Well I'll be 17 in a week so this won't affect me much. In fact, it would not affect me at all as my country doesn't enforce a rating system on video games. But the comfort of knowing that I can legally play M rated games...

So now a game has to get rated to get made? What about indie developers? Do they have to pay the ESRB to rate their game?

good. less 12 year olds on xbl... Is what I would like to say, but considering the parents will just buy it for them, all they're really doing is making the esrb government approved. actually, this is a good thing because people won't be able to blame video games anymore.

Okey-doke, let's come at this from a legal perspective. In the words of the Dude, "this isn't a first amendment thing". This has nothing to do with freedom of speech. What this has to do with is regulating what is appropriate for minors to be viewing. All I'm seeing in the comments are minors who are grumpy because they'll no longer be able to buy games that are not necessarily appropriate for them. My advice? Get over it. Hell, maybe you shouldn't be viewing that content. Now, both film and music have ratings sytem that theoretically prevent minors from accessing adults-only content, and this will be no different. The government are not using videogames as a scapegoat for anything; the fact that the gaming industry has gone so long without a proper institutionalised system of age ratings should indicate that the government have actually not even looked at videogames closely enough over the past thirty years for it to become an area warranting legislation. The relatively recent growth of gaming as an industry and entertainment medium has caused a massive uptake in videogames by younger audiences. This naturally necessitates a legislative code of conduct that will properly regulate the sale of adults-only videogames to minors. While this might not work in practice, it's a step in the right direction for legitimising videogames as both an entertainment medium and an art form, as the majority of people still don't take them seriously. Let me put that on a new paragraph: "[b]While this might not work in practice, it's a step in the right direction for legitimising videogames as both an entertainment medium and an art form.[/b]" The idea of opposing this kind of legislation is ridiculous. It is a simple fact that there is content that is inappropriate for minors to be viewing. This ranges from sexual content, to violence, to drug use, and it's not because videogames affect behaviour (although the jury is still out on that one), or because minors are more impressionable than adults (although they actually are). It's simply because minors have a low emotional maturity, and sometimes intellectual maturity, and should not be presented with the images presented in say, the excessively-violent BlOps2. Don't -blam!- with me here, I've played BlOps2, and it's horrendously violent. I'm not usually affected by that stuff in games or film, but it was just ridiculous: guys caught in bear traps and then shot to death? An almost constant stream of throat-stabbing? It's a simply fact that the vast majority of minors are not at the point that they should be exposed to that. Preparing for intense flaming from under-18s in 3... 2... 1...

So they're just going to enforce what they already have harder? How many kids do they think walk into Wal Mart and buy Far Cry 3? Parents buy the games for their kids.

Eben though I am 18, I still think this is stupid and takes away freedom from younger people. The government shouldn't be deciding things like this, there is no need for this.

BUUULLLLLLLLL SHIIIIIITTTTTTT Clearly the government's responsibility to control what I do in my free time.

Even on the unlikely chance this passes pass decisions by the Supreme court would have any case brought to it cause the law to be nullified.

I love how the government always blames violent video games but not violent movies. Remember Aurora where the guy was literally dressed up as the Joker and said he was inspired by the Joker from the Dark Knight? Is the government saying he played too much Arkham Asylum or something?

So anyone that isn't 17 will probably a) Ask someone older than them to purchase the game. b) Pirate it off the internet. c) Buy it from Steam with a fake birth-date. I am glad that America is looking ahead once more, but please, put someone that knows about modern issues relative to entertainment software to handle this matter not some bureaucratic pen-pusher.