Just a fyi, I updated wordpress and once again had some trouble with it so if anything is broke please let me know.
Upgrading the blog software makes me feel like I do when I have to take my vehicle into the mechanic. It should be easy but it never is. Whenever you change one thing it turns out there are other things broken.
Next time my hosting bill is due I’m going to bite the bullet and move to a host that automatically updates wordpress for you.
Thanks to the Steam holiday sale I’ve just finished playing Fallout 3 and The Witcher. I’ve been thinking about them and I find the depictions of sexuality in them to be interesting.
As anyone who has played The Witcher knows, The Witcher is overtly sexual and features Sex Cards that are given out when the player has sex with someone. Of course the player, who plays as the male Geralt, can only have sex with a woman. Moreover, the sex cards have no real impact on game play. They are just trophies or notches on the belt of the player.
On the other hand, Fallout 3 takes the opposite approach and allows you to pick your sex but doesn’t really have any sexuality at all (at least that I encountered as I played it). You can’t have sex with anyone. One could argue that sexuality wouldn’t really fit in with the kitschy 50s-influenced theme of the Fallout series but there is also the fact that the SPECIAL system and the gameplay includes other realistic elements such as having to sleep and drinking alcohol so why not include sex?
As a thought exercise it is interesting to think how each game might change with the addition of a more open and non-heteronormative sexuality in the games. In Fallout 3 you can use your charisma to try to influence people but what if you could also try to bed them?
In The Witcher, there are several female characters that you not only have sex with but also have quest-based interactions. So when you encounter a woman you can try to bed her and you can also interact with her to further the game. With men you can only interact with them to further quests. Imagine how different your interactions with the men would be if you were trying to have sex with them as well? It would be a very different game.
Another aspect of these sex cards is that they are drawings of naked women. I’ve written before about how I don’t really get the point of looking at drawings of naked women and I still don’t. (I mean besides Betty Rubble, of course…) They censored these in the initial North American release but the “enhanced edition” is uncensored. I wonder if they would have made these things with naked male characters?
Apparently there won’t be any sex cards in The Witcher 2 Maybe the eventual Fallout 4 can take a little of The Witcher‘s sex and The Witcher can take some of Fallout’s flexibility.
On November 2nd the Supreme Court of the USA will begin hearing Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association. This is the case regarding California’s law regulating the sale of “violent” videogames to minors. There’s a lot of talk going on online about this case and whether or not such a law is needed or is constitutional. I don’t think it is needed nor do I think it is constitutional. In reading several stories and comments about the case I’ve also seen a lot of incorrect and misguided statements and so I thought it might be a good idea to write up a post clarifying the case and explaining why it is important.
First off, what does the law actually say? The full text of the law can be found in a pdf. The summary of the law states:
Existing law regulates the sale of certain merchandise, such as political items and sports memorabilia.
This bill would require violent video games to be labeled as specified and would prohibit the sale or rental of those violent video games, as defined, to minors. The bill would provide that a person who violates the act shall be liable in an amount of up to $1,000 for each violation.
The law goes on to state:
(d) (1) “Violent video game” means a video game in which of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being, if those acts are depicted in the game in a manner that does either of the following:
(A) Comes within all of the following
(i) A reasonable person, considering the game as a whole, would find appeals to a deviant or morbid interest of minors.
(ii) It is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the community as to what is suitable for minors.
(iii) It causes the game, as a whole, to lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.
(B) Enables the player to virtually inflict serious injury upon images human beings or characters with substantially human characteristics in a manner which is especially heinous, cruel, or depraved in that it involves torture or serious physical abuse to the victim.
(2) For purposes of this subdivision, the following definitions apply:
(A) “Cruel” means that the player intends to virtually inflict a high degree of pain by torture or serious physical abuse of the victim in addition to killing the victim.
(B) “Depraved” means that the player relishes the virtual killing shows indifference to the suffering of the victim, as evidenced by torture or serious physical abuse of the victim.
(C) “Heinous” means shockingly atrocious. For the killing depicted a video game to be heinous, it must involve additional acts of torture or serious physical abuse of the victim as set apart from other killings.
(D) “Serious physical abuse” means a significant or amount of injury or damage to the victim’s body which involves a substantial risk of death, unconsciousness, extreme physical pain, substantial disfigurement, or substantial impairment of the function of a
bodily member, organ, or mental faculty. Serious physical abuse, unlike torture, does not require that the victim be conscious of the abuse at the time it is inflicted. However, the player must specifically intend the abuse apart from the killing.
(E) “Torture” includes mental as well as physical abuse of the In either case, the virtual victim must be conscious of the abuse at the time it is inflicted; and the player must specifically intend to virtually inflict severe mental or physical pain or suffering upon the victim, apart from killing the victim.
(3) Pertinent factors in determining whether a killing depicted in a video game is especially heinous, cruel, or depraved include infliction of gratuitous violence upon the victim beyond that necessary to commit the killing, needless mutilation of the victim’s body, and helplessness of the victim.
So what’s the problem? Do I think that kids should play M for Mature rated games? No. The problem is the First Amendment. …And that’s where a lot of people commenting online make mistakes.
First, every single time I’ve seen a post online about videogame violence laws there has been at least one post amounting to something like, “What’s the big deal? This would make videogames just like movies.” This is probably the biggest misconception. In the USA no medium has its ratings regulated by law. The website filmratings.com, a site ran by the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) who actually give out the ratings, clearly states that film ratings in the USA are voluntary. The site does a good job of covering the history of ratings in the USA so if you aren’t familiar with the Hays Code and the creation of the ratings it is a worthwhile read. The website also has a frequently asked questions section that contains the following question and answers:
Do all movies have to be rated?
No. Submitting a film for a rating is a voluntary decision made by filmmakers. However, each member of the Motion Picture Association of America has agreed to have all its theatrically released films rated, and the overwhelming majority of filmmakers have their film rated.Is the rating system a law? If no, who enforces it?
No. The movie rating system is a voluntary system sponsored by the Motion Picture Association of America and the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO). The members of NATO enforce the system by asking for identification and refusing admission to R-rated movies by unaccompanied children or to NC-17 movies by children whether or not accompanied. Retailers and rental stores also enforce the ratings for movies released on video. Some parents inquire about whether it is lawful for other parents to bring their very young children to R-rated films. The R rating contains the strict and explicit caution that “generally, it is not appropriate for parents to bring their young children with them to R-rated movies.”
Now, just because film ratings are voluntary in theory doesn’t mean that they aren’t more or less mandatory in practice. This is because, as their own FAQ states, “each member of the Motion Picture Association of America has agreed to have all its theatrically released films rated.” This means all the movie studios rate their films for theatrical release and if a film isn’t rated (or even if it is rated NC-17) then theaters basically won’t show it. However, just because a film basically has to be rated to be shown in theaters doesn’t mean that they don’t sell unrated films on dvd because the practice of releasing “unrated editions” of movies is very common.
Similarly the “Parental Advisory Explicit Content” stickers on some music was created by the RIAA and is also voluntary.
USA Broadcast television’s ratings were suggested by the government but according to the government:
In Section 551 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 Congress gave the broadcasting industry the first opportunity to establish voluntary ratings. The industry established a system for rating programming that contains sexual, violent or other material parents may deem inappropriate and committed to voluntarily broadcast signals containing these ratings.
Broadcast television and radio stations can and have been fined for inappropriate content but that is only broadcast and not cable or satellite. The government can regulate broadcast content because they use the airwaves which theoretically belong to the public. The only reasons cable channels censor programming is because they want to and because they don’t want advertisers to pull ads (and ad money) from their shows and cable and satellite companies to stop carrying their programming (or make it so that customers would have to specially subscribe to the channel or something which would cost the channel viewers).
Some people have claimed that because this law only applies to minors that it isn’t a First Amendment issue and we shouldn’t worry about it. Now I’m no law talking guy and I’m guessing that most of the people writing these comments aren’t either so it doesn’t really matter if we think it is a First Amendment matter or not. What matters is what the judges think and judges both in deciding this particular law and over the years in deciding several other laws in several places including Illinois (pdfs of verdict in various appeals), Louisiana, Oklahoma, Indianapolis, and St. Louis have all been ruled unconstitutional.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals verdict on the California case begins:
We hold that the Act, as a presumptively invalid content-based restriction on speech, is subject to strict scrutiny and not the “variable obscenity” standard from Ginsberg v. New York. Applying strict scrutiny, we hold that the Act violates rights protected by the First Amendment because the State has not demonstrated a compelling interest, has not tailored the restriction to its alleged compelling interest, and there exist less-restrictive means that would further the State’s expressed interests. Additionally, we hold that the Act’s labeling requirement is unconstitutionally compelled speech under the First Amendment because it does not require the disclosure of purely factual information; but compels the carrying of the State’s controversial opinion.
From the verdict declaring the Oklahoma law unconstitutional:
Having viewed the portions of three games submitted by Defendants, the Court is inclined to agree. Whether the games are “suitable,” however, is not the applicable standard for the propriety of the government placing a content-based restriction on dissemination of protected speech, even dissemination to minors.
Because the Act applies only to video games and software containing “inappropriate violence,” its provisions constitute a content-based regulation on protected expression. See IDSA, 329 F.3d at 958; Blagojevich, 404 F. Supp. 2d at 1071. Hence, the attempted regulation is presumptively invalid and subject to the strictest scrutiny under the First Amendment. R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul. Under this analysis, the Act will be upheld only if Defendants can show that the regulation is necessary to serve a compelling state interest. Strict scrutiny also requires that the Act be narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. Id. The fact that Defendants are attempting to regulate the flow of information to minors, rather than to adults, does not render the values protected by the First Amendment any less applicable. Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville. To the best of the Court’s knowledge, the Supreme Court has not “suggest[ed] that the government’s role in helping parents to be the guardians of their children’s well-being is an unbridled license to governments to regulate what minors read and view.” IDSA, 329 F.3d at 959-60; see also Blagojevich, 404 F. Supp. 2d at 1076.
[….]Defendants submit that the standard of Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629 (1968), should apply and allow the government to regulate objectionable depictions in the interest of helping parents with “protecting minors.” (See Defs.’ Resp. at 6, 10.) The Supreme Court in Ginsberg permitted enhanced regulation of distribution of sexually explicit material that is obscene as to minors but not obscene as to adults. Ginsberg, 390 U.S. at 636-40. The Ginsberg decision, however, concerned only sexually explicit or “obscene” material, which is unprotected by the First Amendment, rather than the protected expression at issue in this case. See Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 23 (1973). The Supreme Court has held that, when used in the context of the First Amendment, the word “obscenity” refers only to works that deal with sex. Maleng, 325 F. Supp. 2d at 1185 (citing Miller, 413 U.S. at 24 (“[W]e now confine the permissible scope of [regulation of obscene material] to works which depict or describe sexual conduct.”)). It is immaterial that the subject matter of the video games could be characterized as “disgusting or degrading.” (Defs.’ Resp. at 8). No court has expanded the definition of obscenity to include portrayals of violence, “inappropriate” or otherwise; each is a “distinct categor[y] of objectionable depiction.” Kendrick, 244 F.3d at 574; Maleng, 325 F. Supp. 2d at 1185. In contrast to Ginsberg, the Act in the instant case is attempting to regulate protected expression. Therefore, Defendants may not rely on Ginsberg as authorizing the enhanced restrictions of the Act on dissemination to minors.
Both of these cases as well as some of the others listed above focus around interpretations of obscenity and a case known as Ginsberg v. New York. This brings up another common comment from people who do not see a problem with laws regulating the sales of videogames to minors. People will often write or say, “We don’t let kids buy alcohol, tobacco, guns, or pornography, so what’s wrong with not letting kids buy violent videogames?” The problem with this is, again, rooted in the First Amendment.
Alcohol and tobacco are drugs (or in the case of tobacco, a plant that contains a drug) and are not free speech. They are drugs that have clearly demonstrable negative effects on health. Even at that the tobacco companies fought strenuously against regulations of tobacco sales and advertising.
Guns are a Second Amendment issue and not a First Amendment issue. As little as I know about the First Amendment I know even less about the Second, so I won’t really discuss it here.
That leaves us with pornography. This is the category that violent videogames are most often compared to and with the advent of the phrase “torture porn” and similar phrases, the comparison is more muddled. Before getting to the First Amendment issues, let me point out that pornography is a genre and not a medium. Videogames are a medium. Pornographic videogames would already be subject to the same laws that regulate other forms of pornography. OK, on to the First Amendment…
As I said earlier, I’m no lawyer so all this comes from stuff I’ve read and searched for online. When you try to search for laws regulating children’s access to pornography you mainly come across articles about the legality of child porn which is not really the issue here (and of course searching for ‘children pornography -“child pornography”‘ can also get rid of articles that are relevant but also mention that phrase).
In searching, however, I’ve found that there’s not really any legal definition of “pornography.” Instead, what the federal government does define is “obscenity.” The problem with defining pornography and deciding what is and is not “pornographic” is that different people have different definitions. Are images of naked adults pornographic? What if they are in anatomy books or in art museums? What about depictions of intercourse? What if they are in sex education classes? In some societies a woman’s exposed ankle is pornographic. The Victorians were said to cover up tables so table legs wouldn’t be exposed.
Obscenity isn’t much easier to define but there is at least the Miller Test. Developed as a result of 1973’s Miller vs. California the test has three parts:
- Whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards”, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
- Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law,
- Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
With phrases like “the average person,” “community standards,” and “patently offensive,” you can see that the Miller Test is not clear cut. There were numerous cases before 1973 over obscenity and there have been numerous cases since. You will also notice that the California law is modeled after this test as have been many of the other laws that have been ruled unconstitutional.
The case which established that something not obscene for adults may be found harmful for children and regulated is the previously mentioned 1968 case Ginsberg vs. New York. In the article, “On Protecting Children from Speech.” (Chicago-Kent Law Review, Vol. 79, No. 3 (2004), pp. 3-53), Amitai Etzioni does a good job of covering the history of regulating children’s access to pornography. He writes that Ginsberb vs. New York established, “that children should not be allowed the same access to certain types of materials as adults, and that the state is entitled to pass laws aiding parents in carrying out their duties” (6). Etzioni goes on to explain that subsequent cases such as 1978’s FCC v. Pacifica Foundation (which was about broadcasting George Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words”) have reaffirmed this position.
Despite these clear rulings, as with defining obscenity, the problem still remains in determining what is and isn’t “unacceptable” and “harmful to minors.” Etzioni tells us that several laws designed to protect minors from “harmful material” have been found unconstitutional including federal laws such as the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (“CDA”) and the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 (“COPA”).
The Supreme Court ruled that the CDA’s prohibitions on “indecent transmission” and “patently offensive display” violated freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment. Though it affirmed the compelling interest of the government in “protecting minors from potentially harmful materials” on the Internet, the Court found that “the CDA places an unacceptably heavy burden on protected speech, and that the defenses do not constitute the sort of `narrow tailoring’ that will save an otherwise patently invalid unconstitutional provision.” The Court ruled that the scope of the legislation was too broad, attempting to shield those under the age of eighteen from certain content at too great an expense to adults’ access to protected speech. (Etzioni 7-8).
Similarly COPA was found unconstitutional when the court found that “COPA [was] neither narrowly tailored nor the least restrictive means available to achieve the government’s goal of protecting children from harmful online materials, and also that it impermissibly encroache[d] on speech that is constitutionally protected for adults” (Etzioni 8). Etzioni goes on to examine five other cases where laws attempting to protect children from pornography were found to be too broad and ruled unconstitutional. (It should be noted that Etzioni’s ultimate point is that there is more evidence for regulating violence than there is pornography — something I strongly disagree with. Despite this I still find his article worth reading.)
Thus, while we tend to believe that laws protecting children from pornography are well established, the truth is that they are not. Moreover, the same argument that these laws are unconstitutional because they are two broad and would have a chilling effect on free speech is also the same argument that judges have used to rule laws regulating videogame sales unconstitutional. It seems that if pornography laws which have a long history of legislation and court rulings are still highly contentious then videogame laws which have a much shorter legislative history would be at least as contentious.
To (finally) finish, I hope that I’ve clarified some aspects of videogame laws and done a decent job of explaining why these laws have been found unconstitutional. This case is important not only because it is the first time that the Supreme Court has ruled over whether or not videogames are even deserving of protection under the First Amendment (at least one ruling that was subsequently overturned stated that videogames were NOT speech) but also because it will be important in both subsequent legislation involving videogames and regulating content for children. If the Supreme Court rules California’s laws constitutional, there will be a flood of similar laws and the videogame industry may end up deciding that M-rated games just aren’t worth making thus limiting what game creators are able to make.
I don’t know what the Supreme Court will decide. With recent rulings like the Citizens United case and the case regarding videos depicting animal cruelty the court has taken a pretty strong pro-First Amendment stance but that’s no guarantee that they will do the same in this case. If anyone has any better insights into the legalities in this case I’d love to learn about it.
Scott Pilgrim is a tough movie for me to review. I’m not sure if I liked it. I did like it better than the comic. I read the first issue and flipped through the second. There were some good things. I chuckled a couple times. However, there was a lot I didn’t like — a lot of things that were also in the film. The number one thing I hated was the art. I’ve been a comic book fan since before I could read and while art is subjective I find little redeeming about this art. There were times I couldn’t even tell the characters apart. But I’m writing about the movie not the comic…
I’ve seen Scott Pilgrim compared to films like Napoleon Dynamite (a film that I turned off after about 20 minutes), and Juno (a film I’ve avoided seeing because the clips I’ve seen make me want to run away). So basically movies for hipsters. Scott Pilgrim is pretty much a movie for hipsters too. Now I don’t mean that if you like the film you are a hipster. I may be judgmental but I’m not that judgmental.
Now of course there is the question of “what is a hipster?” Different people may mean different things but when I think of hipsters I think of style over substance. I think of superficial appropriation of things without any depth of knowledge about them. And fixed gear bikes. What is the deal with those?
And Scott Pilgrim is about style and not substance. Sure the whole message is about Scott confronting his past blaa blaa blaa. However, saying that in the last ten minutes doesn’t really make the rest of the superficial stuff ok. I liked the style of the fights. Those were fun. Those were in my opinion a good use of style. What wasn’t were the videogame references. Those were the most superficial thing in the film.
So many people have said and written that this is a film for gamers. But they are wrong. There is no depth to the videogame references. They are all references made by a someone who seems to have had a NES as a kid and hasn’t had any contact with gaming outside of Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero since then. The most obscure reference was to Clash at Demonhead. There are tons of references to Zelda and Final Fantasy but they aren’t that subtle or obscure that they would be known to gamers.
This does make me wonder if this is just my own bias or if this is a legitimate criticism. I’m not really that into Zelda and I don’t like Final Fantasy. To be honest I’m not a console gamer and don’t really like many Japanese games — which make up the majority of the videogame references in Scott Pilgrim. If there had been a first person segment in the film maybe I would have liked it more.
However, I still think that the videogame references are shallow even if they are from games I don’t love. Most of the references in the film consist of taking fonts, sounds, or status bars from games. Beyond “hey that’s a reference to X” there’s no much else to them. It doesn’t really even make any specific references to elements of the game beyond what someone would get from looking at them for five minutes. There’s no chickens that attack you, no Phoenix Down, no warp pipes (although I guess you could argue that the way Ramona gets around is similar to that). Heck, can a player get an All Your Base?
Originally I was probably going to end this post with this. I might have talked about how Ramona has no agency in the film, or how creepy it is that Scott is going out with a high school girl, or how there seems to be some fetishization of Asianness going on (and the fact that the author is partially of Asian ancestry doesn’t dismiss that argument). However, I recently ran across a post on NPR about Scott Pilgrim that included some links to reviewers hating the film because of its videogame references.
I think that the fact that one of the quoted reviewers felt the need to start his review with “First of all, I’m not a video gamer. I have discovered more appealing ways to not have a life” or with a definition of fan service (a professional writer thinks it is ok to do that? I tell my students they will fail if they start by defining a word) and by writing, “Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World is Fan Service: The Movie, an insular, punishingly alienating experience preaching only to the faithful, devoted hearts of arrested 12-year-old boys. It’s singularly fixated on video games and shallow visions of women as one-dimensional objects to be either obtained or discarded and offers no possible point of entry to anybody over the age of 30.” shows just how large a chasm there is between videogame culture and those who don’t know anything at all about games (after all the vast majority of videogame references in the films are from games made in the 80s which means that pretty much the only people who would have a point of entry to it are people near the age of 30).
In these reviews one can see not only an ignorance of videogames but an actual distain for them. It may not hurt that the writer who claimed to have “more appealing ways to not have a life” (apparently trolling on the internet is more appealing to him. Check his responses in that reviews comments from some examples) was born in 1956 but it does show an astounding amount of willful ignorance and outright contempt for videogames. No wonder there are always news stories about “murder simulators” and the Supreme Court is going to hear a case on videogame laws .
I think this explains why Scott Pilgrim didn’t do well at the box office. If it is too hipster to appeal to the hardcore gamers and some non-gamers dismiss anything gaming related then all that leaves are the hipsters. …And they are probably too cool to actually go see any movie that anyone’s heard of any way.
I just noticed that Jack Thompson was on Eagle Forum Radio back on June 5th. Eagle Forum is a super right wing group created by Phyllis Schlafly who thinks that “By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape.” The show is also apparently co-hosted by her son, Andy Schlafly, who is the creator of Conservapedia and the effort to write a conservative translation of the Bible. With this group you know it would be an interesting show…
I took a couple hours of my life and listed to Jacko lie, lie, and lie again and I thought I would list the lies and omissions that were made on the show:
Of course I should be revising my dissertation and not fact checking Jack Thompson. I guess that I can always blame Jack if I drop out of college…
I’m currently writing a dissertation chapter on whiteness at LAN parties. That makes it a kind of coincidence that there’s an article over at Kotaku about the fact that the characters in the movie Prince of Persia are mostly being played by white people.
What’s most interesting about that article isn’t the actual content of the article itself but the comments. Any bets on what race most of the people commenting about how race shouldn’t matter are?
Now that the semester is winding down I’ve got a bit of time to blog (and write my last couple dissertation chapters and then revise all of them and write the intro and conclusion chapters…). A couple things have happened (and are in the process of happening) that have the gaming world buzzing: Roger Ebert wrote about videogames again and the Supreme Court is taking up the case of California’s law forbidding the sale of videogames to minors.
Regarding Ebert, he ends by asking, “Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art?” which echoes my own call for all of us to stop caring about “art.” Tons and tons of people have tried to convince him he’s wrong — so many in fact that I don’t even want to bother hunting down links to some of the stories that do it. I’m not interested in arguing with him because I don’t really care if he thinks games are art or not.
However, it is very disconcerting that he seems to think that he can judge games by looking at screenshots. Would he write a review of a film based on the text on the back of the dvd box? That’s pretty ignorant to think that he can judge games in that manner.
Unfortunately, this is just the top of the iceberg because look at the picture at the top of his post. Now I have no idea if he picked that picture or not. I would say that he probably didn’t but he did pick the rest of the pictures in the post so perhaps he did. Regardless, the picture didn’t just appear by itself. Someone chose that picture. What is in that picture? A kid. So someone whether it was Ebert of just some random web guy, wanted to pick a picture of a gamer and they picked a kid — once again perpetuating the stereotype that games are for kids and in this instance also seemingly indicating that games are in and of themselves childish. Wow. That’s pretty sad.
OK, now onto the Supreme Court…
I’m pretty confident that the Supreme Court will say this law is unconstitutional not only because lower courts have consistently ruled that laws regulating videogame sales are unconstitutional but also because of the recent Supreme Court decision declaring a law banning animal cruelty videos unconstitutional.
Today the Diane Rehm Show had a segment on the Supreme Court taking on the Videogame law regulating videogame sales and had Leland Yee, the California politician behind the bill, Craig Anderson, the guy who has never met a form of media that didn’t cause aggression, and a couple other people I don’t remember. Now, I’ve previously criticized Anderson’s vague use of the term “aggression” so I was pleasantly surprised that Diane Rehm’s first question to him was “what is the difference between agression and violence?” Anderson initially tried to avoid answering the question but then Rehm re-asked the question and Anderson admitted that while violence is generally understood as an extreme form of aggression, it is very rare for aggression to actually turn into violence. I think that it really key because in that statement Anderson (who also in this CNN video says that videogame-caused “aggression” isn’t really any worse than film or television-causes “aggression” ) says that videogames don’t really make kids violent.
If the most well known person who thinks videogames cause aggression doesn’t think they make you violent then that makes the case that they are so bad that we need laws against selling them much harder to prove.
Personally, I look forward to the SCOTUS shutting down these kinds of laws once and for all.
…well that and Jack Thompson getting involved and saying some crazy things…
Allow me a non-videogame-related rant here… It is still about moral panics surrounding children and media though so it could easily have been about videogames instead of movies.
I caught a story on the local NPR station last night about someone threatening a lawsuit against Redbox because they sell “R-rated” movies. I searched for something about the story and apparently it got picked up by a few local news outlets including the Indianapolis Fox Affiliate and the Louisville ABC Affiliate. According to stories the whole thing is being stirred up by Vanderburgh Country Prosecutor Stan Levco.
Of course there’s two little details that neither of the two stories linked to above or any of the other stories I saw seemed to mention: First, The MPAA rating system “is a voluntary system” and the ratings are not legally enforced. The only possible grounds for a lawsuit that there would be would be under obscenity or pornography laws. Levco almost certainly knows this. So why is he causing a stir? That leads to the second missing detail: Levco is running for re-election.
So this is just a ploy to get into the headlines so that Levco can say he is “fighting for families” and concerned about “family values” without having to do anything. The minute I heard this story I immediately wondered if the guy was up for re-election because that’s the only time public officials try to start legal proceedings related to media. I guess Levco couldn’t find any easy videogame targets.
Heaven forbid that any of the media outlets that aired this story would take two minutes to wonder why Levco was doing this or anything… That’s some good reportering there…
In my last post I asked, “Where have you gone Jack Thompson?” Well, if you say his name then he’ll appear…
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick’s full DICE speech, Jack Thompson says ‘Gotcha!’
Once upon a time Jack Thompson was the nemesis of gamers. Then he got permanently disbarred but that didn’t stop him as he claimed to be fighting the Florida Bar and probably lots of other crazy things. He also started writing an occasional column for some online conservative site.
Now, however, he seems to have disappeared. Once a search for Jacko on google news showed up all sorts of antics by him but now searching for Jacko on google news just returns the occasional story mentioning him as a foil and stories about other people named Jack Thompson. (I wonder if the actor Jack Thompson ever gets people accusing him of hating videogames?) Jacko hasn’t even posted a column since August of 2009.
I wonder if Jacko has just given up or if he’s planning some new media frenzy. I kind of hope he keeps at it because his insane claims sure were entertaining even if there were some people who believed his lies. [ad#ad-1]