Unless they've been playing too much real-life beer pong, GamePolitics readers will likely recall the recent flap over the Wii-ware title formerly known as Beer Pong.
Released this week with an E rating, the renamed Pong Toss from JV Games sparked earlier protests from educators as well as a call from Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D) for the ESRB to re-rate the game as Adults Only.
Time has now bellied up to the bar to offer own examination of the Beer Pong controversy and finds that it was predictable given concerns over binge drinking:
Perhaps, in retrospect, JV Games should have seen this coming. After all, drinking games and video games may be two of college-kids' favorite pasttimes, but they are also a source of constant complaints from their middle-aged parents...
The controversy isn't entirely surprising. The point of beer pong is to get your friends drunk... Last fall, Georgetown University banned beer-pong... The University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Tufts University have also banned drinking games.
The anti-pong activism strikes JV Games' [co-owner Jag] Jaegar as somewhat fruitless. As long as students "have access to alcohol, they will create drinking games out of any activity," he says. More to the point, if students have access to alcohol, they'll drink it — no games necessary.
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Re: Time Looks at Beer Pong Controversy
Re: Time Looks at Beer Pong Controversy
Thanks good job;
Btw, I think Atari and Midway will drop out too, but mostly travesti because these guys have done nothing travesti or little and need to start saving costs. and dizi izle
YES.
Now I don't have to get off my ass for the important shit anymore!
Whats next, ordering pizza from Xbox live?
Wait... I think that sounds like a good idea.
But I think voting should MAKE you get off your ass, and see outside or a second while you go vote. I mean, your picking the president of the United States of America for God's Sake... least you can do is drive down there and punch out a card.
Re: Time Looks at Beer Pong Controversy
I'm all for freedom of ttnet vitamin speech and allowing rent a car game makers to put whatever they want in games, but there's one thing about this app that has me scratching my head. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from araç kiralama the previous article araba kiralama on this I gathered that players can use Google maps in-game to find the other (real-life?) dealers in their area. If this is the case, has travesti anyone considered what's stopping someone from using this app to actually move drugs between hands for reals?
But majority araba kiralama of their outrage araç kiralama stems from what it could DO TO children, not the content itself. Talk to one of these people and you'll find they don't think any books kiralık araba should be banned from children. Mention American Psycho and they talk about kiralık araç the redeeming value of using imagination to construct a story. Reading, no matter what the content, is largely viewed as a consequenceless activity for people of any age. The reason why I mention American Psycho is because of the content itself. Gaming never has and likely never will have any scenes where someone has sex with a severed head. Not gonna happen. Yet despite this, they'll fight tooth and nail to protect their children from two boys kissing in Bully but whatever they read is harmless... yeah.
The entire arguement is kiralık oto based upon a social normality inflicted by luddites who can't figure out the controls for Halo so it's frightening and terrifying and obviously the cause of youth violence on the rise even though, in reality, it's in decline (which is actually a HUGE suprise given minibüs kiralama the economies status). In a perfect world, we would have parents that actually parent. The idea of sales restrictions on media on oto kiralama any form to accomidate parental unwillingness to get involved with their child's life is the real problem to me. Here I am, 32 years old, and being held up at a self-scan rent a car needing to show ID before I can buy a $10 M rated game all because Soccer Momthra can't be bothered to look at the crap Billy Genericallystupidson does in his free time. It's too hard for her, so I have to suffer?
Re: Time Looks at Beer Pong Controversy
does he think college kids will use this to drink rather than having to set up real cups? or that's there'll be a tube accesory that fills with beer everytime someone gets a ball in your cup? or people drinking in the background?
Re: Time Looks at Beer Pong Controversy
As long as students have access to alcohol, they will create drinking games out of any activity
reminds me of a drinking game Peter Griffin played: Hit your hand with a hammer. If it hurts, take a drink.
岩「…Ace beats Jack」
岩「…」
Re: Time Looks at Beer Pong Controversy
"Released this week with a Teen rating, "
Actually, it's rated E for Everyone now. I first saw that on the trailer on the Wii's Nintendo Channel, and I double checked it on the Wii Shop channel just now.
Re: Time Looks at Beer Pong Controversy
Yeah, without the beer references, there is really nothing to make it a T game.
E. Zachary Knight
http://www.editorialgames.com
Oklahoma City Chapter of the ECA
MySpace Page: http://www.myspace.com/okceca
Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1325674091
E. Zachary Knight
Divine Knight Gaming
OK Game Devs
Random Tower
Re: Time Looks at Beer Pong Controversy
Has anyone even asked if there is even a market for such an obvious FAIL game like this?
I mean, if you factor in the cost of the console and the game versus buying a set of pingpong balls and MORE beer....
I'm getting the feeling that it's becoming more and more like when the everyone focused on the controversy regarding Manhunt 2 and yet failed to ask themselves if it was a good game to begin with.
Re: Time Looks at Beer Pong Controversy
I picked up the game and I think it's a lot of fun. It's worth the 8 bucks if any game was.
For the 2 days the game has been out, it's jumped to 11 place in download popularity. I would guess there is a market and it's obviously not a fail.
Re: Time Looks at Beer Pong Controversy
Is 21 the legal drinking age in the States still?
Re: Time Looks at Beer Pong Controversy
Did I miss something somewhere?
These ARE adults over 18 engaged in drinking and gaming, right? I didn't misread that?
Where's the controversy? Either you've got a kid drinking which is a bigger problem than some video game, or you've got a college kid drinking and playing video games, and you should keep your nose out of their business because they're adults and thus personally responsible for their actions.
Re: Time Looks at Beer Pong Controversy
Speaking as someone that that spent last weekend with some frineds in the most dagerously drunk city in US, I would just like to say that I have been palying beer pong for real and there is nothing bad about it... except if the ball gets dirty... or you pass out in the middle of it or the cops come about noise complaint or if someone throws up or if you wake up with the wrong person in the morning or if you wake up after a test in the morning or the hang over or, hmmm, maybe this game is a bad idea...
At least its better then chess drinking games... yes there are chess drinking games...
There are drinking games for everything, I really don't see why bear-pong causes the controversy...oh yes, because it is a video game....
Re: Time Looks at Beer Pong Controversy
Maybe if our "moral society" didn't make things such as drinking alcohol, sex, smoking, drugs, ect such a taboo maybe, just maybe we wouldn't have a "binge drinking epidemic" or however they want to call it. Same goes with the other things, if it weren't for how poorly our society handles these things perhaps if the taboo was reduced or eliminated it would and made less of a "big deal" teenagers and college students wouldn't be such idiots in how they handle alcohol.
Re: Time Looks at Beer Pong Controversy
What is a pasttime? does he perhaps mean a passtime? you know as in to pass the time.
Re: Time Looks at Beer Pong Controversy
I liked the time article. They not only talked about the video game, but also the whole controversy behind real world beer pong and college binge drinking. A nice well balanced peice.
E. Zachary Knight
http://www.editorialgames.com
Oklahoma City Chapter of the ECA
MySpace Page: http://www.myspace.com/okceca
Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1325674091
E. Zachary Knight
Divine Knight Gaming
OK Game Devs
Random Tower
Re: Time Looks at Beer Pong Controversy
New drinking game: every time the words "video game" and "controversy" come up on the same page of a national publication, take a drink. We'll be plastered in no time!
---
The Mammon Industry
Fangamer
Re: Time Looks at Beer Pong Controversy
Yeah, I got a chuckle out of this controversy. As the JV co-owner said kids will make drinking games. Or just, you know, drink the stuff. I doubt not having access to a game on the Wii will somehow deter Beer Pong.