from the that'll-fix-it dept

The whole “blame video games for everything” theme seems to be resurfacing more and more these days. It’s a bit strange, as I honestly thought that this bizarre reflex would be waning as each new generation that increasingly grew up with video games came to be adults. But apparently this needs to be reiterated: law enforcement doesn’t think video games cause violence, literary legends don’t think they cause violence, and, most importantly, scores of scholars don’t think video games cause violence.

And the practical reality doesn’t show they do either. In the middle of all of this public hand-wringing over video games turning the public into psychopathic killers… violent crime in America remains in a declining or flat trend. The same is true among American teenagers.

In Mexico, the story is, in fact, much different. There the crime rate, and violent crime rate, have risen significantly since 2000. The reported reasons for this are roughly what you’d expect: cartel-based crime has exploded and political violence is much more common than in the States.

Or, if you ask the Mexican government, it’s the fault of those damned violent video games.

Earlier this week, Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies approved a comprehensive financial package that includes an eight percent tax on video games with mature content. As first reported by Insider Gaming, the proposed tax covers games that have a C or D rating under Mexico’s video game age classification system, which is similar to ESRB in the US. The C rating is for players who are at least 18 years old and allows for extreme violence, bloodshed and moderate graphic sexual content, while the D rating is reserved for adults only and allows for prolonged scenes that include similar content.

The proposed law was first introduced in September, when the country’s Treasury Department claimed that “recent studies have found a relationship between the use of violent video games and higher levels of aggression among adolescents, as well as negative social and psychological effects such as isolation and anxiety.” The report cited a study from 2012 in a footnote, which also observed some positive associations with video games, including motor learning and building resilience.

The studies referenced in the comment were not cited. And I’d love to see which studies they’re talking about, because I’ve read up on this topic for fifteen years now. Sure, some studies out there suggest those kinds of links. And the larger collective researchers genuinely point out all the problems with the methodology of those studies. Plus, for every one of them there are a ton more that show no causal link between video games and violence.

But can I also point out how strange it is to see violent games demonized in this way… only to have the result be an 8% tax on them? If the government really believed its own citizens are dying as a result of these games, why does that same government want to generate tax revenue off of those deaths? And in what world is turning a $50 game into a $54 game the solution to this “problem”?

It isn’t, obviously, and that was never the aim here. Instead, you take an easy scapegoat to paper over government failure to control the drug trade and properly police the country for violence and you use that scapegoat as a tax grab. On the backs of dead citizens.

That’s pretty gross.

Filed Under: blame, mexico, taxes, video games