The Supreme Court has affirmed something I've been trying to tell them for years. Videogames are just as legitimate as movies or TV! Granted, calling each justice up in the middle of the night and yelling that at the top of my lungs probably wasn't as effective as my tipsy self thought it was. It's nice to see some sort of official stance on this.
This was a big step, though. It's encouraging to see this kind of recognition from such a high institution. Along with their production, the experience of games has become much more complex through the years. They are no longer just a piece of software. So it makes sense to treat them like other forms of art when it comes to censorship.
It's a tale as old as time. Some new medium develops and people start to worry about its affects on people. It's a legitimate concern to have, I think. But the response is very important. You don't want to just label something new and potentially frightening as obscene. That argument is always the one popping back up. What is obscenity?
The whole argument of obscenity is that it offers only vulgarity and nothing else of value. But it's hard to see the value of something when you know very little about it. That's what I always seem to notice about the obscenity argument. When you don't know much about something, it's hard to see any value in it. Value is subjective anyway. Someone might see Postal 2 as nothing but a violence and murder simulator. Maybe I look at it as satire.
I just don't know why people always seem to think "Well this time it's different". It never is, no matter how much you try to ignore march of history. It's just the same, and The Supreme Court said so.
This was a big step, though. It's encouraging to see this kind of recognition from such a high institution. Along with their production, the experience of games has become much more complex through the years. They are no longer just a piece of software. So it makes sense to treat them like other forms of art when it comes to censorship.
It's a tale as old as time. Some new medium develops and people start to worry about its affects on people. It's a legitimate concern to have, I think. But the response is very important. You don't want to just label something new and potentially frightening as obscene. That argument is always the one popping back up. What is obscenity?
The whole argument of obscenity is that it offers only vulgarity and nothing else of value. But it's hard to see the value of something when you know very little about it. That's what I always seem to notice about the obscenity argument. When you don't know much about something, it's hard to see any value in it. Value is subjective anyway. Someone might see Postal 2 as nothing but a violence and murder simulator. Maybe I look at it as satire.
I just don't know why people always seem to think "Well this time it's different". It never is, no matter how much you try to ignore march of history. It's just the same, and The Supreme Court said so.
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