Ignophobia – Nathan Mallory's Weblog

You’d think that spending the summer in Oxford without videogames would teach me the joy of keeping games from playing such a large role in my daily life. But alas, you would be mistaken.

In addition to revisiting long absent hobbies (piano, reading, etc.) and contemplating how to keep them from fading away on my return to a game-enabled world, I have also been brainstorming ways to revive my undoubtedly flagging Japanese language skills (absent, of course, any chance to return there or a surge in native speakers in my daily life). Since I did so much good for my Japanese years ago by slaving away translating Japanese games to English, I figured that would probably be as good a way as any.

My current musings are to throw some moderate time and effort into the forthcoming FFVII: Advent Children, then Kingdom Hearts II this winter, and Final Fantasy XII starting on (recently announced) March 16, 2006. If actually successful, I should at least be making some headway towards stemming the tide of atrophy.

Other suggestions for an Oklahoma-based law/business student to maintain and improve his language skills would be appreciated from anyone!

Nathan:     ”Tea, Earl Grey, hot”…

Nathan:     You know, as in Jean-Luc Picard?

Lori:            The diplomat?

Nathan:     Um………………………………. no.

With the torrent of controversy surrounding Rockstar after their mea culpa on the hidden sex mini-game in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, it seems the dangerous publicity which Rockstar so happily embraced to promote its games has finally come back to bite them (and perhaps the entire industry as well).

Rockstar screwed up big time, and anyone who defends the company’s objection to an AO rating for GTA:SA is fooling himself. The content may not have been accessible without hacking the game, but it was still created by the developer and shipped with every copy of the game. It was the product of Rockstar, not that of creative modders (a la the nude patches for Tomb Raider or Dead Or Alive). There’s no way to get around the reality: a game’s rating must be based on the entire content shipped to the consumer, not just what is normally accessible. It is safe to assume that Rockstar must have cut normal access to the content because it would have resulted in an AO rating; if it was intentionally left in (as an anti-establishment programmer just might do), it was blatant circumvention of the rating system, and the game should be re-rated. But you can bet your sweet ass we will never know the real answer to that question from Rockstar, FTC and Mrs. Clinton be damned.

On the broader question of videogame ratings and the recent trend towards mandatory enforcement (partially thanks to the Hot Coffee controversy), I don’t believe that government enforcement on the M and AO ratings is an outrageous notion if the retailers themselves refuse to make it official policy to enforce the ESRB guidelines. In a perfect world, we would rely only on parents to decide what their children play, but that is not our world, and where parents are neglectful, you’ll find elected officials only too happy to step up and take credit. Consider the v-chip, shipped in every modern television sold today and indeed more pervasive in the U.S. than any other country in the world (at least 40% in 2003). It allows parents to block content they object to, based on a voluntarily adopted television rating system. However few parents even know what the V-Chip is, much less actually use it. So the rating system is toothless in the face of ignorant parents. Contrast that with the voluntary rating system adopted by the movie industry. It needs no/less government intervention because movie studios will not permit their movies to be shown in a theatre that does not enforce the R and NC-17 ratings. Could you imagine how quickly retailers would reform if game publishers only shipped to retailers that enforced M and AO?

As with so many things, it all comes down to money. Admit it or not, publishers market their games to teenagers whether it is rated T or M, and an enforced rating system would create a fiscal incentive to shed the violence down to T (much like PG-13 is considered the sweet spot of MPAA ratings). That would result in a squeeze on developers’ ability to express their art with unbridled freedom, hence the outcries from the industry against the government attacking their First Amendment rights. If those in the industry truly stand behind their rating system and the assertion that M rating games are not meant for children, they should stop marketing to them and do more to enforce the voluntary system. It’s the hypocritical idea that Mature games are not meant for children, yet the ability to sell said games to them is too important to the publisher’s bottom line to demand strict enforcement, that has put the industry in the situation in the first place.

In resolving a choice of laws issue, rather than utilizing the fine tools of the 1st Restatement of Conflicts, Interest Analysis, or the 2nd Restatment, I propose this, the Realistic Approach for judges to apply:

1. Identify the conflicting laws.
2. Decide which state’s law you would like to use.
3. Justify it (using any number of factors, contacts, and interests).

Follow-up to the last post… perhaps I am approaching the issue from too American a perspective. The time here in Oxford has shed fascinating light onto Britain’s unique system of government. Unlike the U.S., The United Kingdom has no written constitution. It is a constitutional monarchy, governed by a parliamentary democracy. Many of the rights codified in the U.S. Constitution from free speech to gender and racial equality are just as valid here as in the States, but written down nowhere. Instead, convention dictates much of the government’s function, enforceable only by morality and each political party watching the others’ moves. The net effect, in my opinion is a mixed bag. It becomes very difficult to know the rules of the game, since the courts are no longer the final arbiters of justice (oh yeah, no judicial review either. again, by convention). But just because that is the way in the U.S., is that really the best way to do things? Unlike the States, the unelected judges (and “Supreme Court” of Britain’s Law Lords) are not absolute and unaccountable. They cannot overturn statutes with binding authority (though this is changing in recent times, especially with regards to the European Court of Justice).

What does all this have to do with Harry Potter? Maybe nothing. But maybe it’s a real world illustration of an American/British cultural divide on how, and by what conventions, authority figures govern themselves. It’s nice to think Rowling’s characters are the products of societal differences rather than sloppy storytelling. But hey, whatever makes me feel better about obsessively reading a children’s book! Right?

Midnight on release of the latest Harry Potter book ended up being a decently important day for British bookstores, though I suspect booksellers the world over are giggling at having to worry about fire safety maximum occupancies. A weekend-quality night’s rest and several meals later, I am only about a third through it, but reentering Ms. Rowling’s altered version of England reminded me of something that has always bugged me about these books.

Her characters behave illogically. Not to suggest real people behave much better, but I find myself frequently bothered with how implausibly the adults in her stories act. When I say that, I am first reminded of how illogically other fictional characters, even from galaxies far, far away, are at times. Second to hit me is the nagging escape route that always comes up: Harry Potter is a children’s book! I’ll address each in turn.

True though it may be that fictional characters often behave with less tact and logic than the average real village idiot might, Harry’s world seems to be held together by authority figures with little apparent regard for the “big picture” issues facing them. I don’t think I’m giving anything away to say that Voldemort, the overarching villain, has made clear over five volumes his willingness to do whatever it takes to return to power; the very start of the series began with the murder of Harry’s parents before his eyes. Yet every book finds Dumbledore relying on Harry to save the day. Adult wizards all over the country refuse to call Voldemort by his name because it’s just too scary to think about – give me a break! They start secret societies with quaint passwords to search him out, rather than banding the entire wizarding community to out him (I guess that would only take ONE book though, wouldn’t it). And, presumably because the sequel dictates it, wizard parents from all over continue to send their children to Hogwarts in the midst of chaos that seems to escalate with every book. At least to me, the most bothersome fallacy, but most understandable from the author’s perspective: the Muggle world is always kept at arms length (and with absurd success). Book Six makes clear in the first chapter that the British Prime Minister is aware of the magical world’s existence. Yet he has no problem letting people die and havoc wreak? Even if one gives fantasy the greatest benefit of the doubt and assume magic can trump technology every single time, that guns and surveillance cameras and friggin’ handcuffs could be outdone any wandless magic users, the way Rowling segregates the “magical” story from any consequences in the Muggle world holds water like a sieve. And if otherwise ordinary Muggles have the potential to learn magic, as Hermione proves, shouldn’t everyone have the chance to learn to defend themselves from Voldemort? Shouldn’t the Prime Minister be pulling back the curtain and demanding the tools for his people to protect themselves? And why aren’t humanitarian wizards and witches doing it themselves, teaching Muggles to protect themselves and recruiting new fighters for the cause?

The answer is probably what most readers would be screaming at me right about now. Harry Potter is a children’s book. It’s telling a simple story about a boy and his scar, not trying to tackle complex issues that arise out of the author’s sloppy writing. That is true, but as the stories get darker and the death toll rises, Rowling has an obligation not only to her many adult fans to provide a coherent plot not filled with ocean-sized plot holes, but also to the youngest children that will be entering Harry’s progressively gruesome world. The world of Book Six is not the same world as that of Book One. Kids are going to have conversations with their parents about what happens to Sirius Black in Book Five and Cedric in Book Four, and I can already feel a more grown-up outcome brewing in Book Six.

My point is that Harry Potter’s world is carelessly written in parts. It is painfully obvious that certain aspects of the universe – the unfolding relationship of Harry and Voldemort is a dance I’m sure Rowling has had choreographed since about Book Two. But other areas, where common sense would tell Dumbledore to stop keeping Harry in the dark about his destiny and start protecting him, the complete lack of plausibility jars me out of the story.