wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Faith groups go after violent video game marketing

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Note #8610 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05030
January 19, 2005

Faith groups go after violent video game marketing

Retailers ignore rating system, selling adult games to kids, critics charge

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - Kryss Chupp was stunned to hear that mainline churches and
Jewish investment partners are organizing to have video games that are
designed for adults removed from the shelves in children's toy stores.

	And relieved. She's been running a lonely campaign for a long time.

	Every winter she sends her Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) trainees
foraging through Chicago's Toys "R" Us stores to find the video games whose
graphics include flying body parts and explicit sexual acts and whose
soundtracks are rife with racial slurs.

	Unhappily, they find them without much effort - despite the fact that
the industry's rating system restricts such violent play for kids under 17.

	The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has a simple system to
label video games: E is for everyone; T is for teens (with no sexual
content); M is for mature; and AO is for adults only.

	"The rating system for video games is voluntary," Chupp says, "but it
distinguishes those (violent ones) for people 17 and older. So what are those
games doing in a children's toy store anyway?" Chupp also notes that adult
games are frequently stocked next to kids' games and that store clerks
frequently fail to stop adolescents from buying them.

	Gary Brouse couldn't agree more.

	He is the video game guru for the Interfaith Center for Corporate
Responsibility (ICCR), a Manhattan-based coalition of Christians and Jews
that monitors corporate behavior. On behalf of the ICCR - which counts the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) among its members - he's already filed
shareholder resolutions with four chain stores that watchdogs agree are the
most egregious offenders: Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, and CPT's favorite
foraging-spot, Toys "R" Us.

	An alliance is emerging between CPT and ICCR. Both groups want to
restrict kids' access to violent video games, though each has been working
unbeknownst to the other and in different ways.

	ICCR is tapping its denominational investors to open negotiations
with video game manufacturers and retailers. CPT and its grassroots, pacifist
members are going after local store managers. Both groups are pleased that
the campaign is reaching other levels.

	CPT evolved inside the historic peace churches - Mennonites, Church
of the Brethren and Quakers. But it also draws support from both Catholic and
Protestant churches for its efforts to stop violence in some of the world's
worst conflict zones - from Colombia and Israel to Iraq. It was CPT's
resident team in Baghdad that first drew attention to the abuse of Iraqi
prisoners by U.S. soldiers.

	But Chicago toy stores require a lighter, mischief-making touch in
the practice of nonviolent resistance.

	One year they pranced into a Toys "R" Us dressed as Santa and his
elves, tossing questionable toys into their shopping carts and bemoaning,
"Santa didn't make this toy." They managed to avoid a night in jail only
because police didn't want the public relations debacle of arresting Santa
days before Christmas.

	This year they strolled in wearing their trademark red baseball caps,
loaded up their shopping carts with adult-play video games, and complained to
the manager. The manager replied that he's powerless to override his chain's
marketing decisions.

	Such buck-passing enrages Brouse, who fumes that nobody wants to be
responsible for the marketing and selling of adult-rated games to children.

	The problem is simple, he believes: The video-game industry claims it
has a rating system. But because it's voluntary, there is no enforcement or
penalties for retailers who ignore the rules. So most stores don't bother to
check whether the game is age-appropriate for the purchaser, nor are they
inclined to suggest that parents check ratings on the games their kids buy.

	To put it bluntly, Brouse says, "The controls aren't working." A
recent investigation by the New York City Council revealed what Brouse
already knew: A disturbing number of stores - such as the four mentioned
above - continue to sell adult video games to minors, and do so knowingly.

	While chain stores did somewhat better than smaller retailers in
refusing to sell to minors, under-age kids were still able to buy adult games
in 88 percent of the stores surveyed in New York City alone.

	"Nobody did well," Brouse says, and he emphasizes the urgency to get
better checks into place because violent and sexual images are getting ever
more graphic. Some are so vivid and realistic, he says, that the military
uses them as video simulations to train its soldiers.

	While he's not sure that exposure to such violence permanently warps
young minds, Brouse is sure it isn't good for them.

	ICCR has scheduled dialogues with Target and Best Buy. Brouse also
has Wal-Mart on his list. Circuit City has not responded to ICCR's
longstanding request for conversation.

	The PC(USA) will be approaching Take Two, the manufacturer of several
lines of popular games, including the Grand Theft Auto series, which is on
the ICCR's list of "worst" video games. The PC(USA) Board of Pensions holds
only 200 shares of Take Two stock, but that is enough to get the church's
Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee (MRTI) a seat at the
negotiating table.

	Clips from Grand Theft Auto show a car bounding up and down as a
couple presumably copulates in the back seat, muttering phrases like, "Let's
get down tonight." After sex, the man and a scantily clad woman get out of
the car and he beats her with a golf club. In another segment, a white man
repeatedly kicks a black man in the testicles until he is lying in a pool of
blood.

	The Rev. Bill Somplatsky-Jarman, MRTI's top researcher, said
Presbyterians are always surprised to see that video games are "far more
violent, far more destructive" than they had imagined.

	"There is a great deal of concern to address this in a responsible
way," he says, "at least that's what I've found."

	That's music to Brouse's ears.

	And if the industry doesn't do something to better regulate itself,
according to Brouse, the government will. Legislation to limit the access of
minors to violent video games is pending in Illinois, Florida, New York and
Arizona.

	A committed pacifist, Chupp has opposed violent toys before. Video
games are just the latest items on her list.

	Just before the U.S. war with Iraq, Chupp was sickened by what
appeared to be a marketing effort for the war in toy stores. Suddenly there
was child-size desert camouflage. Plastic paratroopers and Blackhawk
helicopters were suspended from toy department ceilings.

	"We live in a culture of violence. That's what our kids are growing
up in," she says. "As CPT, as people of faith, we have to find ways for
people in local congregations to make a difference."

	Her resolve to focus on violent video games was only strengthened
when newspapers reported that 17-year-old convicted D.C. sniper Lee Malvo had
been trained to kill by violent sniper-style shooting games. Reports also
emerged that the perpetrators of the April 20, 1999, shootings at Columbine
High School in Littleton, CO, were regular players of the video game Doom,
which is no. 1 on ICCR's "Don't buy" list.

	Watching aggression teaches aggression, Chupp insists, which is why
CPTers added a new twist to their toy-store operation this year: a prayer
vigil in the Toys "R" Us parking lot, where members prayed for the dead in
Iraq - three dead Iraqis for each U.S. soldier.

	The actions got a surprisingly positive response from shoppers, Chupp
says.

	CPT began a campaign in 1999 called "500 Churches for Change:
Violence Is Not Child's Play." The ongoing effort recruits local folk to
monitor department stores and hold store managers accountable for what is on
the shelves.

	"We just got to thinking," Chupp says, "that if churches would really
take this one on ... they could really make a difference in local
communities."

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