientific researchers found no causal connection between video games and real life violence.

We would commend Representatives Baca and Wolf to the reams of bourgeoning academic research demonstrating that video games can be innovative learning and assessment tools in engaging and educating America’s youth, especially in core subjects such as science, technology, engineering and math."

- Rich Taylor

Now this is just outrageous!

[GameInformer]