Hot Coffee In The Retail Space

Gamasutra has a piece talking to the Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association's Hal Halpin about the impact of recent gaming news on the retail space. From the article: "As of this minute, [the game retail industry's] three major opponents are the State of California, the State of Illinois and the State of Michigan ... More specifically, they are those states' respective attorney generals and their governors, who each signed into law bills which their legislatures knew full-well would be in violation of the First Amendment."

Comments

Wait a minute..

[sesshomaru]

"Attorney Jack Thompson is someone whom I believe has his heart in the right place actually," Halpin said. "I think it's clear to all involved that he earnestly believes his perspective shall be the one to prevail and he is willing to put all of himself - personally and professionally - into that fight...a position which I don't see countered on the 'pro' side of the debate. That said, we take issue with his opinion that our members have not done enough to stem the sale of Mature-rated games to minors, and in that regard, we appear to be adversarial."

This is extremely sad, and really makes me wonder if this guy has studied Jack Thompson at all. No one who actually knows anything about him would think that his heart is in the right place. There are actually probably some credible people on the anti- side of this debate, who I will oppose to my death, but Jack Thompson is not one of them.

Heck, I consider David Grossman to be another dishonest huckster, but he's like a pillar of honesty compared to Thompson. (Remember him? He used to have Thompson's part in this debate. I miss those days.)

Just read the man's (Jack's) words, he come across as a dishonest, bigoted grandstander whose primary concern is stroking his own massive Ego. I don't get why this guy is treating him like someone who is taking a reasonable, morally responsible position here.

Right....

[steveo777]

From TFA "My personal opinion is that there should absolutely be more AO-rated product available in the market. While I'm not a First Amendment absolutist, I believe in expression, and I also would hope that like music and movies adults interested in purely adult content should be able to purchase or rent similar content on differing media"

He also speaks in favor of Jack Thomson's efforts saying that the only front he disagrees with is the limitation of MA or AO games to the public in general... which is the only issue Thompson ever argues about (well, I know he'd like it banned, but that's not going to happen).

Personally, I agree that certain content should NEVER fall into the hands of minors. I don't care what the parents say. There is no such thing as a non-impressionable teenager. You can tell me how independent you or your kids are, but right up till you die your environment has an impact on you.

Any parent who thinks their 13 year old son is old enough to handle extreme violence (killing bystanders for fun), sexuality (nudity, scantally clad women/men doing their thing, porn), or drug use (the support of it) in any video games/movies (very few exceptions) more than likely would rather let the game machine and TV raise thier kids than step up to the plate. At any rate, they're not okay in my book.

The article doesn't make much sense, and it's kind of hard to understand if this guy's got a point.

They're worried about their wallets. This guy doesn't care what's actually in the game. Free speech is to keep voices from being quelled on a political front, for the most part. They aren't being silenced anyway. We aren't violating free speech, we're protecting our kids', and thier future's!

Re:Riddle me this

[Pxtl]

Actually, it was beyond a cheat code - it was a hack. There was no way to expose the disabled content in the game without pushing bits around manually. Afaik, you had to hexedit a savegame or gamestate or something to expose it. People then uploaded the hacked savegame file that you could DL to try it.

The problem is that there is no real analogy for it in the real world. Most other forms of media can't include unviewable content in any expressible form. Imagine if a VHS tape had a porn movie outside of the margins of the screen - you'd have to practically break your VCR to view it. Or a book had 2 pages glued together with dirty pictures on them - but the only way to expose it was with chemical solvents that you'd have to go to a specialty store to buy.

Re:First Amendment is Federal, not State

[hunterx11]

There is a 14th amendment, you know. In fact, it's newer than the 1st.