Another year, another congressman proposing legislation demanding some sort of label on video games. This time around it's Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah), who introduced HR287, the Video Games Ratings Enforcement Act for consideration by the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee.

The act as written would require all games sold at US retailers to have a "clear and conspicuous" rating label from the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB,) and to give customers information on what those ratings means. This portion would have little practical effect on the state of the game market, as most major retailers already refuse to carry games that don't sport an ESRB rating (and, thus, almost all retail games carry such a rating). But it would make failure to comply a criminal matter rather than an issue of internal industry enforcement.

The second portion of the act would prevent retailers from selling AO-rated games to buyers under 18 and M-rated games to buyers under 17, as suggested by the ESRB. Again, most retailers already comply with this voluntarily, but this section of the law also seems to directly contradict the landmark 2011 Supreme Court ruling that overturned a law imposing similar content-based sales restrictions on games in California.

That ruling not only found no "longstanding tradition in this country of specially restricting children's access to depictions of violence," but deemed restrictions on video games alone "wildly underinclusive" when other media are not similarly constrained. This act differs slightly, though, by using the industry's own ESRB rating system as the guideline for the restrictions. In the California case, sales were restricted for games that were considered "ultraviolent," as determined by a government board.

Under the act, the Federal Trade Commission would be responsible for enforcing penalties of up to $5,000 per violation.

The new act takes a different tack than the previous Violence in Video Games Labeling Act, which tried to impose a Surgeon General-style warning on almost all video games stating "WARNING: Exposure to violent video games has been linked to aggressive behavior." That act, sponsored by California Democrat Joe Baca, failed in 2012, 2011, and 2009. If we had to guess, we'd say the new act's chances for passage are similarly dim, even with the increased attention game violence has been getting in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy.