How Your Game Voting Turned Out

Democrats, the war, and taxes are all just sidelines to the real issue: gaming. We talked about game-related political issues on Tuesday, and now Chris Kohler at Game|Life has the run-down on how the game voting turned out. From the article: "In short, anything that could have gone wrong, did, no matter what your political stripe. Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton, co-authors of the Family Entertainment Protection Act, return to what will likely be a Democrat-controlled Senate. Meanwhile, two of the only House seats that Republicans managed to hold on to will be filled by Cliff Stearns and Fred Upton, each author of his own pet anti-games bill. (Stearns is the guy who wants to make the ESRB play through every video game in its entirety before rating it.) What this means for all of us is more wasted taxpayer money, as the ESA eats legislation like this for breakfast and we'll be footing their legal bills."

I don't think this matters.

[Kirin Fenrir]

Face it...video game violence is nothing but a hot-button "get me voted" issue much like abortion and gay marrage. Once in office, these politicians could care less.

Re:

[LoveGoblin]

Once in office, these politicians could care less.

No they couldn't. :P

So basically...

[kinglink]

Americans didn't care about game laws.

I sure as hell didn't. This election was far more important in so many other ways that game laws were ignored. I don't know many people who think that this election had more than three or four reasons to vote. And they were all about the presidency.

The good news is Lieberman is being treated like a leper by most democrats, however Clinton getting control of the senate (almost assured if the democrats control the senate) will make this more likely.

I think this is one

My two pence (hey wait a minute...)

[GoombaTroopa]

Couple things I'll say on the matter:

- I think issues such as the Iraq War etc. were probably more important to the voters than games. I may be a out-and-out nerd but I wouldn't vote solely in the interest of games.

- If I'm not mistaken, in Britain, it's ALREADY illegal to sell games like GTA to minors. Games likely to have violent content and that are rated by the BBFC, which is well-known and well-respected for setting the age limits for movies. However, such ratings don't harm sales and are often ignored - misjudgement often from parents, which goes to show that no amount of legislation can compensate for ignorance.

- But even this ignorance is not always crippling for kids, and GTA is not really that violent a game, to be honest. The violence in it is kinda cartoony - blood fountains and that, no intestines, no realistic death animations, characters are often revived by paramedics no matter how much you shoot them. Also, I don't know if it's just me, but the whole concept of being the criminal loses its appeal by the time you hit the 17 mark. As you can see, I did get GTA when I wasn't supposed to, but I never thought "I want to do this in real life", and a couple years ago, I lost interest in the whole criminal concept altogether. But very small children should certainly steer clear from it, and the blame should never be placed on the game when a minor uses it as a learning device.

Lastly, this is something I'm sure politicians can understand:
- IF YOU BAN SOMETHING, MORE PEOPLE WILL DO IT.

Don't freak out, people...

[mjhacker]

Maybe these politicians have no love for gaming or protecting gamers' rights, but there's no evidence that's there's going to be anything significant done to alienate gamers. When it's all said and done, nothing will be significantly different from when the Republicans were in control. Politicians are politicians, and despite party differences, both sides are exceptionally good at not getting anything done.

scapegoat

[Fozzyuw]

Least of all the Democrats, because now there's one question on their plates "We promised X, how are we going to do it?". They have 2 years to prove they know how to lead, and that's definatly not going to be enough time. I heard so many boasts about everything, from getting us out of Iraq, to restoring the country, homeland security, FEMA, yet I never heard a single plan that would work in anything other than the short term or feel good ways.

yes, but they still have a scape goat if something goes wrong. They'll still blame Bush. Heck, Bush will be blamed for American short-comings for probably 2 presidential terms after him.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like Clinton?

Lieberman not powerless

[fistfullast33l]

Above someone said some Dems are treating Lieberman as a leper (kudos to CT for breaking replies today). That's actually a bit incorrect. Without Lieberman, the Dems don't have their majority. He's said he'll caucus with the Dems, but his "bipartisanship" (read: conservative leanings) usually causes him to cross the lines on important issues. So they're going to have to let him have his way or he can become a real pain and decide to side with Republicans on key issues. Even better, he's probably going to be the most powerful man in the Senate as with Cheney he'll be the tiebreaker on straight down party line votes.

Re: Scapegoat

[Telepathetic Man]

Turn about is fair play. The Bush Whitehouse is still sticking it to the Clinton administration.

Re:scapegoat

[sheldon]

es, but they still have a scape goat if something goes wrong. They'll still blame Bush. Heck, Bush will be blamed for American short-comings for probably 2 presidential terms after him.

Oh, you mean like how the Republicans are still blaming Carter and Clinton for everything wrong today? I've always loved the whole "Clinton is to blame" rationalization, especially for things that happened long after he left office. Did you know Bill Clinton was responsible for North Korea detonating a nuke? He was also re

National reasons versus local reasons.

[Irvu]

For all the hay people make about "Parties" by and large mopst people vote for or against their legislators for local reasons. Joe Liberman and Hilary Clinton have annoyed many, many of whom are too young to vote but their reelection was based upon other factors than these. It is hard to claim based upon this result alone that the issues don't matter or that people locally don't care. What is clear is that their stances on this issue didn't offend enough people for them to lose. Whether it picked up vot

Uh?

[GFree]

from the you-were-supposed-to-vote-them-out dept.

With all due respect, a person's stance on gaming isn't generally what one should base their votes on.

Re:

[Rocketship Underpant]

"With all due respect, a person's stance on gaming isn't generally what one should base their votes on."

However, it does make an interesting statement about American democracy. Gamers, like many people, have specific hobbies and interests, and they'd like to keep or recover freedom to explore those interests. When it comes to voting, though, they're stymied by a majority that doesn't care about those particular freedoms and votes according to other ideals, emotion, or family tradition.

Clinton

[Taulin]

Hillary is not 'against' games. She is for enforcing the rating system. By making a more enforcable rating system, you will have less idiotic lawsuits. Game stores will take more effort in keeping certain games out the hands of minors, and parents can't sue over a game their kid should not have had in the first place. If you are 14, and are angry you can't get a certain game, I guess you are whining about movies, drugs, alchohol, etc. also.

Re:

[litein]

My whole take on these things is that the parent should be more involved in their kids life. A lot of parent today just let the tv be the babysitter. If a kid wants a game the parent can simply do a little bit of research on the internet or talk to someone that knows about games. Getting this information is so easy nowadays with the internet and their should be not any reason why they can't get it. If a parent let's their kids play violent games they should let their kids that those actions are not allowed

Y'know, GTA _does_ affect me...

[meringuoid]

... but not in the way people would think.

I know damn well that when I've been playing a hell of a lot of GTA, as I walk down the street I see a flashy car parked up and I think 'Right, I'll have that...' and a moment later realise that actually, no, I won't because this is actually real.

That at least is harmless. Even though my reflexes get trained to look out for high-performance cars on the street, with intent to steal, I'm hardly likely to follow through. At most I'll twitch, as the reflex kicks in,