The Other Possible Outcome

There was one thing I thought of while trying to look on the bright side during the months when the supreme court debated the artistic worthiness of video games.  It almost makes me wish I could see what the medium would have been like had censorship prevailed.  Of course it wouldn't be worth it, and you will never, ever catch me saying the Supreme Court made the wrong decision.  The choice they made was absolutely, without question, the only correct one they could have made.  But I do wonder how video game development would have adjusted to a culture that hostile to its most common subject matter: violence.  And I think, if the medium managed to adjust rather than die, perhaps it would not have been all bad.

This is what happens when there's sex and violence
in our movies, kids.  

I liken the avoided video game censorship to the effect McCarthyism had on the film industry in the ate 1940s.  For those unfamiliar with film history, the simple version is that the McCarthy Era involved the blacklisting of many actors, directors, and writers who were suspected to be communists.  Unfortunately, all they really needed to be suspected was to do anything that seemed "Un-American," which included certain very strict moral boundaries.  It was a pretty messed up time, with promising and talented filmmakers losing their careers suddenly when they lost funding and venues.  As a result, movies had to tread carefully.  Mature themes had to be handled without mature content for fear of the blacklist.  Really, it wasn't all that different from the world we imagined were this law to be passed, just with film rather than video games.

The interesting thing about this was that it forced film makers to come up with creative ways to portray things that they couldn't get past the censors.  One of the most notable examples is the use of cigarettes to imply sexual content.  Especially in noir films, two lovers blowing cigarette smoke into each other so the smoke lingers together, or two cigarette butts smoldering in an ash tray, was used as a symbol for sex.  Or consider Hitchcock's Gory Discretion Shots, used before film was allowed to show dismemberment and mutilation.  Though these things are now allowed in film, thus occurring as a result of budget constraints or purposeful filmmaking, they were first developed during a time when more graphic depictions would have fallen under the judgement hammer of censorship.

Even silly games like Castle
Crashers might have problems.

Consider what a similar effect would do for video games. Of course games like Mario and other similarly innocent games would survive this process, but they're generally not what we're talking about when discussing either violence or storytelling.  Gameplay could survive this law, sure, but storytelling as we have developed it within this medium would take a huge hit.  This medium is still almost entirely comprised of stories centered around violence, for various reasons discussed in one of my previous articles.  But what if we couldn't depict that violence anymore?  What if we were forced to do things differently by an unjust                                                                   violation of the first amendment against the medium?

The most obvious effect would likely take place in the horror genre, which has, in the last decade or so, become less "survival horror" and more "gory and occasionally startling action game," much to the ire of many gamers, designers, and critics.  The need to show all the violence would turn into an aversion, and horror games would have to turn to their roots and focus more on psychological horror and playing on the unknown, like classics such as Fatal Frame and Silent Hill 2 or the lesser-known but masterfully terrifying indie game Penumbra.

Sure, this thing is creepy, but what scares you most is
always what you can't see.

But for the industry as a whole, it would mean spreading to genres it has barely touched before. If games cannot explicitly portray violence,  they would have to either portray it implicitly or avoid the subject altogether.  With the vast majority of games, this simply cannot be done.  We would have to start telling stories in different, less violent genres, such as drama and all its sub-genres (romance, courtroom drama, domestic drama, etc.).  This would not be easy, but it is something that must happen eventually, and I think it's fairly clear that progress is slow when it's easy to make money off Shoot Teh Bad Guyz VI: Less Talky Moar Shooty.  But take away the ability to make that, and what are we left with?  No choice but to innovate.

Make sure to thank these guys next
time you play a game.  

So in short, I think it would have been cool to see where the pressure from this law could have taken the industry.  I do not wish the Supreme Court had made a different choice, as the censorship of interactive art (an immensely important and exciting artistic development) could be one of the biggest artistic atrocities in history.  But gaming needs to evolve, and part of me wonders if this could have been the best way to stimulate that evolution.  But thankfully, we can now develop this medium as we like, without threat of censorship.  I hope we'll use it to develop this medium into a truly diverse and effective one.

And no, of course there's no such game as Shoot Teh Bad Guyz VI: Less Talky Moar Shooty. If there was, I would be too busy weeping in the fetal position to be writing this article.

Level Up: Respectability +10

As many of you probably know by now, gaming has won a great victory this week.  On June 27th, this past Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States voted in favor of video games.

In case anyone is not familiar with the case, Brown vs. EMA was an attempt to regulate "violent video games" (yes, it was purposefully vague) with government involvement.  Rather than the voluntary rating system by which the video game industry already keeps M-rated games out of the hands of children (the exact same system by which the film industry voluntarily abides), this law would have made it illegal for anyone under 18 to buy whatever games were deemed offensive, effectively controlling video games not like an artistic form of expression, but in the same way as pornography and cigarettes.

Because clearly, video games are just
as dangerous as lung cancer.

Obviously, little could possibly be worse for a developing medium than the involvement of a legal censorship movement.  Imagine if the only way to buy Mass Effect or Halo was to go to that creepy backroom some movie places have.  Imagine how most developers would decide that it's not worth the risk to make violent games, or tell stories through games that deal with mature issues, such as Bioshock or L.A. Noire, since they wouldn't be widely sold or advertised.  Imagine if any games deemed too violent by our government were treated by console makers the same way AO games are now; shunned from official publication.  Not a very bright future.

But thankfully, the Court ruled against this law, not only allowing us - gamers, the video game industry, and the first amendment itself - to dodge a huge bullet, but also supplying us with some pretty powerful ammunition.

And our ammunition has always been better than theirs anyway.

No longer must we defend ourselves with rhetoric that will me violently turned against us.  No longer must we suffer the lies and ignorance of entities like Fox News.  No longer must we fear for the censorship of our medium.  Will these things still happen occasionally?  Of course.  But it's always been more difficult when the opposition was intensely convinced they were standing on solid rock; now it's becoming blatantly clear they've built their house on the sand.  And while they may never accept this personally, there is little they can do when the legal precedent is no longer neutral, but dead-set against their attempts to silence interactive art.

"Like protected books, plays, and movies, they communicate ideas through familiar literary devices and features distinctive to the medium.  And “the basic principles of freedom of speech . . . do not vary” with a new and different communication medium."  So says the syllabus from this case, plainly and for all to see.  Two pretty simple sentences, but they say everything necessary for us to know that this medium, our medium, is safe.

If ever you've doubted the importance of video games being widely accepted as an art form, look to this example.  Had it not been demonstrated to these people, some of the men responsible for how life is conducted in one of the world's most powerful countries, that video games are in fact a viable artistic medium of expression and communication, millions of people would be barred from these incredible interactive experiences, and, according to some analysts, the industry itself may have crumbled entirely, banished into obscurity.  The very existence of this case, what many are rightfully calling the biggest victory video games will ever win, was based around this simple question: Are video games art?

Some claim it's not important.  Games are just fun, that's the whole point.  As long as we can enjoy them, it doesn't matter what other people think.  Some claim "art" is too subjective and elusive a concept to bother trying to classify anything under it.  But these events very strongly beg to differ.  This is a fight for respectability.  This is where we step up and show what video games can truly be; not just enjoyable pastimes, and not harmful addictions, but a medium of expression that is truly deserving of the first amendment protection its very nature clearly warrants.

This is an art form now, fellow gamers.  Not just in identity, but in social status.  Let's show the world that the Court made the right choice.

Didn't See That Coming...

So apparently video games are actually decreasing violence in the United States.

Fact is, anyone who is actually familiar with video games and has been watching crime rates over the last decade or so already noticed the correlation.  Obviously that is not cause to assume causation, but it certainly seemed interesting, especially in the face of claims that video games were responsible for the rise in youth crime.  The rise that, based on even a simple glance at the figures over the last 20 years, has never existed during the life of this medium.

So I say it's about time someone figured it out by doing a legitimate study.  I especially love that it's not actually a study on video games, it's a study on the crime rate decrease; it has nothing to prove regarding video games, it just caught on.  Just an exciting bit of information; the decreasing crime rate has always been an argument against video games causing violence, but now it's actually a real argument for societal value, not just lack of damage.