NY Passes Anti-Violence Game Bill, Citizens of Mario Land Whimper

June 1, 2007 (LPAC) -- The anti-video game legislation passed this week by the New State Assembly is provoking a furor among bachelors in their mother's basement nationwide. The legislation was introduced after the VA Tech shooting was connected to the perpetrator's obsession with violent first-person-shooter video games. The Assembly Speaker, Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), said in support of the bill, introduced by a Republican from Staten Island:

"Psychological experts have concluded that violent video games can desensitize players to the real-life consequences of violent actions. This legislation will protect our youngsters from being exposed to the detrimental impact of violent video games that promote depraved violence and brutalize and demean human beings"

The legislation also would establish an advisory council on interactive media and youth violence that would review the Entertainment Software Rating Board's (ESRB) rating system; examine how interactive media and other forms of electronic entertainment affect minors.

The video game lobby is very upset. Bo Anderson, President of the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) claimed that the law's liability would be predicated in part on whether a video game depicts "rape, dismemberment, physical torture, mutilation, or evisceration of a human body... This bill is impermissibly vague." Andersen said the bill "seeks to apply real- world standards of violence to the fictional and fanciful world of video games, an environment in which they have no meaning. As a result, retailers and clerks will not and cannot know with certainty which video games could send them to jail." With this new law in place, they should find out.

The EMA was created last year, merging together a number of video game merchant and retail groups. They are having their national convention at the "Venetian Casino" in Las Vegas, June 16-19, 2007.