Video Games, the First Amendment, and Obscenity 229
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."
The main reason games don't have obscene content (Score:5, Insightful)
Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness (Score:1, Insightful)
Demand is low (Score:2, Insightful)
Until the demand for content that is considered obscene (in current culture) allows for mass profits, the big developers will never take it on.
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not even "a single breast being exposed during a Superbowl half-time show" but a single nipple. You can show much of the breast on TV and in print without being called porn. Just look at all of the bikini shots that show nearly the entire top of the model. But show one female nipple and you're in "won't someone think of the children" territory. I still haven't quite figured out how that small patch of skin on a female qualifies as obscene while the same patch of skin on a male is mundane. I keep envisioning a test to see how the "think of the children" folks react. Put a woman in a modified burka. It would cover her from top to bottom so you wouldn't be able to tell anything about her shape but cut holes in the burka so that only the woman's nipples showed. (Some tape may be in order to keep any breast from showing.) Would people think this was lewd? What if a similar woman walked around in a string bikini?
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:2, Insightful)
We're waiting on the AARP crowd to die off so we can take control.
Are you fucking kidding? Thats what we said when we were your age, and look at any of the movies that came out in the 70s and 80s when I was still young. Ever seen Fritz the Cat? How about Total Recall? I loved the mutant with three boobies. Terminator with Sarah fucking Kyle?
What movies have your generation produced like that? NONE. Jesus, you young punks even made HHGTG a G movie, WTF? You think boomers are on the ESRB? Quit blaming us geezers for your own failings. It's your generation that is censoring us, not mine.
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:3, Insightful)
I think this is mostly because most parents feel that their kids having sex is more likely than them becomming violent killers.
And they also seem to believe that the two are morally comparable.
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:3, Insightful)
and so, "Won't someone think of the children" was born...
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Probably only in the US... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:3, Insightful)
I wouldn't say that. Its an application of expected value.
M = Lets call this immorality, with higher, positive numbers being more immoral.
P = Probability
M-total = P-sex * M-sex + P-violence * M-violence
In a lot of parents' eyes, you'd probably end up with 0 > P-violence, so you end up with P-violence * M-violence P-sex * M-sex, simply because sex is far more likely.
Along other lines, you have issues like teen pregnancy, which is far more likely to negatively impact a kids' life than violence.
Now, I don't agree that sex is immoral. Provided you give your kids education about safe sex, its safe too, so for me M-sex is pretty much non-existent. But a lot of the driving force behind these kinds of "People worry about sex but not violence," is to portray people you don't agree with as stupid, incompetent, and immoral, which is not necessarily the case. I'm sure that if you asked many parents, having a kid who murders someone is a far worse outcome than having your kid sleep with his girlfriend. However, they simply don't see the former as very likely, and thus not worth a lot of concern. To simply state that this is proof that they see sex and violence as morally equivalent is bullshit.
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:1, Insightful)
If you suck on a tit the movie gets an R rating. If you hack the tit off with an axe it will be PG.
Jack Nicholson
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:3, Insightful)
Us young folks ain't censoring your generation. This isn't a generation thing. This is a regional thing. The United States is split into two (really three, but we're simplifying) cultures heavily based on region: the really-laid-back West Coast urban culture, the businesslike but still liberal East Coast urban culture, and the rural, moralistic culture of the Midwest and South. Unfortunately, somehow people from that last group seem to come to disproportionate prominence in the entertainment industry's morality self-police and in the governmental lobbies that police said self-police, ensuring that the rural Southern Christian (it always masquerades as Christian) culture gets to hold the entertainment of the other two hostage.
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:3, Insightful)
It is interesting that we are ok with violence, but fret over sex (At least in the US).
It's not just interesting, it's mind boggling.
Violence is bad, murder is generally considered to be the worst thing you can do. Sex is great, and actually required for human survival.
And which of these do we freely display in movies, while the other is only hinted at or avoided?