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_____Correction_____
" An Aug. 13 Outlook article incorrectly reported the name of one of the senators who sought legislation requiring ratings for video games. He is Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.).


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By Daphne White
Sunday, August 13, 2000; Page B03

Daphne White is the mother of a 12-year-old boy and the executive director of the Lion and Lamb Project, a Bethesda organization seeking to stop the marketing of violence to children.

The action figure your preschooler is clamoring for looks innocent enough, as these things go: "Primagen" is a green creature with five tentacles plus one lobster-like claw and one three-fingered hand. Its blue face--a cross between that of a turtle and ET--looks a bit sad. The label on the package says Primagen is a Turok character--not that you know what Turok is--suitable for "ages 4 and up."

So maybe you buy one.

If you do, you will be bringing home a Trojan horse. For inside Primagen's box is a "game code," or tip sheet, for Turok 2: Seeds of Evil--which is, in fact, an explicitly gory, frighteningly violent video game that is industry-rated "M"--for "mature" players at least 17 years old.

Certainly there is a significant distance between the plastic doll in the toy store and the adrenaline-pumping interaction of the video game. But there is no question that the cross-marketing of brands--in this case, the video game developer Acclaim licensing its Turok characters to the kiddie-toy maker Playmates--is a way to get 4-year-olds to bridge that distance, to make friends at an early age with characters most parents wouldn't want them to know.

It reminds me of Joe Camel, the swaggering cartoon hipster that R.J. Reynolds employed to sell cigarettes to "adults" (nudge, wink) until 1997. But to me, these toy-store action figures are even more sinister than smokin' Joe, because they're not making an understandable pitch in the public marketplace. Instead, they are stealth-marketing violence in a techno-world of video games that few parents comprehend.

Joe Camel was fired only after he was criticized at congressional hearings, denounced before the Federal Trade Commission, and highlighted in the Food and Drug Administration's proposal to regulate tobacco. The same kind of forceful public activism is justified against the marketing of violent entertainment to children.

Turok is far from the only super-bloodthirsty game with a kiddie connection: Quake, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat and others have related action figures or hand-held electronic games for small children. None of these products carry any warnings that they are based on M-rated games. Like most toys, the only warning they might bear refers to possible choking hazards, as mandated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

As for "suitable for ages . . . " ratings, they are in many ways meaningless. Take the Duke Nukem action figure, based on an M-rated game that takes the player into porn theaters and strip bars (among other places), killing all the way. The action figure is labeled "for ages 10 and up." The reality is that today's pre-teens don't play with action figures. Little boys do.

Game companies introduce children to a brand early in the hope that they will identify with it and grow up with it. And they're certainly growing up fast.

"We're seeing kids going from Teletubbies to Sesame Street to Barney to Power Rangers," Michael Tabakin, director of sales promotion at Toys R Us, told the trade publication Kidscreen. "There is a natural progression. But from Teletubbies to Power Rangers, there isn't an awful lot of years there."

From Power Rangers to Seeds of Evil is also a quick jump. Marketers have a shorthand expression for the fast-forward nature of modern childhood: KAGOY, as in "kids are getting older younger." In a KAGOY world, no child is too tiny to be targeted: I've heard marketers talk about aiming products at children beginning at "age zero." By the age of 6--according to Kidscreen, as well as many toy marketers--children begin moving away from action figures and into hand-held electronic games such as Game Boy. By the time they are 8 or 10, the kids consider themselves ready for games rated Teen--supposedly aimed at ages 13 and older. And 12-year-olds get into Mature-rated computer games, the forbidden fruit that has been advertised to them since kindergarten.

There are few safeguards to prevent children from buying or downloading these games. (Several experts who have studied them say we shouldn't even use the word "games," but should call them what they are: "murder simulations." In fact, the U.S. military has increasingly been using simulation games to train soldiers. There is even a version of the M-rated game "Doom" that has been adapted for military training--it's called "Marine Doom.") Most parents don't even know that video games have a rating system.

Like most mothers, I have no idea how to actually play video games. So to find out just what lurks inside Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, I rented it. Then I borrowed some experienced players of M-rated games--Mike, 13, and his brother Jeff, 15. Several girls were visiting, making up a sort of a peanut gallery. This is what we saw.

Turok is a "first-person shooter" game--in other words, the player sees the world through Turok's eyes and wields his weapon, which is visible at all times at the bottom of the screen. At first the weapon is a talon. The player uses it to rip up the Primagens, who gush bright red blood copiously onto the screen. After successfully disemboweling a few, the player is rewarded with an upgraded weapon: a pistol.

The visuals are darkly Gothic, the music ominous. One of the 15-year-old girls, who is not accustomed to playing video games, screamed whenever one of the Primagens burst onto the screen. "It's so dark and scary," she said, covering her eyes and hugging her knees to her chin. After a while, she left the room.

As more enemies are gruesomely killed, the player earns more weapons: a flying razor-blade disc, a grenade launcher, eventually a hand-held nuclear weapon. The grenade launcher leaves gaping holes in the victims' chests, and the ribs protrude. There is also a "cerebral bore," which drills into the enemies' skulls, sending their brains spewing out in a glutinous red mass.

"The whole point is to kill everybody," Mike explained, saying the game didn't really have enough of a plot for him. Jeff said it gave him a headache.

There's a Game Boy version of Turok 2, rated E for Everyone over age 6. It has the same name as the adult version, and the same basic plot, although the graphics are more cartoon-like and less explicit. The music is downright cheerful, as opposed to the dark, suspense-filled soundtrack of the M-rated game. There is no question that the E game is a playable advertisement for the M version. If it is not, why call them both Turok 2?

Too often, both government and the entertainment industry place all responsibility for monitoring the games children play on the shoulders of their parents. Certainly, parents need to be vigilant and provide their kids with guidance. But in a culture where $1 billion a year is spent by industries of all sorts to advertise their products directly to children, parents can't stem the tide of "entertainment" violence on their own.

Some tentative first steps have been taken. The Federal Trade Commission, under a request from President Clinton, is studying the marketing of violent "entertainment" to children--through video games, movies and music--with a report expected out next month. Congress--often under the leadership of Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.)--has held a series of informational hearings on the issue.

More concretely, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) have introduced a Uniform Ratings Bill and are planning to hold hearings on it after the FTC report comes out. This bill would mandate an end to the current hodgepodge of ratings systems and require that Hollywood, the video game industry and music industry work together to create a single ratings system. If the industries fail to come up with such a system, the FTC would be authorized to establish one.

This bill would be a large step forward in making the ratings clear and understandable to parents--but it does not address the advertising or marketing issues.

Toys and other products promoting adult-rated video games and movies to children need to be clearly labeled as such. Requiring a warning label in the style of the health warning label that appears on cigarettes would be a good start.

There's an obvious problem with these solutions: Any Internet-savvy kid can go online and download demo versions of truly violent games. If they're really savvy, kids can figure out how to get whole games. The way the Internet works, I don't see any practical way for government to keep them from doing that. But Congress and the FTC, which already have sought to limit children's access to online pornography, should at least seek the same limits on their access to violent video games.

Parents, of course, can and should try to monitor their children's online activity--but I know all too personally how difficult that is. I've been actively opposed to violent children's media since my own son was 2. But a few years ago, when he was in third grade, I mentioned that I lacked the computer gaming skills to study products that I was concerned about, and he cheerfully offered to help. "Mom, I can download Blood or Thrill Kill for you," he said--and he did.

We need government's help to keep such products out of our children's hands. At least it is worth the effort to put in some safeguards. To make a similar comparison, children under 18 aren't legally allowed to buy cigarettes. The fact that many younger children start smoking doesn't make that law less worthwhile.

The need for action was made clear last month, when four major public health groups--the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry--issued a joint statement to Congress saying that "viewing entertainment violence can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values and behavior, particularly in children. Its effects are measurable and long-lasting. Moreover, prolonged viewing of media violence can lead to emotional desensitization toward violence in real life."

Significantly, the statement noted: "Although less research has been done on the impact of violent interactive entertainment [such as video games] on young people, preliminary studies indicate that the negative impact may be significantly more severe than that wrought by television, movies or music."

Like the tobacco industry of old, the entertainment and toy industries generally deny any responsibility and are unlikely to make changes on their own. Joe Camel did not disappear because concerned parents told their children to "just say no" to cigarettes. It took sustained legal and government action. This issue deserves no less.

What the Ratings Mean

In 1993 and 1994, when even the most violent video games carried no labels or warnings, Joseph Lieberman, now the presumed Democratic vice-presidential nominee, and his Senate colleague Herman Kohl (D-Wisc.) held a series of hearings and then introduced legislation that gave the game industry one year to come up with a ratings system. The industry responded by creating the Entertainment Software Review Board (ESRB).

The board rates video games on a scale comparable to movie ratings, but different enough to be confusing (and nothing like the television V-chip ratings). Most kids' games fall into the following categories:

E is Everyone (comparable to "G" on movie ratings), indicating the game has "content suitable for persons ages 6 and older."

T is Teen (comparable to PG-13)--"Content suitable for persons ages 13 and older."

M is Mature (comparable to "R")--"Content suitable for persons ages 17 and older."

There is also an AO--Adults Only--rating, but only a handful of games are in this category.

The letter ratings can be modified by violence "descriptors" noting that the games contain images such as "animated blood and gore" ("animated/pixilated or cartoon-like depictions of mutilation or dismemberment of body parts") or "realistic violence." As many as a third of all E games have such violence descriptors.

The ratings are set by an industry group--and stores don't always enforce the system. In reality, children of any age can buy or rent M-rated videos at most stores or rental clubs. In a sting operation last spring, Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan sent children ages 13 to 15 into video stores to buy M-rated games, and in each of the 32 instances the children emerged with the adult products--no questions asked.

© 2000 The Washington Post Company