i think that, AGAIN, all of these politicians are a complete waste of space. WHY DO YOU VOTE THESE LOSERS INTO OFFICE? If you don't like what they are doing, VOTE THEM OUT. Here in WI, we have a man hater that is going to be a judge because nobody will vote against her (and there is a running mate). She's already ruined a few family by putting male drivers of car accidents (with no blood or acohol in their system) in jail for 25-45 years... because of an ACCIDENT...

The parents of these families have nobody to blame but themselves for not voting AGAINST this judge.

doesn't affect in the slightest

Dumb ass laws. What makes people violent is the lack of tough laws against violence. Financial crimes seem to be punished far more seriously than violent crimes. I can get money back but my life is a once off thing.

I agree with the judges. I am a gamer and I have been playing games my whole life. I like very violent games. Ya, know, use a shotgun to blow someones leggs off and hear them scream. But even though I like games like that doesn't mean I'm dumb enough to doing anything like that in real life. I am probably one of the most passive quiet people you'd meet. Lets not forget the fact that other countries have the same video games and don't have the same issues with kids blaming games saying I just did like the video game.. That's total BS. Next time I get pulled over I'm just gonna tell the cop oh well it's not my fault I was playing need for speed and he will say "OK, I'll let you go cause we all know it's the video games fault you were speeding".

Lol no blood or alcohol? Sounds like he was to dead to go to jail

However it is sad what happened!

The first truly violent game I ever played was Halo back when I was 12. Compared to a lot of other games, even around that time, it wasn't overly violent. However, it was the first one with an M rating. All I can say is going through "The Library" in the middle of the night with all the lights around me turned off scared the crap out of me for a while.

Regardless of that, I actually felt that I could handle my anger and rage better after playing games like Halo. So, all in all, no downside from my experiences ... well ... other than just losing some sleep at times.

the problem is in more than just the laws, they have plenty of laws against violence . the issue here is they need harsher punishments for violators. even then this will hardly sway half the idiots in this country from violence when they are pumped up and at the heat of the moment. what needs to change is the general mentality of this country. few people in this country really gives two s--t's about any one else that is not directly blood related to them. an example of this mentality at work is commonly seen in online games here is an example of my own exprience.

One night i got on to Left 4 Dead to play with my steam friends, however we could not get a full game of friends only so we decided to switch the game over to a public game. wel we get a new player on fairly quick. So we start the game , at first all seems well but as the gmae progresses this new player get's more and more obnoxious, finnally i start talkign to him on my mic , about how he should try to play as a team after all the game is a team style game. this is where he informs me to "f -off" that the internet is only good for pissing off other people and arguing and he'll continue to be a non team player because we all "suck more than him"


granted this is an extrreme example and not all poepel think like this guy (that should be obvious I try to be polite and curtious to every one i meet when i can be, rather it is at my local grocery store or online in steam). However this guy's mentality sums up the whole of this country note ver individual but the country in general , that being "no one really cares unless it is happening to them". 9/11 can also be viewed as an example, no one cared about those wal street workers at all , untill some one came along and blew them up, and we could seem to care less what is going on half way across the world ... it didn't happen to us. for violence to deminish , or cease altogether i think the world will need to change it's whole mentality on caring about other people ... something that likely won't happen any time soon saddly.

LOL you make me feel old when i was 12 i was playing games like mortal kombat on the super nintendo .. heck when i was 6 i was still playing the old Atari 2600

when i was kid every one was flipping about violent movies (80's) though my grandparents and my mother never cared what i watched i was raised on movies like Return of the Living dead and games like contra and mortal kombat. And i'm far from a violent monster LOL ( in fact i'm quite the hippy)

My first experiences with video games was also SMB but shortly after, the first Doom. I had to have been 6 or 7 at the time, killing demons from hell in bloody glory. I can honestly say today I abhor violence in the real world and can never justify harming another person, physically or emotionally, other than in self-defense.

This debate has been raging ever since Spacewar! was created:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacewar!

That was 1962. Considering what the 60s were like you could theorize that video games promote drugs but not violence.

Not only have I found video games to never incite violence but they have actually been a very effective means of taking out my aggression. Funny...

What I find odd about the whole debate is that the other side acts as if violence has never existed or even to such levels before when video games existed. The truth is the world is much less violent than it is today than it was anytime in the past. Even our wars today have much less casualties than any other period of history.

Also our definition of children has become anything less than 18 here in the US. However this isn't recognized everywhere and most likely no where in the else past. Children in the past have been known to be violent and young teens would even serve in armies and die on battlefields throughout history. So certainly we can't blame video games or any other modern type of hobby or activity for the violence we see today in our youth.

Rather going out on an office killing spree because I'm stressed out and hate the people I'm around, I can go home and get on my computer and kill fictional characters without harming anybody. Disaster averted. Thank you, video games.

Now, I'm not stupid and I know that with a troubled mind, participating enactments of violence or just watching acts/enactments of violence, can have a profound negative effect, and because of that we should be mindful. For the majority of us who are stable enough to know reality from fantasy, and how to keep things that way, yes of course this is silly. But it only takes one messed up kid with Halo in one hand and a shotgun in another to ruin it for the rest of us.

I have been killing bots in game since i was a little over 10, and i havent had the urge to kill anyone yet... i live in a country where guns arent exacly a must have in house. I acually do have access to some since my fathers in the armed forces of my country... Before taking the controler of the kids hand, try to take the gun off the other hand first...

Games make for a great stress reliever, without them there would probably be more bad examples of kids bringing violence to real life.

On that note:
Some days when I get home I don't know what I'd do without my good ol' N64 and it's amazing Perfect Dark game... So I'm a bit behind in the console wars, deal with it.

"Unfortunately, examples such as the kid who shot his parents, killing his mom, for vengeance"

That particular example, had more to do with parenting, addiction, and psychological problems with the child. The video game itself was not the cause there, IMO.

I kind of have to agree with the judges in this case. However, I hope this ruling will not prevent folks from preventing very young children from buying software/games which display adult content (nudity, porn, etc). That goes beyond free speech, and begins to intrude on another person's rights (which is why you can't run naked in public without being arrested).

I've played video games since I was 5 or 6 years old. I've played most of the GTA games, Halo, COD, and lots of FPS games. I've never had the inclination to hurt another person due to this.

im actually writing a research paper on this right now. my take is that young children 10 or so and under shouldn't be playing really violent games, neither should anyone who has a psychological disorder that can make them violent. other than that i have seen no problem with video games causing real world violence, so game on.

killing pixels is fun, killing people is illegal, period

there was murder and violence going back in time, pre-electricity (aka no video games), what do all the researchers blame then?

So why are there rating son movies then? Should be Freedom of speech, no? Has there ever been a connection made by people watching movies and violence?

It would seem the laws/rules that apply to video games should apply to all other forms of media, no? So I guess the Ninth Circuit will soon be striking down a bunch of other rules.

two words.... PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY!

Hmm, by this logic, X-rated films ought to be open to minors. The ratings systems is largely the same for movies as it is for video games (different notations but the same general idea behind their use).

Amen brother!

People who commit Violent acts would have most likely done that even without having played Video games. I dont think Jesse James or Billy The Kid played GTA4 and Im pretty sure Hitler wasnt playing Halo (even if he did get his Live account banned).

In the 1940's it was comics, in the 50's it was Rock N Roll, in the 80's it was Metal and Hip Hop, now its Video Games.

They compare these people who commit violent acts and find they play Video games, but if you compare them to ALL PEOPLE who commit violent acts youll probably find that more of them have what they ate for breakfast in common.

People have been killing people for far longer the Video Games have been around. And Murder is far lower now then it was 200 years ago.

Sicundercover your 100% right and you have given me a thought.

If you notice the things you listed from comics to music all of them have violent themes within them including video games. This shows that man has a natural craving for violence and will constantly create more things containing violence to enjoy. It seems that real violence isn't even needed to satisfy the desire. So the problem isn't with the types of entertainment we create that's just a expression of ourselves. Its who we are as a species.

What we fail to recognize is that the state has absolutely no right to pass laws baring the sale of violent video games to minors.

The simple truth is that politicians, and panels deciding the level of violence in games is something that parents should be doing from the beginning.

It's sad to see that our culture has become so dependent upon these people that we are freely giving over to them the responsibility that parents need to have over there children.

Who is raising these kids anyways? "It's ok I don't care about anything my kids do anyway, besides I'll just let them do whatever." Too bad that the actual lawmakers give a damn about morals and how it affects children as the grow up.

At the same time don't be blaming the gaming industry either. Who are they making these games for anyway? Gamers that have grown up in the 80's. It's not like they're specifically advertising these sort of games to 10 year olds; if they did, when did Phillip Morris get into gaming?

I think games offer positive reinforcement, actually. Consider this...

In almost all video games, if you do senselessly illegal things, you are often punished for it. They don't make you a killer. In fact, if you suck at games, you may even think twice about being violent because you'll probably die due to your suckiness at being a criminal.

Games like Day of Defeat show you just how easily you can die in combat. In ALL games, there's usually a negative side effect to the fun graphical treats when you do drugs.

When it's all said and done though, you can't substitute a video game for proper education. People aren't mindless drones and video games aren't brain washing software. If that halo kid didn't kill his parents over a game, he probably would have done it over a car or something else that he viewed important. Killers are killers... games are just entertainment and outlets for many.

Did they ban the 3 stooges or the road runner. there were no Games to play in the early 60's and people were still killing each other but our elected officials only stand on issues that appeal to fringe groups on the left and the right glad to see a common sense ruling for once

Media can only have a chance to be harmful if parents let their children being raised by media. Not only video games, but movies, TV and even plays can highly suggestive to a child. People are forgetting to relate thenself with their children. Media can act like a bad friendship on school and parents are in charge of teaching their children the corrent attitude.
There is no need for banning.
It´s sucks to see publishers cutting games to adapt them to the M rating. ERSB should be only a suggestion, not law. I´m pretty sure that most of video game players are 18+, so what a hell!

This is relative. If your from a smaller town where the cops are not used to drugged out peeps running around naked, you would be surprised at how apprehensive a cop would be at tackling a naked guy.. Its easy to not get arrested if the cops just watch you run away, junk flopping all over the place.. Not that I would know anything about that..

None of the people I have ever seen in California wouldnt even know what that means.. Probably couldnt even spell it.. I know not everyone in Cali is like that, but the people who make the most noise are...

Damn.. I wish I could edit that 'wouldnt' to be 'would'.