"It's game over, man! It's game over!"

You may have heard how some shrink, ordered by some asshole to come up with some shit, reckons that all video games should have compulsory age restrictions - making it illegal to supply games to those not below the stated minimum age.

So, I took a gander at the shit she came up with. This national study, commissioned by the British government, surveyed a staggering 306 people. That's right, national government policy on issues of free speech and child safety, amongst other things, are being informed by a study covering a number of people equal to less than two thirds of the number of people that sit in the House of Commons.

Not only is the study ridiculously small, it's plain ridiculous. Here's a typical question:

What are the potential and actual risks to children and young
people who engage with video games and how should the Review
approach defining and measuring the risks?

So, the report didn't actually look at how video games effect people, just how people think they might effect people. People say lots of things, facts are what we should be interested in. But the final report does mention facts, or rather, the (perceived) lack of them. Regarding the effects of violent video games on children she writes:

The research remains highly controversial and inconclusive.

In other words, we don't know if violent video games make children worse off. They might make them better off. None the less, she proposes a ban on supplying violent video games to children. How can one support a ban on something without any knowledge of its effects?

All the study seems to have determined (and I use the term loosely, given the small sample) is that parents are pretty confused about the rating system, don't know much about video games and aren't bothered enough to learn. So her solution to this supposed problem (even though she admits we don't know it's a problem) is to replace the rating system, that doesn't appear to be very helpful, with another rating system. What will the difference be? Far from making it simpler for parents and informing their parental decisions, it will simply ban them from making a particular choice i.e. to decide that their children can play violent video games. yet the vast majority of those surveyed did not think a ban was a good idea, so if we're ignoring their views on that to get to this policy, why are we using one of their other views to justify that very policy? And if parents aren't fussed about dictating what media their children consume, doesn't' that tell us that they just don't want it done, not that government needs to do it instead?

So, it's basically horseshit. Now on to another bunch of assholes and some more horseshit: the BBC. The BBC article on the report quotes her as saying:

The European Pegi [a voluntary ratings system] system works for the industry but the BBFC [compulsory government rating system for 15 rated games and over] works for parents and children.

Clearly, she is no economist. The video games industry is highly competitive, so we don't need to worry about monopoly. With this in mind, you can be certain that if someone says they like one thing, but buys another thing, they were probably talking shit in the first instance. People don't have any incentive to make good hypothetical decisions in imaginary question-answering land, but in the real world when it's their money they're spending and their kids they're buying for, they have incentives that are second to none when it comes to make good choices.

There's also an even more worrying development:

Work should also be done to see if there are technical means that can oversee where people go online and warn them about illegal or harmful sites they may visit.

So they want us all to be spied on 24/7 (well, if we spend all day on the internet) and have a little digital Nanny come and warn us whenever we want to check out naked chicks. Well you know what? Fuck you! I like naked chicks! Unless they're ugly. Well, unless they're ugly but in that kind of "man, she is ugly but I'd still hit that, she's got that 'girl next door' vibe going on" kind of way. Ahem. Anyway, also notice that the BBC simply states that this should be done, not that this is what somebody thinks.

There is some good news though: Womb-Prison Indoctrination Camp Secretary Ed Balls was quoted as saying the government would "legislate where necessary". So no where then!

Now, I shouldn't be too hard on Dr Byron. Although she probably only got the job because she's been on TV and is eminently fuckable, she did say, in one of the embedded videos in the BBC article, that "it's what the child brings to the technology, not what the technology gives to the child", suggesting that she knows damn well that violent video games are about as bad for children as hymen reconstruction surgery is for a 15 year old skank whose very suspicious and meticulous father is a strict Mormon.

The real bitch is this asshole. Her story reveals the sad news that Dr. Byron's baseless recommendation that violent video games be banned for young people has been gobbled up by The Party and spat out in legislative form. Not only that, but they have seen fit to 'advise' parents not to allow their children to have computers in their bedrooms. When Jacqui Smith said yesterday that Noo Laybuh was committed to "hard working families" it seems that what she meant was "committed to telling them what to do".

She goes on to have a little hissy fit about each of the games she 'tests', and by 'test' we mean picks up, pushes random buttons without having any idea what's going on, and then scribbling furiously in a little notebook about how we all need to "think of the children!" Well, I am thinking of the children. I'm thinking of how many children love to play video games, some of them violent, and how this is no bad thing and how banning parents from allowing them to do so is a fuckwit idea and if anyone ever tells you otherwise push them down a flight of stairs. Clearly, I am joking. The irony if I were not would be quite amusing.

And it's not just biological children that she wants to be an insidious little ball breaker to - she also wants to turn apparent adults into squalling children. Survival-horror classic Resident Evil 4, a game beloved of gamers and achieving high critical acclaim, "shouldn't even be allowed to be sold, even to adults". Of course, Anne doesn't include herself here. She's so intellectually superior to us peasants that there's no need for her to seek therapy or turn herself in to police lest she go on a rampage. Nor does she intend to turn herself in for illegally supplying a 15 rated game to her 12-14 year old son.

It is pretty obvious that she is intellectually superior, however. She makes some very insightful comments like:

I was stabbed to death with pitchforks amid fountains of my own blood. This kind of violence can only be bad for you.

The best bit, though, is the picture of her holding a bunch of video games. Cack handed Photoshoppery at its best: