Anthony Perez
Media studies conducted by doctorates and organizations have uncovered the vast sexual nature of television programming. In general, 64 percent of all television programming contains sexual content according to Watching Sex on Television Predicts Adolescent Initiation of Sexual Behavior by Dr. Rebecca Collins. Dr. Collins also discovered that the average television viewer would be exposed to four sexual scenes per hour. The Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood organization did its own media study as well, citing music videos for containing roughly 93 sexual scenes per viewing hour, of which 11 scenes explicitly depict intercourse and oral sex.
In comparison, video games are a generally more wholesome medium. The Entertainment Software Ratings Board recently released the percentages of games in accordance with their associated ratings and surprisingly, mature content appears in a severe minority of the games available to your children at retail outlets. The ESRB assigned the rating of “Everyone” to 50 percent of games in 2005, while the “Teen” rating drew the second highest allotment of 24 percent, down 9 percent from 2004. The new “E10+” rating and the dreaded “Mature” rating both finished the year at 12 percent, while “Early Childhood” received one percent – higher than 2004 – and “Adults Only” procured the remaining less than a percentage point.
The acceptance of sexual content is also affected by the choice involved with media forms such as movies, books and yes, video games. They are all excellent examples of media with selective audiences, audiences that have to make a concerted effort to watch a particular film, read a certain novel, or purchase a mature rated game.
“With TV, though, there are no barriers [Ed. Note: There is a product called the V-chip to block programs with certain ratings on TVs featuring the technology, as well as rating filters in most digital cable or satellite boxes],” said Damon Brown, freelance journalist and author of the tentatively titled book Sex, Lies, and Video Games, which is currently being shopped to publishers. “Those things are available free access and if I happen to have a child – a son or a daughter – who was even a three- or four-year-old, they'd know how to turn on the TV and they'd be able to watch it.”
Despite these factors in favor of the game industry, it still remains the focal point of controversy.
“It’s kind of that age-old argument, literally, that video games is still considered a kid’s medium,” said Brown.
“With that established [the formation of the ESRB in 1994] I think that actually gave some leniency for game designers to make games that were strictly for adults. But the problem is, though that was accepted to some degree in theory; it wasn’t really accepted by the general public.”
Yet the general public isn’t necessarily cognizant of the expanse of gaming as a medium and how it’s matured since the days of text-based role playing adventures on the Amiga. The gaming audience is growing, and more importantly aging. The maturity of video games players is evidenced by the segment in the latest edition of 60 minutes as well as the growing number of professionals either in the industry or covering it. Unfortunately, when put side-by-side with other forms of media such as film, television, or music, gaming is still considered an adolescent driven form of entertainment.
“With a video game as violent or as sexual as Grand Theft Auto or Postal, that's going to be argued because the general public still associates video games with kids, even though the average gamer according to the ESA is, I think, 29-years-old,” said Brown.
“Those things [television, film, music] have had a chance to establish themselves. I'd say in that in about twenty years games will start to get regulated some more. But until it gets to that mainstream saturation point, it's still in its small stages and it's still considered a kid's device.”
The question behind it all is, are games simply at too early of a state for objective criticism? Looking at history, other forms of new media have undergone disparagement of their own. In the early days of television the only married couple you saw sharing a bed were the Flintstones. Throughout 1950’s and early 1960’s television, married couples generally slept in separate twin beds.The Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA, now known as the Motion Picture Association of America, or MPAA) established the “Production Code,” or sometimes referred to as the “Hays Code” in 1934. The code was put in place to govern and censor film before the establishment of the modern MPAA by prohibiting nudity, religious bashing, depictions of crime (such as arson or smuggling), drug use, and maintaining the sanctity of marriage. It took the movie industry roughly 33 years to abandon the Production Code in 1967 and establish the current ratings board which regulates film today.
Video games as a mainstream form of entertainment have only existed for nearly a decade, so how could it be expected for the medium to be understood in the same light as television or film? The current controversy over video games is a result of misapprehension and misunderstanding. Its most nefarious foe is not the white-haired senator in Washington; it is its own infancy.
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