Video games have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. When I got my Sega Genesis, games like Street Fighter, Road Rash and WWF Royal Rumble began occupying a great deal of my time after school everyday. Since I kept my grades up and didn’t have any ill behavioral effects from these games, my collection grew. I then gained a Nintendo 64 and Starfox. From there, I gained Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. Having moved on with a PC, a Gamecube and XBOX, I’ve gained a whole slew of new games such as Mafia, Fable, and all of the notorious Grand Theft Auto games. What do these all have in common? They’re all violent!

Despite my long history of violent games, I’ve never killed anyone. I’ve never shot up a school, and I haven’t driven my truck into a police blockade. While I still may be young, I don’t foresee doing any of those. Jack Thompson, a notable Florida attorney seems to think differently. Thompson has made headlines recently due to his crusades to keep violent video games off the shelves, and has never relented in his bashing of those of us that play games in general. Thompson issued his “challenge” to the gaming industry entitled “A Modest Video Game Proposal” for someone to make a game in which the CEO of Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of the creators of the Grand Theft Auto series, is to be killed in an “disturbingly violent manner.” If this were to occur, Thompson said he would donate $10,000 dollars to the charity of Take-Two CEO Paul Eibeler’s favorite charity. The game was created, and not surprisingly, Thompson declined to make the donation, claiming his proposal was satire.

Soon thereafter, the creators of the popular webcomic Penny Arcade made the donation to the Entertainment Software Association Foundation in Thompson’s name. Thompson then called the Seattle police department claiming that the two artists were leading a “campaign of harassment” against him. The charges were ignored. These are fairly normal actions from the man who is leading the crusade against games. Instead of having a real argument against games, Thompson must resort to threats to seem credible due to the lack of information defending his cases.

On the political front, Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Joe Lieberman (D?-CT), and Evan Bayh (D-IN) have introduced “The Family Entertainment Protection Act” which would pass the regulation of video games to the United States Government instead of the separate and definitely sufficient Entertainment Software Ratings Board, an independent ratings board. Amazingly enough, the Family Entertainment Protection Act offers no regulation for other forms of entertainment such as movies, television, and the like. According to the Video Game Voters Network website (www.videogamevoters.org), the ESRB would continue to rate games as they have in the past, but the United States government will have federally mandated reviews of their ratings at taxpayer expense, of course. States like Illinois, California, and Michigan have been working to legislate even harsher restrictions against games.

I don’t have a problem with people being required to show identification to buy these games, because it’s not really that big of a deal. An elementary school kid probably shouldn’t be playing San Andreas, but being an advocate of smaller government, we don’t need to blow more federal dollars on this issue to make sure that little Timmy won’t try to run his school chums over with a tank. The burden of monitoring what their kids do should fall on the parents and not the government. People like Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton are trying to pull all aspects of personal responsibility out of our lives by throwing more money at these problems. Kids who go into their schools to kill their classmates have many more issues than a mere video game can bring, and terrorists don’t decide to bomb places because a game built up their rage.

Contrary to popular belief, there are plenty of gamers who can hold an argument without “UR RONG K THX OMG ROFL.” We need to make sure that people like Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton don’t become the end of our entertainment as we know it. If you’re a parent, take responsibility for your kids and watch what they play, and that they know it’s only fantasy. Many people our age love to sit back and enjoy a game, be it sports, RPG, or anything else. Thompson and Clinton’s generation didn’t have games like we do, and it’s important that they be led to understand that our generation votes, and we deserve our freedoms as much as they do.