Age limit on violent video games? Age limit on violent video games? (April 16, 2004)

Legislator wants sales restricted from minors

By Grace Rauh

Gino Troian likes to play video games -- especially violent ones.

On his scooter at the Rengstorff Skate Park, 9-year-old Gino doesn't exactly resemble a man out to avenge his wife and son's murder, but it's a role he assumes whenever he plays Max Payne, a Mature-rated video game from Rockstar Games.

Gino's parents don't always approve of the often violent and gory games he wants to play, so "he buys them with his own money," said Marina Troian, his 12-year-old sister.

Although shocking to some, Gino's game-playing habits are hardly exceptional. About 40 percent of the people giving their thumbs a workout playing Mature-rated video games do so before they turn 18, according to the Federal Trade Commission, and this trend has some legislators worried.

State Assembly member and former Mountain View Mayor Sally Lieber is appalled by the games being played in living rooms across the state and says they are desensitizing kids to violence.

She has co-authored two new bills that prohibit the sale of violent video games to minors, require retailers to post a sign explaining the current video game rating system and create special sections for Mature and Adults Only-rated games in stores. There are currently no official age requirements regulating video game purchases.

"This really puts the control back with the parents," Lieber said.

In some popular Mature-rated games, players take the role of the perpetrator and travel through a city -- gun or bat in hand -- to beat, kill, burn or abuse any number of people who cross their paths. In the game Grand Theft Auto, a voice says, "I am the law, ha ha," when a player repeatedly bludgeons a police officer. In a clip from another game, a car rocks up and down to imply that people are having sex inside. In the next frame, the man kicks his "date" out the door and beats her, winning points in the process.

"We are seeing very sophisticated narratives that are a complex web of misogyny and violence and racial prejudice all working together," said Lieber, who introduced her bills at the Support Network For Battered Women in Mountain View. "I can't imagine girls watching something like this."

But girls in Mountain View are not only watching these games, they are playing them -- and some say they love it.

"There's lots of games that are violent," said 13-year old Stephani Guzman, who practiced hip-hop moves with Marina Troian at the skate park last week. "I own all of them. My brother is obsessed."

If Lieber's bills became law, the playing habits of these girls are unlikely to change -- they don't play the games behind their parents' backs. In fact, Troian's mother, Domanique, sits with her kids when they play and talks about the violence on the screen.

"We guide them. 'This is not real. This is video game,'" she said, adding that she supports restricting video game sales.

Yet these bills may never become law. Legislators "are facing a great deal of opposition from industry," Lieber said, and the bills' proponents will have to put up a tough fight to push the legislation through.

Sean Vader, a manager at GameStop in Mountain View, said he is concerned his store's video game sales would be impacted by these bills. "I think they would definitely go down. We already have signs up that say ratings this and this and that."

If a customer looks young and wants to buy a particularly violent or "mature" game, then sometimes Vader asks him, "Are you sure your parents will allow this?" But his decision to question the customers is determined on a case by case basis, he said.

"Some kids can't handle that kind of violence and some can," said 17-year-old Arturo Guevara. "Enforcing [restrictions] would be a lot better."

E-mail Grace Rauh at grauh@mv-voice.com

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