by The Baron von Gamer
So in the spirit of kicking off this new-fangled "blogging" thingamajig you kids are doing these days, I decided to celebrate my new-found opining on the video game industry with the celebration over the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in which it rejected the law that was seeking to place governmental restrictions on the sale of violent video games to minors, thus placing it on the same level of restriction as tobacco, alcohol and pornography.
For those of you who are interested in the details of this ruling, you can check out the ruling here. Before I unleash the first featured list of this blog I must say this:
Suck it, Jack Thompson.
Anyway, moving on to the top 4 reasons why this ruling, um, rules:
1. Set legal precedent for games to be under First Amendment protection
This is really the part that gets my gamer juices flowing. The ruling states video games, "like protected books, plays and movies, they communicate ideas through familiar literary devices and features distinctive to the medium." While I believe there should have been a clause not protecting the Call of Duty franchise under the "communicating ideas" part (similar to my apparently unpopular idea that Michael Bay should have his First Amendment rights reneged; still don't understand that...), I think it's safe to say this is probably the greatest legal victory for gamers and game developers around the world in the history of the medium. But the key here is the legal precedent of the thing: ANY time some douche in the same vein as the afore-insulted Jack Thompson or Joe Lieberman attempts to sue or censor someone in the gaming industry, the defendants can simply say, "Uhhh, remember Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association of 2010?"
2. The 7-2 Margin
A 7-2 margin is an INCREDIBLY significant margin. Challengers to Supreme Court rulings typically have a very difficult (nigh impossible) time attempting to overturn the ruling when the margin is THAT wide (yeah, yeah that's what she said).
3. The statement that games aren't any worse than other forms of media
As someone who actually wrote his senior thesis in part on the effects of forms of media on child and adolescent violent behavior, I'd be the first to say that there is a definite correlation between the two. But being that same someone, I'd also be the first to say that correlation does not equal causation. And because of their interactive nature, video games have been unfairly targeted more often than other forms of media recently. That is, until this ruling, which stated that "psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes [emphasis added] minors to act aggressively. Any demonstrated effects are both small and indistinguishable from effects produced by other media." In other words, games aren't the new kid in class getting picked on by all the bullies anymore. The new kid may still be new, but the teachers finally stepped in and told the bullies to KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF.
4. The fact that it might make folks like Roger Ebert cease being such a condescending fart about video games
Okay I won't hold my breath on this one. While Ebert did ultimately somewhat relent and say he shouldn't have said that video games would "never be art", his July 2010 apology column titled "Okay, kids, play on my lawn" (yeah that's not condescending at all) basically said that he should be more familiar with the medium before he makes such a claim, but STILL made it a point to say he still believed what he initially said (not sure why he would even bother to write a follow-up). What does this have to do with the Supreme Court ruling? Not much directly, I admit, but it should show that people of what I call the Ebert School of Thought are now less caught up with the times than THE GOVERNMENT. That should say something.
The following videos with which I close certainly say to where games have gone and I would posit they certainly deserve a place in Ebert's precious pantheon of "art".
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