Games for Adults Only?

In May of '99 Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson decided that kids should not be allowed to play violent video games - so he started making a law to stop kids from playing them. The reason for the law was to keep games from warping kids.

Fair enough, getting warped sucks.

The game companies raised a ruckus about the law and everybody got lawyers. Things got really ugly for a while as they squabbled in court. Once they'd finished, the conclusion was that kids were playing super violent, sexy games because the game companies were making the games for kids, not for adults. So starting Oct. 13th kidz were supposed to be kept away from violent/sexy video games.

Hang on, something isn't right here. The game companies make violent games specifically for kids and then, when a law says that's wrong, the kids get booted from arcade's full of their favorite games. Um, hello? How about the game companies? They're the ones that got us kids hooked on the games and they're walking away while we miss out on our favorite games. That sucks.

We don't make the games, we play them and we aren't thinking about whether they're too violent - we're trying to beat level 3. It's up to our parent's to decide if they're too violent, not Bart Peterson. And they're supposed to have the help of the game companies. That isn't happening and we're losing out on our favorite games because of it.

Here's the good news:

The law was supposed to start Friday October 13th but it didn't. The game industry got it suspended for a while. Now they can sit down and work out a new answer to the problem.

What do you think they should do? What do you think they will do? Give us your take on this mess.

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