Grand Theft Auto IV arrives tomorrow for the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. And, like Grand Theft Auto III through GTA: San Andreas, misguided, misinformed attention whores from both the Left and the Right are lined up around the block ready to extract their lump of publicity and flesh from everyone's favorite Murder Simulator.

Brent Bozo's Parent's Television Council recently took a break from watching all the Television and categorizing all the television you shouldn't be watching to issue ominous empty threats to retailers selling Grand Theft Auto IV.

California State Senator Leland Yee -- apparently having fixed California's Budget Crisis and having nothing better to do with his time -- has warned Parents that Grand Theft Auto IV is not for Kids. Apparently, Leland believes that the average Parent is incapable of reading the Rating (Mature 17+) on the box.

The fourth installment of the Grand Theft Auto series is due to be released in about 3 weeks, so it comes as no surprise that legislation restricting access to video games is back in the news. Because if you want to grandstand for votes, nothing says pandering like passing bills that claim to protect children & have virtually no chance of surviving a court challenge.

Debates about the content of movies, television, music, and video games & its effect on society, seem to occur in cycles. Either some kid shoots up a school, adolescent crime or sex statistics show a rise, or interest groups see an opening to start screaming about the need of protecting children, and armchair psychiatrists everywhere rush to judgments about what could possibly be corrupting young minds. Inevitably the wheel of public scrutiny turns to debating the effect of Jack Bauer, listening to hip-hop, or playing "Halo."

But is it really anyone else's responsibility to care about what children may see, except for parents who just maybe could monitor what their kids are watching? So in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, they've decided to take action.....

Hey everyone,

First, let me say that I apologize if I'm breaking some spamming rules but nowadays the only way to effectively promote new blogs is to post on topic-related forums and stuff.

You'll guys should note that I am a regular contributor to the DailyKos community, so I'm not just hitting-and-running here.

Too many people seem to think that "war is a video game". This brings up the question, why do video games glamorize war instead of portraying it realistically? If your average game was a movie, it would have more in common with "The Green Berets" than "Platoon". I've been thinking of some ways video games can de-glamorize war while also adding to the gameplay.

Everyone's second favorite scary conservative Catholic after Mel Gibson is at it again.  John Bambenek is apparently taking a break from trying to censor the Daily Kos off to internet with the FEC and is going after... Grand Theft Auto.

MercatorNet.org, an Australian religious magazine, published a piece by John Bambenek called Unsuitable for Children (and apparently publishes a good deal of Bambenek's excrement).  In this article, Bambenek repeats the usual religious right fist-pumping horror about violent video games.  Except he takes it one step further... he goes beyond keeping it away from children and is honest about the agenda of the religious right... he's about taking it away from grown adults.

He says, "If some video games are too violent to be suitable for kids, what exactly makes them suitable for adults?"  So not only does Bambenek want to be the censor of political speech, he wants to censor video games too.  Why?  Because he's special and knows what's good for you, even when you don't.

I smell a video game.

The Pope has ordered his bishops to set up exorcism squads to tackle the rise of Satanism.
Vatican chiefs are concerned at what they see as an increased interest in the occult.
They have introduced courses for priests to combat what they call the most extreme form of "Godlessness."
Each bishop is to be told to have in his diocese a number of priests trained to fight demonic possession.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/...

I've been playing Video Games for my entire life. I remember playing math games on my stepfathers Apple II C when I was about five. Pitfall, Super Mario Brothers, Wolfenstien 3d, Doom, Descent, Tomb Raider, Grand Theft Auto, Katamari Damacy, Kingdom Hearts, Mass Effect, I've played them all. My 62 year old stepfather spends most of his free time sitting at his computer playing Video Games, and I'm not talking about solitaire, I mean Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, Freelancer, Wing Commander, Advent Rising, ect. For a little while my 17 year old sister, my stepfather, and my 28 year old self were all playing the same game. The free MMORPG Tales of Pirates.

Penny Arcade posted a wonderful strip a few weeks ago that I think illustrates the point that I'm trying to get at perfectly. Video Games have become an intrinsic part of our culture.

VIDEO GAME ABOUT SPANISH CIVIL WAR INFLAMES BITTER NATIONAL DEBATE

MADRID: A new video game that invites players to rewrite the course of Spain’s devastating civil war has touched a nerve in a country that is often reluctant to revisit its past, let alone play with it.

"Shadows of War" bills itself as the first video game based on the 1936-39 war, which erupted after rightist forces loyal to Francisco Franco staged a coup against the elected Republican government. It went on sale in Spain on Thursday in the midst of a bitter debate about how to deal with the country’s past, prompted by a new law that would authorize reparations to civil war victims and ban monuments to Franco.

Any Sims players here on Daily Kos? I only got introduced to the Sims 2 computer game this summer, and found it to be addictive, with its mix of realistic characters and scenarios. It's loads of fun to play.

Anyway, I mention it because the Sims - along with other forms of entertianment - has been the object of censorious crusading by Florida based GOP Christian conservative lawyer Jack Thompson, known for his public advocacy of conservative Christian moral standards. Thompson has been the Christian right's, and Ollie North's, hired gun in their attempts to regulate the content of the gaming and entertainment industries, and has targeted the Sims game for his false allegations that the game depicts explicit nudity.

He's also been feuding with the Florida Bar Association, even though this organization lists him as a member in good standing, but the Association has just knocked the wind out of this wingnut's sails in a legal victory.

Speaking Monday to the Butler County Democratic Party, Gov. Ted Strickland told a group of staunch supporters that Ohio still faces looming challenges including the "loss of manufacturing jobs, too many people without health care, jobs that don’t pay living wages and the high cost of college."

But Strickland can reduce by one the scary, threatening boogie men dragging the state down because Ohioans will soon no longer be able to play faux slot machines. The threat was so onerous that he, Attorney General Marc Dann and nearly the entire Ohio legislature raced to attack it as if the future of Ohio depended on their pell-mell redefinition of what constitutes a "game of skill."

    The House is holding hearings about the evils of rap music.  Haven’t we been here before? There was Tipper Gore’s anti-rock campaign of 1985, and Lieberman and Clinton’s noise for the last few years about video games.  Don’t these people have anything important to do, like end the war, lower crime, improve education, save our infrastructure, deal with global warming...nahhh, you get more airtime attacking hip-hop.

    Republicans AND Democrats like to vilify popular culture, good or bad-—it’s a potential vote-getter, and you don’t have to deal with the real causes of violence in our country, like the fact that we have more guns than people. Rappers and video game companies don’t have a lobby. The NRA is going to beat "NWA" every time.

Criticisms of content & violence in movies, video games and on television, and it's effect on society, seem to occur in cycles. Either some kid shoots up his school, the crime or teenage-sex statistics show a rise or interests groups start screaming about "protecting children", and people rush to analyze what could possibly be corrupting young minds. Inevitably the wheel of public scrutiny turns to debating the effect of Jack Bauer on "24" or watching Flavor Flav sit in a Jacuzzi with half-nude women on VH1.

But is it really the broadcast & cable networks, Sony & Microsoft, or anyone else's responsibility to care about what children may see, except for parents who maybe could monitor what their kids are watching?

The latest issue of Time reports on cop killings being at a thirty year high. And like clockwork, the search for causes brings us to Xboxs.....

Microsoft sold $170 MILLION worth of Halo 3 on it's first DAY.  I figure that comes to about 2.8 million people sitting on their ass in front of their boobtube.  The title is rated "M" and costs $60, so I'm assuming that most of those 2.8 million are of voting age.  2 million registered voters (and more after today's paychecks are handed out I'm sure) sitting around for hours on end, doing NOTHING.  And that's just Halo.  Account for the zillion World of Warcraft Online players and it starts getting a little disturbing...

   Last week we discussed the addictive properties of the Wii.  Wii fans seem to become so dependent up the system, that they now have their own repetitive motion injury, Wii Elbow.  Even my own good buddy has succumbed.  To what can we blame this scourge?  Lack of real time exercise? Misuse of the Wii?  People acting like insufferable babies when they can't hack it on the Wii Tennis or Bowling circuits?  People like me know the truth.  It's all about controller configuration!  Join me on a trip down memory lane, as we investigate the best controllers ever.

Growing up, I was a fan of Sierra On-Line adventure games for the PC.  Unlike the console arcade games of the time, adventure games placed story above action, and thinking above reflexes.  My favorite line of Sierra adventure games was Space Quest, a space comedy about Roger Wilco, a normal, every day guy who finds himself trapped in unusual – and hilarious – situations.

A few weeks ago, while searching online for information about Space Quest, I was surprised to come across an Adventure Classic Gaming interview with Scott Murphy, one of Space Quest’s co-creators.  Even more surprising was how, after reading the interview, I realized that it serves as an illustration of the screwed up values of corporate America today, and how they can impact real people.

If one has a compelling message and a powerful vision, one can build an e-empire on the Internet. Kos did it. Atrios did it. But even without such niceties as "reasonableness" or "sanity", one can become a minor Internet celebrity.

Take for example my friend and e-sparring partner, Adam T. Yoshida.

Cathedral shootout game under fire
POSTED: 10:14 a.m. EDT, June 10, 2007

LONDON, England (AP) -- The Church of England accused Sony on Saturday of using a cathedral in Britain as the backdrop to a violent computer game, and said it should be withdrawn from shop shelves.

A state governor takes nearly $1 million out of the budgets of the state public health department, the economic development department, and the welfare agency to pay for a quixotic appeal of the overturning of a law found to violate the First Amendment of the Constitution.  Sounds like classic, Republican culture of corruption stuff, doesn’t it?

But in this case, the governor in question is Illinois Democrat Rod Blagojevich, reelected last year, who has misappropriated these funds to pay for the legal appeals which prevented him from enacting a law to ban the sale of violent video games.