November 2nd will be the most important day of your lives

[Fez]

http://videogamevoters.org/scotus


The Supreme Court of the United States announced that it will hear arguments on a California law—Schwarzenegger v. EMA/ Entertainment Software Association— regulating computer and video games. The restrictions proposed by the State of California are unconstitutional and do nothing more than take away the rights of individuals to make their own choices. Parents — not the government or industry — should be the ones to decide what games are appropriate for their children. Sign up to learn about how you can stand up for your first amendment rights.

Basically in all legal terms, the Supreme Court of the United States will decide whether or not videogames are protected under the first amendment. If this law passes then the Californian Government will regulate videogames, not an independent body, and effectively kill off the 18+ rating (similar to what is going on in Australia).

This means

1) A similar law will follow suit in all western countries, England included
2) Given the financial implications, videogames will effectively die out of denote to smaller budgets and a smaller industry as a whole (with the chance of completely fading away given the regulation)
3) You will never play a 'great game' again.

If you want to learn more in a handy, hilarious video form then click here - http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/1961-Free-Speech

The first amendment protects media that is not seen as 'Obscene'. To be deemed 'Obscene' they need to past a Miller Test, which basically means

1. Members of the community see it as offensive or objectionable
2. The media does no attempt to distort sexual content or obscenely represents it (as a core focus)
3. It has no political, literary, scientific value.

You can obviously see games are protected here, but do you know all of those 'studies' we are all reading about? We all dismiss because they're political motivated or so on and so forth? Well they're suddenly not funny, the Californian Government is making the argument that games do harm to minors and that they should be regulated by the government to substitute for parental control.

This will be a big, big day.

Thoughts?

[dbgtz]

i didnt get this until i saw the escapist (which usually put out awesome vids, i should watch more)

anyway there will always be ways around this. For example making a violent as hell game in littlebigplanet. People will make it online etc etc. Plus I doubt itll be passed.

[iDices]

wtf i was Born in Novemeber 2nd rofl?

Edited by Nicola (Forum Super Moderator): Please do not post pointlessly

[FlyingJesus]

1) A similar law will follow suit in all western countries, England included
2) Given the financial implications, videogames will effectively die out of denote to smaller budgets and a smaller industry as a whole (with the chance of completely fading away given the regulation)
3) You will never play a 'great game' again.

1) We don't have the same laws as America, and this is only a State law anyway so it only makes a difference in California
2) This doesn't even make sense, having things regulated doesn't necessarily (or even implicitly) mean that everything will be banned
3) What, because you can't have great games without rape and murder?

[Oleh]

Wouldn't surprise me if england actually adopted this.

[kk.]

and what about films? and other media?

but also, california law, not US law

[Lycan]

Wouldn't surprise me if england actually adopted this.

England wouldn't, too many costs involved... The Coalition is only about Cuts and blaming other people

[Fez]

1) We don't have the same laws as America, and this is only a State law anyway so it only makes a difference in California
2) This doesn't even make sense, having things regulated doesn't necessarily (or even implicitly) mean that everything will be banned
3) What, because you can't have great games without rape and murder?

1) With a state such as California and the Supreme Court ruling, if it sides with California then it will give leeway to all states reviving their 'anti-videogame' laws. That and if a country such as America rules this then the rest of the world will likely follow suit.
2) The law would be not being able to sell games to anyone below 18 years of age, which is a huge market, it makes up at least 40% of the industry (or at least marketing-wise it does). This also implies getting rid of the 18+ rating and installing government regulation on videogames.
3) No, but I think we can agree that most great works of art or literature or whatever venture into the darker side of humanity. War, violence, dark psychology and all of that good stuff that makes us shake and shiver. Having regulation would mean games such as BioShock and Fallout 3 would have to be heavily censored in order to pass through.

Watch the video really because I suck when it comes to explaining things.

[FlyingJesus]

Guy has one hell of an annoying voice. Also if this did go through I can't see what difference it'll make. Under 18s can't buy 18 rated games anyway so really the only games likely to be negatively affected by this would be the games that 12-17 year olds (ie: kids who are old enough to not only go into town if their parents are there to buy them everything any more) play most - dismissing of course the 18+ games which they would need to have bought for them whichever way this ruling goes. So which games are these? The only ones I can think of are possibly the odd RPG/MMORPG and sports games. Whilst my most played game personally is Pro Evo, I'm old enough to buy it anyway and one would assume that no parents would have any issue whatsoever about being the one at the till when a football game is purchased. It's not as though the potential ability to slide someone from behind is going to spark fears of a child becoming morally and emotionally dead the same way they demonise FPS games.

All that said, it's still only a State law appeal, and there's only about a fifth of the states who actually want any form of such laws. Not exactly a worldwide scare

[Josh]

It won't be the most important day of my life. I live in Australia so yeahh......... it already happened.