My thoughts on the "Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association" law

I promised myself I wouldn't go on a huge, passionate rant about the subject. Instead, I offer you two links...

- http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/1961-Free-Speech
- http://videogamevoters.org/pages/learn

...and a small rant-ette on the subject.


The future of gaming as a medium is pretty much in the hands of people who don't care about gaming and are uneducated about gaming.

At least, the future of gaming as a medium for artistic expression. It's hard to argue that Bioshock isn't pretty, in the sense that it's an enormous underwater city that's falling apart with a fascinating background (and the graphics aren't bad either).

But, the Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association court case, currently pending before the Supreme Court of the United States, could crush games like Bioshock.

Because the whole 'banning the sale of violent video games to minors' thing isn't the real issue. And by violent video games, they mean anything with blood and/or bullets in it.

No, the actual issue here is this law could totally crush the game industry, primarily in two ways:

#1. Essentially, the government is telling what game devs can make and what publishers can, well, publish. This means less innovation and less edgy games that push the envelope, meaning out 'Call of Duty's, 'Bioshock's, 'Half Life's and others will be a thing of the past. But, perhaps more importantly-

#2. If this does pass, retailers will be far more hesitant to put these kinds of games up on the shelves. But worse than that, all the states that did have these kind of laws that lost will resurrect them, and you can bet they'll vary from state to state, making it impossible to create a game that you can sell all over America without making a 'family' or 'kiddie' game.

I don't like to really admit it, but if game publishers can't sell their games in America, they won't sell them anywhere else. They couldn't get enough sales to cover their costs, and just give up.

So, without any of these kinds of video games being sold, the Xbox 360 and the PS3 will have lost most of the games it relied on. Think "Xbox 360 minus Halo and Gears of War (just to name a couple), and the PS3 minus God of War and Metal Gear Solid (just to name a couple)". What use are those consoles anymore?

Oh sure, the Kinect and Move will come rolling in, but they'll just be the Wii all over again with minor variations and nothing to really drive them forward apart from 'cool' technology, and technology won't cut it.

If only the people who are in control of the future of gaming actually gave a damn about it. But they don't. And they don't give a damn about the people who love gaming either.

Somebody made the point to me just before I started writing this post that this law won't kill gaming outright. I absolutely agree. We'll still have out Wii! ...Probably. And you and all your mates can sit around the TV, bowling and playing tennis! Or hey, maybe you could, I dunno, fork out half your life savings to pet a virtual tiger.

As I said, this law won't kill gaming. But it will change it so dramatically I don't think anybody will want to go back to it.