Back in the day when I walked two miles to school in the snow, uphill, both ways, year round– the game of choice, late Friday every night, was quarters. A simple game, a hard top table, a cup or glass and beer. Shot glasses and Tequila for the adventurous. It was quite popular, supplanting the older games of loser drinks, insert activity here, or winner chooses who drinks, insert activity here. The equipment was simple every day objects and a lack of imagination. Perfect for college in other words. In high school the game of choice was called buying beer, which for those keeping track, er, never mind.
Somewhere deep in the annals of history, someone with a degree of imagination more than quarters, took the concept of tossing a ping pong ball into a small bowl with a goldfish and beer and turned it into beer pong. The wiki explains a somewhat different origins, but since nothing can be verified– ahem, the game essentially has no rules other than arranging cups at two ends of a table and creating teams of two who compete by tossing a ping pong ball into the other sides cups. Which happen to have some beer in them. Which if the ball lands in the cup, you get to drink. Simple enough. Yet some video game company decided that the game was worthy of being video-gamed. And thus was born Frat Party Games, and the Wii version of beer pong. Because assembling a bunch of cups, a table and beer can be too much effort.
The Wii, if you are unfamiliar with the latest in video game consoles, is somewhat different from its video testosterone cousins X-Box and Playstation, in that it doesn’t 3-D every graphic animation with fake realism, and instead provides a wireless wand like controller than is motion sensative. Which means that the games sense the movement of the controller and the gameplay reacts. Great for sporting games, golf, baseball, bowling and my personal favorite, boxing. Oh yes, I love nothing more than cranking up the Wii and jumping into the ring to box with the glee knowing my opponent will never lay a glove on me. The Wii is fun, video games are fun, but video games are not reality. And this is something that Connecticut’s Attorney General clearly doesn’t get.
AG Blumenthal has taken exception to JV Games naming of their Wii game, Beer Pong. So they changed it to Pong Toss. I guess Blumenthal is unfamiliar with the connotation of the word toss, as in cookies, which really cuts to the the results of a bad round of Beer Pong. Score 1-0 for JV Games. Today Blumenthal, according to an AP report, objects to the Entertainment Software Rating Board giving “Pong Toss” a teen rating. Probably because the action of the game is to score points, instead of as in real life, drink. Check out the gameplay here:
Blumenthal has his boxers in a twist over the depiction of beer mugs and kegs in the background. The AP:
Blumenthal sent a second letter to the board on Monday, asking that other video games that contain alcohol content be given an adult rating, for users 18 years old and older.
He criticized the board for saying the appearance of alcohol in the game was minimal. Blumenthal said the name “Beer Pong” directly refers to a drinking game. Also, beer is depicted in the graphics used for the game’s title, some of the beer pong tables in the game displayed images of kegs and mugs of beer, and there’s a full bar in the background.
“The whole basis for the games is heavy alcohol consumption – simply not appropriate for teenagers and deserving more consideration by the Board,” Blumenthal wrote.
In a written statement, Eliot Mizrachi, spokesman for the Entertainment Software Rating Board, said the board’s role is not that of a censor.
“Our job is to impartially and consistently label content about which there may be a diversity of views so consumers can make informed choices for themselves and their families,” he said. “‘Pong Toss’ involves nothing more than players tossing virtual pingpong balls into plastic cups, which hardly qualifies it for our most restrictive rating of AO (Adults Only, for 18 years old and older).”
Ah yes, the world, as in the entire United States must conform to the paranoia of Connecticut’s Attorney General whose lurid imagination sees great harm that someone under the age of 18 might see a virtual beer mug on a television set. I guess all those beer bottles in ads are not suggestive at all, or did I miss Blumenthal’s attempt at banning beer advertising recently? Let’s take a look at some retro gaming milestones.
Here’s a screen shot of Larry Laffer in a bar. The premise of the game was: “In general, the games follow Larry’s escapades as he attempts (and mostly fails) to convince a variety of young nubile women (rendered with increasing sophistication throughout the series) to have sex with him”
Of course when Leisure Suit Larry first came out there was no ESRB, and access to the game was mostly determined by access to a computer and buying the game. Which is the point at which anyone who cares about the content of any entertainment product should be able to discern whether said content is acceptable for their precious offspring. Games these days are the not so affordable $45-60 range. And any game called Beer Pong, plopped on the conveyor belt at the local Walmart by a 13 year old, should normally elicit some sort of parental conversation right? But Blumenthal thinks parents are too dumb to figure that out for themselves. Er, maybe he’s right, some people just keep voting for him after all.
The constant pressure by politicians with over-sized egos isn’t new. In the 1950’s it was the ban on comic books put forth after Dr. Fredric Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent, whose premise was that comic book reading causes juvenile delinquency. The Senate held hearings and the Comics Code Authority created, and promptly censored such classic titles like Vault of Horror and Tales From the Crypt. La plus ça change …
Apparently generations of kids running around playing cowboys and indians or cops and robbers, with the classic goal of “bang your dead” led to generations of kids running around in later life wielding semi-automatics and killing people. Just like video games like Joust caused people to jump on the nearest ostrich with a lance and impale them. Or Final Fight led legions of spandex clad street fighting.
Whenever these bastions of banning stab their pointdexter views of the world on mere entertainment products, they fail to provide one example, one actual real life example of any entertainment product influencing the behaviors of kids. Whether its the “Banned in Boston” list of books, comics or video games, the reality is they are censoring imaginative expressions. That is wrong. Beer Pong is a mindless game. It is can be played by anyone with or without beer. To liken a virtual version played in the privacy of homes as something that promotes heavy alcohol consumption just suggests to me that someone must have lost quite a few rounds of quarters years ago. And still being a sore loser about it.
source: Courant, ‘Beer Pong’ game’s teen-friendly rating criticized, by AP, July 7, 2008
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Since lawyers and the courts have decided that no one is responsible for their own actions. That when we do something wrong, it is everyone else’s fault. We must blame someone else, otherwise it would be our own failings.
Hmmm…following the logic here (media does not drive behavior, parents are responsbile for children, games do not induce teh depicted bahavir), y’all should be supporting the guy at Paganos. After all, a minor viewing sex will not be any more encouraged to try out sex than a minor veiwing a drinking game will be encouraged to try out a drinking game — following the argujment presented in this thread. Free speech and minimal government intervention apply to the Pagano’s cae as well. The teen chose to look.
Methinks you folks are talking out of botgh sides of your mouth and not making mush sense out of either one. VOR is right…the law is the law is the law whether you like it or not.
Thank you. I tried to stay out of it. But I can’t. I think people have gotten of track. People started off attacking Blumenthal for doing his job – a job we pay him to do. This company is selling a product called Beer Pong to 13 year olds. Whether or not it depicts drinking in it is irrelevant. The name is enough. The intent is there. Look at the definition of intent in law. People get arrested all the time for intent. The intent to sell a product called Beer Pong to 13 year old children is obvious. Change the rating. Simple solution. No harm. No foul. 17 years olds still can’t drink but are presumably mature enough to handle certain things. They are almost old enough to go off to war so they should be able to handle this benign game.
I think we pay him to enforce the laws of the state of CT, not try to set national policy. With all the real crime that is going on in CT, I think he is wasting his time on cases with borderline, if any, credibility. I was watching a John Wayne movie on TV Sunday afternoon where they were drinking whiskey out of a bottle and smoking. Should he be wasting taxpayer money doing something about that too?
Did anybody point out it looks like a really stupid game in the video? You would have to be drunk to enjoy it.
For the record, I have sent an email to JV games with my suggestion to change the name of the game to Root-beer games along with my explanation of Pong’s alternative name of Root or beirut. I have even suggested that they could have dark foamy mugs that could pass for either non-alcoholic rootbeer or its tastier guinness look-alike. I have also waived any future copyright or trademark infringement rights to the name in case they decide to use it. Hopefully they will adopt this or something similar so that bloomin-onionface can do some real work.
Believe me, I am all for Blumenthal spending his time fighting the electric companies and gas stations that hike up the prices under the guise of giving cash discounts – instead they just charge the original price for cash and then more for credit. Stick it to us any way they can. They think no one will notice because prices were fluctuating so rapidly.
Maybe now is the time for the legislature to reduce taxes on gasoline.
Yeah, but they all live in backwards land and they raised it instead. Raise taxes, raise rates, raise prices. Stick the knife in and twist it. No break for the weary in CT.
You know anon 30, a whole generation of people were incredibly influenced by the heavy smoking movie stars of the 30’s, 40′’s 50′ and 60’s. Look at any of those old movies from comedies to westerns and everyone was smoking and that includes the women too. Movies were the most popular form of entertainment outside of the home in those days – everyone went to the movies and eveyone thought it was ‘cool’ to smoke. Lung cancer is now the number 1 killer of women and either 2nd or 3rd for men. You cannot say that the advertising and tv media do not influence our children and young people. And it has nothing to do with being smart or dumb. It’s the constant bombardment and, yes, any movie with smokers in it should be r-rated.
It is a great relief to me to see some adults with common sense on here who actually understand, or at least make an effort to understand, why this is important.
And there are those who say that a whole generation has been brought up inundated with anti-smoking messages, DARE programs,cigarette warnings and labels, hotlines, etc. And still choose to partake in these vices. One would think that with all this media influence, it would counterbalance any exposure.
The Bush-whackos have been trying to legislate morality for years now to no effect. Guess Blumenthal hasn’t learned anything.
Gotta give him credit for upholding the law where 93 East Avenue is concerned, though, because Mayor D’oh!ccia seems bent on letting his sleazebag pal Handrinos weasel around it.
Lindsay-there are also adults on here who “actually understand” the rights and protections granted to us in the Constitution–We are talking about a game here that you and others think is trying to send some awful message to kids. I’m not crazy about the game Grand Theft Auto–I think its premise is horrible, but rest assured, many kids under 18 play it–Why? –because often their primary caretakers are playing along with them! Access to much worse messaging can be found very easily on any PC–It all boils down to who is watching the store–not labeling or banning game content. As far as common sense is concerned — nobody can be with their kids 24/7–They are going to make choices –hopefully most of them good ones–but it is of the utmost importance to instill in them how great it is to live in a country that has choices in life–and knowing full well that many of the choices that kids make are the direct result of how we bring them up. And finally–do I think Beer Pong The Game will influence kids to drink? Think about it, if they buy it or play it–they probably already have been drinking for some time already–Why?–Chances are the parents drink too–stronger influences than any media in the world.
Hey, nobody’s talking about taking the game off the market. And as far as I know, they changed the name to something that no one will remember or pay attention to and everything is cool. It was about marketing and sales. Personally, I think all liquor and smoking regulations (including weed) for adults are bogus. But you gotta be legal age to buy adult vices (although we all have practice in getting around those, eh?) Excellent.
First time I ever bought beer in a bodega, I was 13. First time I ever got into a bar, I was 16. Nothing will ever change. If kids want to do it, they’ll do it.
Parents are the ultimate guiding force in how their kids evolve morally. Churches are next. Keep my tax dollars out of it.
Voice of reason your killing me (53) – Blumenthal is the AG of Connecticut. He has no authority or jurisdiction outside of Connecticut. If wants the game banned in Connecticut, that’s between him, Connecticut, and the Connecticut supreme court.
Just do some research on Blumenthal and you’ll see that he is constantly over stepping his boundaries (for press reasons). He has been repeatedly warned by his Governor to back off.
A reporter stated that “The most dangerous place in Connecticut is between Blumenthal and a camera.”
That fact that it doesn’t depict drinking is very relevant, The only intent is what your giving it, and the game should not be prejudiced against just because of the name. What you are talking about is plain and simply censorship.
If your argument is change it to 17 because their mind can handle it then do we change the majority of Disney movies to “R” also? In an example of beauty and the beast – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaBnWZignkQ
Does this scene in the cartoon promote drinking? Everyone is singing and happy and DRINKING.
While this Videogame shows nothing of the sort.
Just found this… Sorry for the long read
Court upholds ban on Minnesota video game law
The Minnesota law would have imposed up to a $25 fine on minors younger than 17 caught buying or renting video games rated “M” for mature or “AO” for adults-only, under the video game industry’s rating system.
But a U.S. district judge blocked the new policy the day before it was scheduled to take effect. The judge cited constitutional concerns and “a paucity of evidence linking the availability of video games with any harm to Minnesota’s children at all.”
The state appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, where a three-judge panel unanimously upheld the lower court’s findings in an eight-page opinion (PDF) released Monday.
Minnesota officials had argued that their interest in protecting the welfare of children justified the new law–and that children have no First Amendment right to play violent video games. They laced their briefs with descriptions of violence in games like The Punisher (“Game player is able to jam knives into victims’ sternums”) and Resident Evil: 4 (“includes chainsaw decapitations and impalements”), and submitted studies by medical and public-health groups that claimed to document a causal relationship between media violence and aggressive behavior in children.
The appeals court ultimately ruled that the state “failed to come forth with incontrovertible proof of a causal relationship between the exposure to such violence and subsequent psychological dysfunction,” and it disagreed with its constitutional interpretation.
“Indeed, a good deal of the Bible portrays scenes of violence, and one would be hard-pressed to hold up as a proper role model the regicidal Macbeth,” the judges wrote. “Although some might say that it is risible to compare the violence depicted in the examples offered by the State to that described in classical literature, such violence has been deemed by our court worthy of First Amendment protection, and there the matter stands.”
Those conclusions aren’t exactly surprising. The same appeals court held that violent video games are protected free speech in a 2003 case against a St. Louis County, Mo., law.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2001 and again in 2006 came out the same way. And attempts at restricting minors’ access to violent video games in other states–including California, Louisiana, and Michigan–have also been rejected by courts in recent years.
The Entertainment Software Association, which represents the video game industry, has made a habit of challenging such laws as they arise, with its position backed by groups like the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, and the American Library Association.
Sorry guys – this just in: The company that makes the game is changing the name and all references in it that have anything to do with drinking because, get this, they weren’t promoting alcohol, they were promoting the sport of pong toss so that is the new name. I guess their legal counsel advised them to do it because I imagine it must be more costly than waiting for a rating change. Here is the link for anyone who cares to watch.
http://www.comcast.net/data/fan/html/popup.html?v=788959247&pl=789427806.xml&plc=789427806&launchpoint=Cover&cid=fancover&attr=default_headline&config=/config/common/fan/default.xml
Fred, No one is banning the game. Theyre just trying to get the name changed. because, people (parents) as much as youd like to think theyre the “guiding force” in kids lives, more often than not do not take responsibility for their failures in parenting and blame someone else. If someones think theyre a great parent and churches are guiding forces in this day and age, good for you. By the way, its 2008.
All Nintendo needs is for some stupid kid to want to play the “real” beer pong, get drunk and smash his head in, and say “we play it on Wii” next this you know the “guiding force” parents are suing Nintendo and every store that sells it because their precious do-no-wrong baby was harmed by their evil Wii.
The reason for this level of government regulation is simple. PEOPLE ARE STUPID. I used to work for Guinness Imports and our legal dept actually got a phone call from a lawyer in Texas whos client wanted to sue guinness because he was drinking it while he was driving and backed his truck into a wall. It was therefore our fault because we made the product that got him drunk and caused him to crash his truck. You may laugh but Wii is exposing themselves to a huge risk with this game.
I respectfuly disagree, I don’t think people are stupid at all. I think people in general and of a whole are very smart. You have morons in there of course but I don’t believe they make the majority, they just gather the most attention.
@voice – Just watched the video but I went to JV’s website and the news got something wrong.
I don’t know whos handleing JV PR or marketing but they are bloody genius’s somebody is going to write a book on this.
Here’s the thing, the game got changed to Pong Toss but it also got re-rated by ESRB. It’s now an “E”.
Soooo. Identical game, different name and now it’s ESRB’s lowest rating and cant be block by parental controls.
I wonder if somebody shot themselves in the foot but im really glad to see this. All over the word Beer.
Youre right Fred, I think generally most people ARE smart…but there are enough stupid ones out there to make seemingly rediculous restrictions necessary.
And please note that no one is trying to BAN the game..theyre just btrying to change the name so it can be marketed responsibly, or restrict who buys it…theyre not BANNING it.
Hi Lindsay,
I completely realize they are not trying to ban it. My concern is the complete sensitivity to the word “Beer” and the fact they are actually trying to get it changed.
I’m not going to waste all of our time about going into the bill of rights, all of us here knows where that leads.
Why does it seem to break the American conscience when we use that word?
I don’t want to get off topic but you made another comment that struck me, “there are enough stupid ones out there to make seemingly rediculous restrictions necessary”.
Why should the majority of Intelligent people be punished for the actions of the fewer stupid people. We’ve all seen those cases where a criminal seems to enjoy more rights than the victim. In recent years (Last 30 or 40), it seems to becoming more common. I won’t go into any examples because I know everyone of you will be able to think of something that made you just shake your head.
To be a strong society, is bending to the lowest denominator the correct path we should be on?
It is the rediculous lawsuits that result in this mess. Like the “I spilled hot coffee on myself and got a burn so I sue McDonald’s for not warning me that the coffee was hot” case. Now we must label everything to the standard of the least intelligent person.
The McDonald’s case has been misrepresented. They were at fault because the coffee machine was serving not just hot but superheated coffee. I don’t remember if it was a malfunction or human error. So, the company was at fault…
You are absolutely correct anon. No one remembers how to take responsibility for their own actions any more. People are always looking to blame the other guy. It has ruined just about every aspect of our culture. Why do you think not as many kids can walk to school any more? Why do you think our playgrounds have so many rules and don’t have the same fun equipment we had as kids? – Everything is too much of a liability. That’s why good people don’t want to become doctors and our medical profession is in a crisis so we see physician’s assistants instead of “real doctors” – there aren’t enough to go around. That is why in this case of the Beer Pong, the company had to act. They didn’t want one 13 year old to have a problem and they lose everything. Blumenthal had a point – it should not have been marketed to them under that name. That is all I have been trying to say and Lindsay has been trying to say. It is not the fault of the company that people are stupid and greedy and but that is the way it is so they have to protect themselves and do it the way it should have been done to start.
And that’s what I’ve been saying. The courts and litigation have screwed everything up, but instead of constantly working and bowing to a broken system, shouldn’t we be working to make it better so people will once again be able to live without fear of being sued for any ridiculous reason. Would it return our basic human instincts and help someone injured without fear on consequence.
A solution: Give Judges the ability to heavily fine lawyers for frivolous suits. When a lawyer has to pay 5-10,000 for wasting a courts time, I guarantee you they will become very selective.
Blumenthal being a lawyer, do you think we would support this
As before, with Beer Pong simply going through a name change and nothing else, is that really protecting the kids?
To continue
Turfgrrl got it right from the beginning “Beer Pong is a mindless game. It is can be played by anyone with or without beer. To liken a virtual version played in the privacy of homes as something that promotes heavy alcohol consumption just suggests to me ….”
90% of all video games emulate something, whether it’s football, bowling, driving, WWII, whatever. To play real football, you throw a ball. To play a football videogame, you press a button. To play real life beer pong, you throw a ball. To play the beer pong video game, you press a button.
Before you say realife beer pong involves drinking, remember that the videogame does not. If anything the JV Games company did a service by never including it. As stated over and over again, the video game consists of nothing more than throwing a ball into a cup.
Why is the videogame industry taking so much flak. As Turfgrrl suggested earlier, is this reminisant of the 60’s were millions of government dollars were spent trying to figure out the lyrics to “louie louie” or the 80’s were Ozzy Ozzborne was corrupting our children to Satanism. He’s now considered classic rock right?
Doesn’t stop there – then it goes to Marilyn Manson – always someone on the music scene, and I’m sure there is someone more recent. But Blumenthal was hired to do what he was doing. Good guy/bad guy. Sometimes I like the fight he fight he fights. Sometimes I think he could be spending his time on other things that are way more important. But I would think we all feel that way about our jobs – even if you stay at home to take care of your kids. There are always going to be more important things. That’s why we learn to prioritize. But if someone brings it to his attention and his office feels it needs to be dealt with, he has to do it. He may have saved that company and Wii millions of dollars in lawsuits if down the road some stupid family had sued. Sad commentary on where we have come.
Parents who dont want to parent can have their children jacked up on pharmaceutical narcotics. Yet those same kids shouldnt be playing a video game with the word beer.
Just another lame attempt for those parents who cant hack their job, or was this fabricated by the competition. Sure lets write a law to relieve myself from my God given responsibility, so when my child dies I can get paid.
Any parent supporting this crap should remember that your child is your responsibility, not the governments. Unless you have been proven an unfit parent. In my book, asking for this is equivalent to admitting that you are an unfit parent and have no control over your children. If you dont know what games they play, where they go, who they hang around with; in general who they are. Then what the hell have you been doing all these years as a parent?
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