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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...
I can't remember off the top of my head what the case cite is, but the SCOTUS decided that each local has the choice of deciding for its self what is obscene and what is not.
For example, what might be obscene in Kentucky may be par for the course in California and so on.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
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.
Do keep in mind that the legal definition is really, past all the smoke and mirrors, whatever the judge personally finds distasteful. Deciding what the population doesn't need or want to view for them has no place in a free society.
Then of course, we're not a free society.
The law often makes up legal principles (usually giving them Latin names to try to make them seem magical and justified) to override other legal principles. Obscenity is a great way to override freedom of speech by taking speech, labeling it "obscenity," and then claiming that it's "not really speech." A problem with the constitution colliding with the rights of minors and school? No problem! "En loco parentis," is right up your alley (whether you agree with the concept or not). The "community standards" excuse is, even if it is applied as per the name, is a violation of individual rights which the legal system has been more than happy to sacrifice in the name of a sort of vicious populism. Why community standards in obscenity, and not political opinion? Obscenity, political opinion, all of it is simply how one takes it. Personally, I find Nazis more distasteful than goatse, but we're not at silencing them (yet...).
This also extends into the domain of politics, where wars become "police action."
Don't think freedom means a damn thing if the government gets to play with the meaning of words, or if whatever is popular reigns over individual rights.
"I do have a cause though. It is obscenity. I'm for it. Unfortunately the civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it owing to the nature of the laws as a matter of freedom of speech and stifling of free expression and so on but we know what's really involved: dirty books are fun. That's all there is to it. But you can't get up in a court and say that I suppose. It's simply a matter of freedom of pleasure, a right which is not guaranteed by the Constitution unfortunately."
(at which point he launched into this jaunty tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pva35TFiBfI)
I am officially gone from
Many countries, even in the English-speaking world, still have official censorship bodies which won't let you publish content without state approval. That's general content, not particular content niches like pornography. Games have been effectively banned in Europe or Australia from being sold for being too violent or "mature." By comparison, the United States has no effective apparatus of censorship. The most that can happen is that a prosecutor brings you up on charges of violating local obscenities laws, but then the prosecutor has to show that your sexual content is gratuitous and has no independent (artistic, literary, etc.) merit. If you had a map where a character walks through a realistic strip club, and gets into a shoot out, that content is likely to be protected under the same precedents that protect R-rated movies with similar content.
Now, if you create a sex simulator, even one like Hot Coffee, well, you're up shit creek. That aside, our system is significantly freer and more in line with "let adults be adults and let parents be responsible" than the majority of the industrial world on content in general.
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.
Anyone know of any court cases involving Japanese sex games? I know they get pretty obscene..
There's been a lot of talk and grandstanding for banning games like "RapeLay" but I don't think there's been a court case or decree. It's pretty difficult to get a hold of through a major outlet though. And I think Japan's version of the ESRB is passing new standards preventing the publishing of games like this. No court cases on US soil regarding this title to my knowledge. From what I've read, it seems to be the most explosively controversial title out there right now.
My work here is dung.
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
Sexual content in a movie that would earn an R rating by the MPAA, earns an A (adults only) rating in game. See, for example, the Hot Coffee version of GTA.
This applies to retailers as well, the same retailer will accept the content in a movie but not in a game. It's not just chilling, it's deadly to a game.
Hm. And, while we're on it, there's nothing wrong with me setting up in public and warning people about how awful homosexuals are, is there? After all, it's free speech. It's not even obscene. Oh, wait, you call that "hate" speech and have decided that "hate" is wrong, whereas "immorality" or "obscenity" is not, thus you want free obscenity and bridled hate.
You have failed: It's only hate speech if you say "The Queers are ruining the soil, and we should do something about them." It's still legal to say that the Queers are ruining the soil to make landing strips for Gay Martians... unless you're actually harming someone. Actually, it has to be a direct incitement to violence to even be prosecutable in most cases; a sort of vague, general "someone should do something about those damned queers" is usually not actionable, even if you find it objectionable.
Anyway, libel, defamation and slander are illegal, so if you want to put up a stand and hand out pamphlets that tell lies about fags, it's against the law. However, it's against the law for them to put up a stand and tell lies about you... under the same laws.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No, it wasn't. Mass Effect was rated "M" and can be purchased just about anywhere that sells video games.
The controversy that surrounded that game alleged that there was rape and other sexual disturbing scenes, which was completely false. There exists one (1) "bed scene" that is more tame than what you see on TV.
I have a bad feeling about this...
You Americans need to relax a little bit concerning sex. I think violence is a lot worse than sex.
It's OK for kids to see people being machinegunned into pieces, blood and flesh everywhere, but a boobie is simply too outrageous. WTF!?!
Here in Europe, most movies have nudity in them but in a Hollywood movie, if you see some boobs for a fraction of a second, it's outrageous. The leg-crossing of Sharon Stone in Fatal Instinct was deemed as the sexiest thing on cinema, but truly, it's pretty standard in European movies. Of course, in American movies and series, violence is rampant, even in family-rated stuff.
On American TV, I've seen boobs blurred out in movies, music videos, etc. I've even seen something incredible, Naomi Watts was masturbating in Mulholland Drive, but she was only filmed from the waist up, so you could only see her arm going up and down, suggesting what she was doing. They fucking blurred her arm! How stupid is this?
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.
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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.
Skinnerian radical behaviorism has all but been completely thrown out the window in modern psychology. These days, cognitive psychology is all the rage. Even more modern post-Skinnerian behaviorists like Tolman had began thinking along more cognitive lines.
Thing is that I, along with many others, including my wife who self-identifies as a bevaviorist, believe that Skinnerian radical behaviorism is far too simplistic a view and that with advances in modern technology we have to look beyond simple operant conditioning as causes of human behavior, because at this point, quite frankly, we can.
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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
Actually the part about the proprietary bootstrap code isn't an issue as was decided in Sega v Accolade in which Accolade reverse engineered code to load their games for the Genesis as they weren't a licensee of Sega. Basically that code wasn't covered by copyright because it was considered "non-expressive" and as such didn't get copyright protection. The issue for what the GP is talking about has to do with the cryptographic key signing that is used by the consoles. That is illegal to circumvent.
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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There are a grand total of four possible sexual encounters. One is optional for all characters in all playthroughs (and happens or not depending on conversation responses). The last three are optional depending on which (if any) crew member you decide to romance - at most one of these will happen per playthrough. All of them are consensual and between adults.
The first doesn't show anything even remotely considered nudity, and is mostly implied. It's with an Asari (a mono-gendered, but female-looking/acting alien race) consort. It's a 'reward' for you if you don't think her gift of advice is enough for completing her sidequests.
The other three are very similar in style, and are between a male PC and a female human, a female PC and a male human, and a female or male PC and an Asari (female-looking/acting) scientist. They show, at most, mild nudity from the characters (showing rear nudity, with full nudity implied), and are indeed tamer than what you can see on network TV in most ways, and certainly tamer than some things you can see on cable TV. They also only occur after a fairly significant romance sideplot, advanced in conversations with the chosen NPC between missions, and only occur near the end of the game (which is, attempting 100% completion, a longer-than 20-hour game, and probably could not be completed in much less than 8 hours, even with skipping all non-plot related events or quests).
It is interesting that we are ok with Violence, but fret over sex (At least in the US). To me though, I prefer it that way. My wife and I, we watched Watchmen last night. It is now funny to look back at our reactions, all the gory parts we said "WHOA!" and the sexy parts we'd blush and look at each other (You know what they are doing?!?). I'm ok with sex being Taboo, because I like sex. For example, you're watching some love story, they start getting hot and heavy, you start thinking (they are gonna do it) and then the Camera pans off. Same is is in Mass Effect, and some people think (DANG I wanted to see that). But it's the question that has people interested. If we saw sex, and it was ok, all the time, we wouldn't be so curious about it anymore. Why do you think old married couples don't have sex as often? It's not just because they are busy. It's because they have lost the curiosity.
Indoctrinate : to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments Educate : to develop mentally, morally, or aestheti
I agree that we are too concerned about nudity. It's bizarre that the 70's were more open and accepting of nudity in film, for instance, that the 2000's are.
However, you can't directly compare it to violence. Explicit sex is media is frowned upon for entirely different reasons than violence. I'm not worried about my son, my daughter, or 99.9% of anybody else's kids wanting to go out and commit murder because they see it in a game. However, sex is a temptation. The kids would be weird if they DIDN'T want to go out and have sex... or lock themselves up in their bedroom and watch sex all day.
Yeah, I think it's too restrictive. I don't see anything wrong with a child seeing a breast. But in fairness, the current stigma is not because sex is considered WORSE than violence. It's considered more SEDUCTIVE than violence.
What movies have your generation produced like that? NONE.
Watchmen had a faithful reproduction of the amount of sex from the book. I seem to recall there were a run of movies like Zack and Mimi and others which were even more raunchy than Total Recall. To be more to the point though, I don't think censorship is necessarily the problem here. I think that the problem is that there is very little content being produced with anyone over the age of 20 in mind. Back in the old days, kids had cartoons and they had disney movies. Now that people realized that kids are the only demographic worth catering to, that's all that's made. Don't hate the baby boomers. Don't hate the "pepsi generation". Hate all those overbearing marketing assholes who decided to prey on children with their inability to differentiate content from advertisement. Now that this is the standard operating procedure for anyone looking to make a buck, that's all you'll see anymore. Me personally, I just solve the problem by downloading kids movies, splicing in individual frames of sex scenes, and then posting them back out there for download.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
The Japanese seem to have no trouble delivering on this...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eroge
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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.
If anything, the strategy of hiding sex in the US media during the last 2 decades did backfire: teenage pregancy rates are the highest among the "developed" countries. Spain for example is second lowest, I lived there during my teens, and the TV program there was very, let's say, educating (after 10pm).
I guess that openess and explanation works better than obfuscation, as always.