ESA Criticizes Proposed Video Game Health Labeling Act

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) criticized the Video Game Health Labeling Act proposed Monday by Reps. Joe Baca, D-Calif., and Frank Wolf, R-Va., calling the bill “a solution in search of a problem.” The Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) also knocked the bill, saying Baca introduced the same bill in the prior Congress and “no action was taken” on it.

The ESA and EMA have fought many government efforts to make it illegal to rent or sell to minors explicitly violent games, and U.S. courts have usually ruled in their favor on First Amendment grounds. The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in November on one such case, Schwarzenegger v. EMA, a California dispute whose outcome has wide-ranging implications (CED Nov 3 p1).

The new legislation mandates that all videogames with an Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) rating of Teen (T) or higher be sold with a health warning label. The only other rating that stands to be impacted significantly would be M. There is also an AO rating, but videogames are rarely ever released with that rating because most major retailers won’t sell them and the console makers disapprove of them, relegating the rating largely to minor computer games.

The bill calls for the creation of a new rule within the Consumer Product Safety Commission that would force games with a T rating or higher to be sold with a label that reads, “WARNING: Excessive exposure to violent video games and other violent media has been linked to aggressive behavior."

Baca said, “The video game industry has a responsibility to parents, families, and to consumers -- to inform them of the potentially damaging content that is often found in their products.” However, the industry “repeatedly failed to live up to this responsibility,” and “research continues to show a proven link between playing violent games and increased aggression in young people,” he said. Co-sponsor Wolf said, “Just as we warn smokers of the health consequences of tobacco, we should warn parents -- and children -- about the growing scientific evidence demonstrating a relationship between violent video games and violent behavior."

While ESA “supports empowering parents with information required to make informed purchases for their families,” President Michael Gallagher said Baca was “greatly mistaken on the purported effects of computer and video games.” There was, Gallagher said, a “growing body of science and objective researchers and academics who find there is no causal link between video games and real-life violence.” ESA was also “concerned about the practicality of this bill as not all games rated ‘Teen’ contain violent content,” Gallagher said. Also, all video and computer games sold at retail “already are clearly labeled with content descriptors, educating parents about game content before they make a purchase or rental,” he said. “For parents who want even greater detail than what is already found on the box, rating summaries are available that describe a game’s overall context and offer specific examples of the content in each game.” He invited Baca “to work with us in continuing to educate parents about the videogame rating system and continue to help reinforce the high enforcement rate that was lauded by the Federal Trade Commission in its most recent report to Congress on the efficacy of our industry’s rating system."

EMA said the legislation “ignores the fact that videogames already have an effective advisory -- the ESRB videogame rating system.” Retailers “educate parents about the ESRB videogame ratings and content descriptors and enforce the M rating at the point of sale,” EMA said. EMA also said the two most recent secret shopper surveys by the FTC found that kids sent into stores to buy M-rated games were “turned down 80 percent of the time.” The videogame turn-down rate was “higher than the turn-down rate for movie theaters and R-rated tickets, DVD retailers and R-rated and ‘unrated’ DVDs, and music retailers and ‘Parental Advisory'-labeled albums,” EMA said.

Baca has been a frequent critic of violent games, as well as “violence and sex in the media” in general, he said Monday. He pointed to scientific studies from the Pediatrics journal, University of Indiana, University of Missouri, and Michigan State University that pointed “to a neurological link between playing violent videogames and aggressive behavior in children and teenagers.” ESA recently slammed the Pediatrics journal report, saying it was based on “a flawed study” by Douglas Gentile, a “longtime video game critic” (CED Jan 18 p9).