| “Getting this information out can influence how grandmothers’ shop,” she said, speaking of the 300,00-member PW.
MRTI is acting jointly with the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), a New York–based coalition of Christians and Jews that monitors corporate behavior and coordinates shareholder actions to force changes in business practices.
The video game industry is currently self-regulated, with no penalties for retailers who sell violent, sexually explicit or racially stereotyping video games to kids who are younger than the product label designates.
“It’s been proven that the impact of exposure to these games — the violence, the sexual content — impacts young children. It’s been documented in thousands of studies,” said the Rev. Bill Somplatsky-Jarman, who is MRTI’s staffer. “Despite that, the industry continues to hide behind self-regulation that is inadequate.
“And it pretends that these games are not ending up in the hands of children.”
The PCUSA strategy targets Take Two, an international corporation that produces several lines of games. Its products include a series built around conflicts like the Vietnam War (whose advertising reads: “Splinter vehicles apart, shoot out lights, collapse buildings, whatever it takes to survive!”) and “Grand Theft Auto,” which is a highly sexualized line of games that critics say capitalizes on racial stereotypes and gross violence.
The Board of Pensions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) holds 200 shares of Take Two stock valued at $6,000 that it has kept in a segregated account for MRTI’s use — and in this case, the ICCR’s use, too. MRTI is, in Somplatsky-Jarman’s words, “taking the lead” on behalf of ICCR with Take Two.
That small stock holding buys MRTI and ICCR access to the corporation, which had more than a million dollars in net sales in 2003, up from $303,715 in 1999.
MRTI’s goal, Somplatsky-Jarman said, is always corporate reform.
Pat Chapman, who directs the Child Advocacy Office, said an effort to curb the sale of explicit games to young kids is long overdue. It is also necessary, she said, to educate parents about the rating system and about the content of the games their kids are playing.
The Entertainment Software Rating Board has a simple system to keep the most violent games out of the hands of children: E is for everyone, T is for teens (with no sexual content), M is for mature and AO is for adults only.
Take Grand Theft Auto, as an example, which is labeled as inappropriate for anyone under the age of 17.
One clip from the video shows a car bouncing up and down as a couple copulates in the back seat, muttering phrases like, “Let’s get down tonight.” After the sex act, the man and a scantily clad woman get out of the car and he beats her with a golf club. In another segment, a white man repeatedly kicks a black man in the testicles until he is lying in a pool of blood.
What gripes Chapman, however, is that many of the M and AO games are on the shelves next to games for younger kids. And if parents do not understand the rating system or if vendors fail to enforce it, children have easy access to unsuitable material. “I’ve been amazed,” Chapman said, “at the explicit sexual content, the racism. Some of these games are just hateful and violent.”
A spokesman for Rockstar Games, the parent company of Take Two, told the Presbyterian News Service that Take Two supports efforts to keep games intended for the adult market from children — but they think the ratings system does the job.
In a written statement the company said: “The game rating system is a highly effective tool to inform and empower parents, and the Advertising Review Council provides important industry oversight and enforcement. We are fully committed to the rating system and to marking our games in compliance with the principles and guidelines of the rating board.”
The statement acknowledges that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas — one of the newest games on the market — carries an M rating because of its mature content. “The game is intended for adults who can appreciate its mature themes and sophisticated storytelling.”
But MRTI and the ICCR argue that the ratings system doesn’t work because access is too easy.
A game called “Postal 2,” manufactured by Running With Scissors, shows black people being burned, shot and killed while a voiceover makes statements like “Holy shit. I’m not racist. These people really do all look alike” or “Now, that’s what I call welfare reform.” One scene shows an assailant urinating on a woman. Another shows a burning black body as a voice says, “Smells like chicken.”
It is not yet clear whether any ICCR member bodies hold stock in Running With Scissors, which opposes censorship of its products, which it says are designed around “the imagined needs of 6-year-olds or clinically psychotic persons.” It lauds its “tasteless and insensitive” games on its Web site, which says: “We believe that violence belongs in entertainment products — not in the streets. But what do we know, we’re just ignorant video game developers.
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