Tag: Video Game Research

Earlier this year, Senator Coburn signed on as a cosponsor to legislation that would require the National Academy of Sciences to perform studies into the connection between violent games and violent actions. In response to this bill and our concerns over its implementation and potential ramifications on our industry, we sent a letter to Senator Coburn.

In that letter, we expressed concern over the bill’s primary sponsor Senator Rockefeller and over Senator Coburn’s involvement when he has clearly been against studies of similar nature in the past.

After nearly 3 months, we have finally received a response from Senator Coburn. (posted below) It certainly isn’t the response we may have wanted, but it isn’t an unexpected response. Few politicians will back out of their support for legislation once they become a full cosponsor of it.

Today, Oklahoma game developers sent its letter to Senator Coburn regarding his co-sponsorship of S. 134 Violent Content Research Act of 2013. This bill if passed would require the National Academy of Sciences to perform studies into the connection between violent games and violent actions. The primary issue with this legislation is that the bill’s sponsor has shown a heavy bias against the games industry which leads us to believe that any studies resulting from this bill could be tainted by his bias.

Senator Coburn has many times come out against the funding for such studies and it is unclear why he would support a bill that could potentially waste tax payer money as well as dilute the valuable research that can be done outside the influence of bias.

The below letter was sent to Senator Coburn as well as members of the media based in Oklahoma and throughout the US.