Bill on video games: final [estimate] score – 20%

As the Chamber of Deputies has approved and sent to the Senate the bill to regulate the sell and rent of video games to underage people, and to demand parental control in consoles; we can have a look on the whole process and evaluate the current outcome. Our conclusions are not as bad as we expected.

Before our last report, the bill proposed to regulate the sell and rent of video games according only to their violent contents, to require an ID before every sell or rent, to classify the video games according only to their violent contents, to cover a quarter of any video game box and advertisement with a warning about their violent contents, and to demand a system of parental control in every console. What we proposed, in our report, was to warn not only about the violence but also about sexual scenes and use of drugs and only when these things actually appeared in a video game (the bill propose to show a warning no matter if they appeared or not), to require an ID only when there could be doubts about the age of the customer, to classify the video games with the same system currently used for the movies, to show a warning only in the case of video games with adult contents and with a visibility enough (not covering a quarter of the box or advertisement), and not to demand a system of parental control in every console.

The bill, as it was sent to the Senate last January, proposed to regulate the sell and rent of video games according only to their violent contents, and also to require an ID before every sell or rent, and to cover a quarter of any video game box and advertisement with a warning about their violent contents. But it did not propose to demand a system of parental control in every console. However, the President of the Republic inserted a modification on the original proposal of the bill, stating that the video games will be classified according to their violent contents as well as to their educational worth, specifying a system different from that used for the movies, although giving the task of classification to the Council of Cinematographic Qualification. He also stated that this classification process could be omitted if a qualification is given in Spanish and according to the same parameters described before in the original country of the video game.

So we can now measure the percentage of achievement reached up to now.

1st statement, “to warn not only about the violence but also about sexual scenes and use of drugs and only when these things actually appeared in a video game”: 0%. The bill does not care if a video game does have or not adult contents and will only warn about it if this content is violent, not paying attention to sexual scenes, use of drugs or other issues.

2nd statement, “to require an ID only when there could be doubts about the age of the customer”: 0%. No matter if the customer is an old man, the law commands the seller to request the ID at every single purchase; no matter if the same customer goes every week to buy a different video game, the seller will have to ask him an ID every time.

3rd statement, “to classify the video games with the same system currently used for the movies”: 0%. The bill, following the indication of the President, establishes a new classification system different from that used for the movies, considering only two parameters: violence and educational worth.

4th statement, “to show a warning only in the case of video games with adult contents and with a visibility enough”: 0%. This means that over an 80% of video games (the percentage of them without adult contents) will show a warning on a quarter of their boxes saying that the video game is safe for underage people. And, again, it does not matter if the video game actually has or not adult contents.

5th statement, “not to demand a system of parental control in every console”: 100%. Yes, we did it! Or not? This statement was proposed by four Deputies, but it was rejected. However, the lines on the bill establishing this commandment disappeared ‘mysteriously’. Perhaps it was only because of lack of attention and they will be written again, but currently they are not a part of the bill.

Our final score is only a 20%. Clearly the Deputies did not listen to us, excepting perhaps those who proposed to put out the parental control (Rubilar, Valarce, Bertolino and Sepúlveda). We still believe that this bill is wrong and that it has to be modified. Our next step is to prepare a new report for the Comission of Economy in the Senate. We are going to defend strongly our statements and try to convince the Senators about them, so that this bill be modified and improved.