Politics and Videogames, oil and water.

Or, Why Hillary and Joe need to STFU.

Yes, what a tried and true subject, violence (and sex!) in Videogames, and what the politicians are doing about them. Thank you Jack Thompson, thank you Hillary Clinton, and you Joe Lieberman, for seriously messing things up. Travel back with me, to a simpler time. San Andreas had just been released, fans gobbled it up. Selling faster then hotcakes, it became one of the biggest games of 2005.

Then, a shock. A programmer had managed to unlock hidden content, which was never meant to be shown to the public. The Hot Coffee mod, as it would later come to be called, reopened to debate of violence and sexual content in videogames. Why, several years earlier, Mr. Lieberman led a crusade against such games as Mortal Kombat. His crusade helped to create the ESRB, and things died down for a time.

But, thanks to Rockstar (or that programmer, however you look at it) it would seem the battle for PR has begun again.

Senators Clinton and Lieberman would ban videogames if they could get away with it. Why? I think you know the answer. Videogames has become a hot-button issue lately, and those two want as much good PR they can get. If you were a politician, wouldn't you? So, instead of worrying about something important, they go on attacking vieogames, just like they did with the movies way back in the day.

M is Mature, Ao means adults only. But where does the line get drawn? The thing San Andreas has taught us, is that you can have all the blood spilling fun you want to and still maintain a M rating, but heaven forbid you add a little sexual content (bodies with out private parts dry humping each other, in this case) and you get an Ao.

That's the problem with our culture. There is a huge double standard for sexual stuff in the media.

Senators Lieberman and Clinton have begun their crusade, submitting piece after piece of legislature aimed at blocking or restricting the sale of Mature rated videogames to minors. Well, seeing as most retailers won't sell a M rated game to a minor already, there isn't much more that can be done.

And besides, if you limit a child's exposure to any sort of violence or sexual content until they turn 18, there's a little thing called culture shock. If you slowly introduce the violate content to a child (all the while building the ability to tell right from wrong and reality from virtual reality), kids are more able to cope with the world around them.

I don't have all the answers, but I do have a bunch of questions.