The date has been set, November 2nd may be a day that lives in infamy, for gamers at least. On November 2nd the United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear California’s appeal to keep their 2005 video game law related to selling video games to minors.
According to the Supreme Court of the United States Blog, the case is dubbed Schwarzenegger vs. Entertainment Merchants Association and will be heard on November 2nd. The Supreme Court will be looking at the ECA’s (Entertainment Consumers Association) argument for why they believe the law is unconstitutional, due to it being poorly written and leaving the chance of it threatening American’s right to free speech, which ultimately harms the gaming industry.
This is no new fight, this has gone through the lower Courts, who have already deemed the law unconstitutional, but as we all know that doesn’t stop the appeal process. This will be the last and final stop of the law. The Supreme Court is the majors, and (usually) whatever happens here is the final word. The Governator has stated that he wants hard hitting penalties on the retailers who either sell violent video games to minors or do not properly label mature content.
Since this is the Supreme Court, which effectively decide what is and isn’t constitutional, this could mean the end of free speech for video games in the United States. Yes may I’m exaggerating the effects, but when it comes to your freedoms, especially being in the “Land of the Free,” you have to take a stance once in awhile.
What’s your opinion on the situation, Ranters? Do you believe there should be stiffer penalties for selling mature games to minors? Or do you think this is a slippery slope?
Source: Supreme Court of the United States Blog
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Does anyone know if GameFly restricts rentals based on age versus ESRB rating?
Well you have to have a credit card to sign up I know that for sure, so most kids don’t have one, at least I hope not. As well there is a parental controls settings available so only certain ratings are able to be rented. Plus I do believe that, first and foremost, it is the parents responsibility to know if their child is on GameFly and to make sure they aren’t renting inappropriate material.
After learning more about the comic industry, this will undoubtedly effect the industry whether it passes or fails. In the 60s, comics were scrutinized and attacked and thus comic camp was born and enforced to remove heavy violence and monsters from the industry. A prime example being the Batman television series with Adam West as the caped crusader. Many comics were dissolved because of high public opinion and after camp replaced the darker tones, comics again turned to merely a childish fascination which took years to right [thank you Frank Miller and Alan Moore].
Although I doubt the bill will pass, I do worry about the negative effect this will have on the gaming industry.
I would argue, and bring up the example of the movie industry and their rating system. Then I realized that as a result, there has obviously been a push to get most movies to be PG-13, for marketing purposes. So there has been a “kid-difying” and dumbing down of movies, and of course that can happen to games as well.
That is exactly what I am afraid of! Imagine Call of Duty games being Teen, or ousting GTA games all together! This could be a huge loss for the gaming industry and gamers. Lets hope the Supreme Court will agree with all the other courts.
I don’t care about “Mature” video games because blood, gore, and sex in videos games stopped impressing me about the same time alcohol and smoking stopped impressing me, and that’s back when I was in my teens. But I do worry for what kind of precedent this would set for other forms of expression if the law is not shot down or at least the language reworded to be more precise.
I dont care for blood, gore, etc as a reason to buy games; however if they are removed from a large market scale, companies may dumb down games to sell more. Look at the Call of Duty franchise, if the games were “teen,” much of the realism would be removed to compensate. Yes, they do not “impress” me but I feel that in certain games it adds a depth of realism to certain games like CoD and MGS4.
I think a point that many people are not acknowledging is that even though this law doesn’t affect most of us in terms of what we can and cannot buy, it will still affect what kind of games are released. Marketing sucks for everyone
@Blue Vendetta
Wait, “realism” in Call of Duty and Metal Gear Solid? Whoa…
Realistic violence in both games yes. Of course by MGS I mean gun violence not sword slashing. The graphic scenes in World at War as well as Modern Warfare 2 are both moving more towards realism and that is why they are rated M.
And i am refering to games that are already mature by nature. I doubt a Mario or Zelda will be heavily impacted by this ruling.
@Blue
Eh, actually neither of those games have realistic violence… The first Modern Warfare was SLIGHTLY more realistic than MW2, but that’s about it. There are very few games that actually have realistic guns and battle scenes. I know what you’re getting at about the whole Rated M thing in that you can’t have realistic violence without blood, but just poor choice of games to call realistic is just my opinion.
I would say the most realistic shooters have been the old (pre-Ubisoft) Rainbow Six games, the old Ghost Recon games (also pre-Ubisoft), the original Operation Flashpoint (not the sequel), and ARMA II. The first ARMA made a good attempt but was WAY too buggy to be considered realistic in my opinion…
I totally forgot about the original Rainbow Six games for PC, great games!
Here’s a thought; Goldeneye007 for the N64 was rated T for Teen as was several other games like it. Do you guys think it deserves to be T or it should have been rated M?
Note: the remake for the Wii is marked T for Teen as well.