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Video Games, the First Amendment, and Obscenity
An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from an article about how obscenity laws and the first amendment relate to modern games:
"This question is a tough one, for the very good reason that no video game developer or publisher has ever been prosecuted for obscenity related to video games. As we have seen, if the medium of video games are held to the same standard as literature and film then, presumably, they can also be held to be obscene. One of the reasons for the lack of obscenity prosecution against video game developers and publishers is that the courts have limited obscenity to sexual content only. In fact, the courts have gone so far as to specifically reject calls to alter the definition of 'obscenity' to include violent content in video games. The other major reason is the vast majority of video games sold in the United States have only small amounts of sexual content thanks to the Electronic Software Rating Board."
So games don't have much potentially obscene content because of existing censorship and fear of further censorship if they included sexual content? Talk about a chilling effect...
Declaration of Independence. Three inalienable rights. It shocks the hell out of me that people don't understand everyone's entitled to these. If what I'm doing doesn't deprive other people of these three rights, I should be able to do it. Yes, that's a libertarian viewpoint but it's in the Declaration of Independence. If I want to play Left 4 Dead in my home, what do you care? It's not depriving you of any of these three things and I enjoy it. Should I start saying that you sitting at home all night reading The Holy Bible is bothering me? Because it's about the same damn thing with Lazarus and the whipping and the lashing and the begetting and the Mary Magdalene and the apocalypse ... See how stupid this argument is? It's a waste of time. It has been this way with books and movies and it will be that way with video games. Get over it and move on to target things worth your time censoring and prosecuting like child pornography.
My work here is dung.
The lack of sex has little to do with first amendment as its pretty much all based on the self censorship the industry is doing via the ESRB.
A game that contains sex gets rated AO by the ESRB and AO means that it won't be allowed to make it on either Nintendo's, Sony's or Microsoft's console. There is still the PC market, but Walmart and other shops won't carry AO either. So AO pretty much results in a game that you can't sell, so everybody avoids it as good as they can, meaning no sex in games.
It does amaze me that we live in a society where realistically depicted violence, and in the case of some news stories, actual violence, is considered acceptable. Meanwhile, a single breast being exposed during a Superbowl half-time show resulted in outrage and a strong desire to "crack down" on obscenity. The message there is that violence is normal and acceptable while sexuality is obscene and must be censored.
You are quite right about a chilling effect. That tells me we are doing things the hard way. Rather than censorship, I'd much rather we teach people that fictional depictions like video games can be appreciated for what they are without also being idolized and emulated. Any adult who can't understand what that means is not really an adult but an overgrown child. So I assume this must be about children. If parents are worried about their children being exposed to the more severe video games or movies or any other media, I fully support their right to act as the "benevolent dictators" that they are and control what their children have access to. However, I expect them to actually be parents instead of relying on institutional censorship to carry out their responsibility for them.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Dude, WE KNOW.
We're waiting on the AARP crowd to die off so we can take control. There's a shit-ton of baby boomers out there, they're active and they vote.
Once they're all dead, we'll "relax" more as a country.
But yeah, I agree, I'd rather see a delicious breast than some dude get blown to pieces by a gun in a movie.
Don't kid yourself though, Europe is just as screwed up as the US is, just in slightly different ways.
Sent from your iPad.
What's to stop someone from making such a game, that will work on some or all of the platforms, and marketing and selling it independently?
The fact that it won't play on the vast amount of consoles that aren't unhacked?
Sure, you may not get offical blessing by Sony, Nintendo or MS, and you may have to omit their trademarked names, but, surely there is no law about what you can plug into your own game unit that you own, is there?
Are you completely unaware of the DMCA?
If the companies start bitching, just throw out the 1st amendment rights and the fair use doctrine.
And you'd lose on the grounds that circumventing copy protections in such a manner as you described is clearly against the law.
Well, part of parenting is teaching your kids how to react to things that you don't usually allow. If you'd rather your kid not look at nude photos of women or play extremely violent video games, you don't just keep them out of your house and pretend that they don't exist. At some point, your child will discover them. Instead, you have a talk with them about why you consider those things bad (kids aren't too fond of "because I said so") and how to react if they should come upon something like that. It's what I do with my five year old son (and will do with my two year old son when he gets older).
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I'm kind of failing to see what the loss to humanity is if some commercial sex games aren't made.
I can definitely see that a game with strong sexuality can have artistic merit, that's not what this is about. On the other hand, I think most games like that would never, ever be made by anything other than an individual or small group that would make it regardless of whether it would be commercially viable.
What humanity could stand to lose is the "we know what's best for you" mentality. Humanity could stand to lose that, the same way that a cancer patient could stand to lose a tumor.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Dude, WE KNOW.
We're waiting on the AARP crowd to die off so we can take control. There's a shit-ton of baby boomers out there, they're active and they vote.
Once they're all dead, we'll "relax" more as a country.
I bet you don't. You'll be their age then, and I bet you'll be pretty much the same. Remember that those baby boomers were the "free love" and "turn on, tune in, drop out" generation!
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I have a different theory on old married couples.
I think they are a classic skinner box type training.
Every time you ask for sex, you had a good chance of being rejected so you ask less over time and have less interest and desire to avoid the pain of rejection.
I say this because I was in a long relationship with a lady where six times a month we got together and it was always a "sure thing" and the sex got better over time -- just walking in the door we would both be ready and we felt "safe" that it was going to happen and we were not going to be rejected. Other times were a "sure thing" that nothing would happen and that also felt safe and relaxed in a different way. People talk about liking spontaneity but it brings with it a risk of rejection and the subsequent ego hit.
I could ask him/her, but I have a 75% chance of rejection-- never mind. besides he/she rejected me and made me feel unattractive last time I asked.
OTH, a lot of affairs are smoking hot because-- the people know they are getting together for hot sex (tm).
Plus, then there are the bonus rejections for "I don't want to have sex because you didn't take out the garbage", "I don't want to have sex because my boss chewed me out and I'm worried about getting fired", "I don't want to have sex because you embarrassed me in front of the Jones."
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As far as the watchmen went-- I felt the violence was beyond the book. And even where it was the same, it seemed more extreme because you could hear it and see it at the same time.
I think the watchmen was ruined by lacking a good soundtrack. It had a good score, but the soundtrack was weak and, at times, misleading. A good sound track cues your emotions appropriately for what is on the screen. The watchman soundtrack failed in that regard.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.