Video Games: Write the Presidential Candidates
Truthfully, these things probably go unnoticed. But, it doesn’t hurt to try. If you believe in video games as free speech, and you don’t want to see time and money wasted on trying to impose national regulations on them, let the presidential candidates know (I believe that parents are responsible for parenting their children, not the government). How? With a pre-written letter for all of us who are lazy! I added “Video Games: ” to the beginning of the subject when I sent mine for the sake of clarity.
When I have previously written to my congressman about legislation on gaming, I got back a form letter assuring me that he would do everything in his power to protect our children from the danger that video games represented.
It never hurts to write your elected officials. I say this as someone who is in receipt of a lot of issue-oriented letters. Now sure, some lawmakers will blow them off, but enough correspondence on a certain subject does make staffers and even the elected officials take notice.
It also doesn’t hurt to state your case as an adult gamer. Unfortunately, when elected officials think video games they think kids. They look at protecting kids from anything as being good. They need to realize there is a voting constituency of those 18 and over that is still huge gamers. We view those games as an example of freedom of speech and even art. I think our generation will be the first generation of adult gamers that will play until they can’t play anymore. Our elected officials need to know that.
The voting constituency of 18+ gamers is getting bigger every year. They’ll eventually have to change themselves because of the people who can vote for them. Most people 30 and below pretty much grew up with video games, so there’s already a pretty big chunk of voters whose votes can be swayed away from politicians who are anti-games.