The video games industry has witnessed exponential growth in the past few months. That has led to greater scrutiny of certain aspects of video games in recent times. For instance, the degree of violence in video games has been a point of contention for a while now. Certain games have been criticized for going overboard by depicting too much violence. Now it seems like another game is coming under the scanner. As per reports, GTA 5 could be the next game to be banned if a law gets passed.
US Lawmaker Wants Videos Games Promoting “Psychological Harm” and “motor vehicle theft” to be banned
As Chicago Sun-Times reports, Rep. Marcus Evans Jr. “wants to amend a 2012 law preventing some video games from being sold to minors”. Earlier, violent video games were prohibited from being sold to minors. The latest amendment aims to expand the scope of this law to issue a complete ban altogether.
The bill explicitly mentions banning games causing “psychological harm,” and“motor vehicle theft with a driver or passenger present.” The latter has been a pressing issue in the city and puts games like GTA V under the scrutiny of such a law. Furthermore, it also aims to redefine the definition of violent games by including all games that “allows a user or player to control a character within the video game that is encouraged to perpetuate human-on-human violence in which the player kills or otherwise causes serious physical or psychological harm to another human or an animal.”
While this bill has been proposed in Chicago, if it does end up getting passed, it might attract a similar response from other countries. While it is one thing to make games accessible for a wider audience, it is often debated that games with mature tones have a separate target audience. Certain games like The Last of Us 2 have set a benchmark for dark and mature tones in video games. At the same time, they do end up delivering a strong message of ending the vicious cycle of violence. Whether this bill ends up getting passed remains to be seen, but video games will likely be subject to greater scrutiny in the days to come.
