Bill in Seattle could take away responsibility

By Ryan Jenkins
Staff Writer

One of the more amusing issues that have been cropping up lately is that of corporate accountability involving violence caused by graphic video games like Grand Theft Auto III.

I'm an anti-big business guy, but this is ridiculous. Let's take a look at a recent piece of legislation from the state of Washington that would actually hold a company responsible for any crimes committed by a child caused by a violent or graphic video game.

For starters, exactly who gets held responsible? Are you going to throw the entire staff at Microsoft in jail for life? What about the parents? It's accepted in America that, if a child does something wrong, the parents are responsible. Video games are rated, so, if a kid has a really graphic one, his parents should know about it.

Compare the games in question to cigarettes. Kids shouldn't have them, but if they get their hands on some, it's not the fault of the tobacco companies. The parents are responsible for the actions of their children, and if you think that's unfair, well, you don't have to have kids.

In philosophy classes, we often run into the problem of subjective standards and we usually apply the logic that there are some people who simply don't have an innate sense of right and wrong. There are some people who will become violent after playing a graphic video game, but you can't base the legal system on a minority.

Punishing a group for the actions of a few members is wrong.

It's tempting to blame violence on video games. However, if you look at the FBI's statistics on murders in the US, you can see two major time periods where the rate spikes dramatically. The first is during prohibition, literally beginning and ending with the ban on alcohol. The second, and still continuing, spike began with the war on drugs.

Kids might want to emulate video game characters. Okay, but who do we supply them with as heroes? Currently, there is a lot of work going into making heroes out of soldiers. If we don't want kids to be violent, though, why are we telling them to model themselves after people whose sole purpose is to make other people die for their nation (keep in mind that the military doesn't serve a purpose in peace, only in war or conflict with the exception of the Coast Guard that always serves a purpose)? It doesn't make any sense.

Obviously, saying kids are being modeled after professional killers doesn't sound too good, but that's what we're saying about video games. We boil the issue down so far that we take only the aspects that suit our purposes. You might say, "Well, Soldiers are disciplined and noble. What about games where you just kill people without a higher cause?" Frankly, soldiers are not always disciplined or noble. There's no such thing as a perfect role model.