Supreme Court hears arguments on video game censorship

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Re: Supreme Court hears arguments on video game censorship

Post by UntamedLoli »

DrumsofWar wrote:One thing I always found ironic is that the one sub-genre of gaming that everyone else in gaming looks down on, first-person shooters (usually just an iota above Madden 64 and Aladdin the Game) have fostered the most custom content. Beyond just the success stories of Counterstrike and Portal, the companies are usually more tolerant compared to RTS.

(Blizzard, for all the hate it gets here, is probably the most mod-tolerant overall compared to EA, Ensemble, and such.)
Um no.

Blizzard is the only one turning modding into a problem and completely refuses to ackowledge the existance of mods beyond their own personally tailored definition.

Tolerance means shit all when they are controlling the only means of playing it, D3 won't be moddable at all if they do away with LAN without someone programming up their own server which Blizzard has been fighting against even more now.

Modding on most games was against the EULA and no one cared because you didn't have to use their online service to play them or risk being banned for doing so, the loss of LAN/Direct really is just more bullshit that didn't need to happen and now any sort of modding has to be played by their rules instead of what the community wants to do.

How do you think Valve got this far? they didn't fuck with their community and actually paid attention to what was being done with their game and supported them (free Source engine license) instead of blacklisting them off the face of the earth.
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Re: Supreme Court hears arguments on video game censorship

Post by IskatuMesk »

DrumsofWar wrote:(Blizzard, for all the hate it gets here, is probably the most mod-tolerant overall compared to EA, Ensemble, and such.)
The fuck kind of rock are you living under? It has to be quite a big one to hide all that porn away in a manner that prevents you from having any knowledge of what's going on in the entire planet around you.
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Re: Supreme Court hears arguments on video game censorship

Post by aiurz »

I'd have to disagree with the whole argument that certain mediums are higher art than others. Printed books themselves started as a more "common" and peasant way to spread religious publications compared to the Latin Vulgate which was written in the more "ancient and pure" tongue.

We didn't even HAVE anything resembling novels until 200 years after Gutenberg's printing press was made. Presuming that an artistic and creative medium which has existed for only 20 years and only has had the ability to convey advanced messages in the past TEN is purely a business (which both painting and sculpture were for millenia) is a naive and very snobbish presumption.
I've talked to some artists in the literary field that say that video games have such potential to create this really cool kind of thing and it's such a promising venue or whatever but the problem is that nothing out there is really any good. Obviously most of them don't have time to play a lot of video games so they don't know about aren't really popular or whatever, but I think that in general this kind of sentiment is perfect and right. Game developers today don't need to produce a game with an outstanding or thought provoking narrative- they don't need to actually try to drive the artistic potential of the medium in order to continue their career or profession. It feels to me (simply an onlooker as I don't really buy or play a lot of games) that the industry is mostly focused on making money. This isn't necessarily a problem, because the main target of video games is going to be the mass of population and what makes art good doesn't necessarily mesh well with them (the most popular and best sold authors of our generation is like Robert Pattinson, Stephen King, and Stephanie Meyer), but to try and sell that it's a myth that video games are a "lower" art form than something like literature etc. has (in my very un-informed opinion) little to no merit. I could always be wrong and Call of Duty or Wii Fit might be able to excite me in the same way that reading a good novel or poem could, but I really doubt it.


Consider for a moment that it's none of your fucking business what innocent games someone else buys to entertain themselves.

Here's a great solution - very easy - for you to get over yourself, here. It's a quick two-parter. Ready?

1) If YOU don't want to give it to them, then don't. That's the totally awesome thing about living in a free country.
2) Mind your own fucking business. Are YOU giving it to them? No? Great. That's all. Move along. Get your hand off everyone else's dick.

WhaaaaaAAAT?! Parents actually having to BE PARENTS?! That's unheard of! You're absolutely right! We should totally pass intrusive legislation on the entire country so that the lazy parents may continue to be lazy! What an astounding idea!

I love how, not to long ago, being in your child's business all the time wasn't even a though-about. It was so part of the job of being a parent that it never crossed anybody's mind. Now all of a sudden people like you and your nanny-feds DECLARE it to be an abhorent weight that nobody should have to live with. Look, if you're not ready to be a parent, don't have kids. In the mean time, fuck off about legislating the rest of the world how you think they should be raised.

First of all, don't be a goddamned moron. Science backs Liquor as a chemical poison. Superstition backs the idea that porn and games have direct negative effects on the viewer. (science disagrees with you here, too btw). And HELL YES I hate the fact that I get carded to see a movie at the theaters (being 9 years over the age doesn't help). So what you're saying it "Well shit, we already shot off one of our feet. Might as well keep going." Yeah. That's what we need in this country. Self-defeatists like you stomping on what's left of our inalienable rights.
Your sentimentality is stupid. Parents should be parents blah blah blah- while it is true that that parents should be parents and that if parents were able to all raise their kids well we would all be fine and dandy, there is less and less people that have the time to be worthy parents and less and less people actually being worthy parents. You can spout off about how people shouldn't have kids then all you want, but the fact remains that this only stops the more responsible people anyway- all of the stupid people who half make shitty parents will go ahead anyway.

How people raise their kids isn't not my business- how someone raises their kid can often have a direct affect on people who don't have anything to do with the kid or the family. If the naturally violent kid starts to fulfill his violent and sexually perverse desires and fantasies with video games first, by needing the kids parents to buy the game for him the parents will at least have to know that they bought this game for them, and out of greater concern, due to the content of the game, the parent could be lead to monitor their child more closely and then seek the professional help that they need. How it is now is that the kid can simply get money, waltz into a store, buy the game, and then just play away from their parents. Even away from that, in the cases of normal children, what I feel the implication becomes is that greater graphics and the progress of all that kind of stuff is, in most cases, the pursuit of reaching a medium that can appear to be real. Recent gaming trends, like motion gaming, even go as far as to try to involve the gamer, physically, with the action in the game. If we continue down this line of "it's just a fantasy, everyone normal knows it's just a fantasy" what happens if we get to the point where the graphics can get even closer to real, and suddenly we have a bunch of people who are able to act out this violent fantasy of murder and rape in a scenario that not only appears to be real but also physically involves the user with the reality of it? It's a really complicated matter and to simply shrug it off and say "it's just a fantasy" and "regulation is bad because it hurts my bottom line" can be just as dangerous as banning violent video games.

I'm not saying "violent video games are bad" or that we should ban them or that censorship is great. As an artist, censorship is something that I am opposed to but I feel that in the direction that I see society moving that requiring someone to be over 18 in order to buy excessively violent or sexually perverse material is reasonable. You can go on and on about how it will lead to this and that, but we should not be paralyzed into inaction simply by considering all the possible consequences of the consequences of our actions.
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Re: Supreme Court hears arguments on video game censorship

Post by Archangel »

Now you're just deflating.

I wasn't saying that parents should have to prohibit children from playing games. That's just stupid. The entire argument has been about parental neglect. If the parent believes that the child's radical tendencies are the result of a video game, they're already idiot failures. You keep throwing the subject back there like that's the point and that's what makes you a useful idiot to the expansive Government. If a parent wants to ground a kid, switch off their power outlets. It's really fucking simple. If you were's so ridiculously shortsighted, you'd understand what we're talking about. But you're participating in a conversation that is clearly far above your understanding. Let the big boys do their work and you go play with your toys.

Laws already exist that punish violent crimes. What you are championing is preventive laws. Like Thought Crimes. What a load of crap based entirely in superstition (see my argument where science does not yet back violent video games having any effect on crime). At least the speed limit in neighborhoods full of kids has SOME merit. You've just got being a massive dick to the free republic.

Your argument that games graphically so intense that "IT'S PRACTICALLY THE REAL THING!" insinuates that you would RATHER these people be committing the actual rapes and murders on real people. You're a piece of work.

If there's a venue where a psychotic animal may vent his frustrations and socially unacceptable actions and violent crimes inside his own home against fake bits of data that harm absolutely no one, I say three-goddamned-cheers for technology.

But you go on ahead with your tinfoil hat and religious robe. You're not just fucking the rest of us. You're fucking yourself.
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Re: Supreme Court hears arguments on video game censorship

Post by GreatGodSajuuk »

DUDES EVEN IF WE CENSOR GAMES EVERYONE WILL STILL BUY EM!
LIKE MOVIES! THINK OF A WORLD OF ONLY FAMILY COMEDIES RATED TEEN! IT WOULD BE SO AWESOME!


oh wait... Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

THE HUMANITY!!!


Also, the moment you bend over and let government work it's media censorship magic on your ass is the moment where "In soviet russia movies watch you!" becomes true to you too. I mean, forceful media censorship is one of the criteria to define a dictatorship.
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Re: Supreme Court hears arguments on video game censorship

Post by aiurz »

Now you're just deflating.

I wasn't saying that parents should have to prohibit children from playing games. That's just stupid. The entire argument has been about parental neglect. If the parent believes that the child's radical tendencies are the result of a video game, they're already idiot failures. You keep throwing the subject back there like that's the point and that's what makes you a useful idiot to the expansive Government. If a parent wants to ground a kid, switch off their power outlets. It's really fucking simple. If you were's so ridiculously shortsighted, you'd understand what we're talking about. But you're participating in a conversation that is clearly far above your understanding. Let the big boys do their work and you go play with your toys.
I'm pretty sure you're not really getting the point that I was making so I'll try to spell it out in language that you might be able to get:

Kids can buy these violent and sexually perverse materials. They can simply waltz into a store, purchase them, and then walk out and play them all they want. The law in question in California requires someone to be over 18 to purchase these materials, and if a store is found selling them to minors, they would get a fine.

I'm pretty sure that you understand all of this from what you've posted. If not, feel free to flag down any point that you feel you've missed.

What I'm saying is that this law is not inhibiting anyone's right to free speech. Not only am I willing to assert my belief in this, I would go as far as to say that having a kid's parents need to buy these materials for the kid is a step in the correct direction, not only for neglectful parents but for parents that are active in their role as parents. It lets the parent know that if they don't want their child to get the game, or to play the game, they don't have to be on constant watch of their child in order to make sure of this because in order to get the game they would need someone to break the law for them.

Now whoa whoa whoa, I'm sure at this point you are already salivating at another chance to throw your condescending rhetoric at me and want to point at the fact that you believe parents should be there for their kid observing and watching 24/7 because that's what parents do, and if you aren't okay with that well then don't be parents.

I'm not going to argue the merits and demerits of parenting skills with you. I can see that we were both raised differently: I was raised with minimal interference from my parents who both had to work all the time so we could get by, and was left to many decisions like what books I would read and what authors I liked most. Maybe I would have been outraged with my parents if they had decided that Catcher in the Rye would have been too much for me, or if they had disallowed me to read Howl because they didn't feel as though I was ready to read something like that. But I can't help but think that if I had wanted to read something that was excessively violent or sexually perverse and had wanted to move in that direction to the extent that it would have fueled violent or sexually perverse tenancies that my parents should at least have the ability to know that what I'm reading is violent and sexually perverse.

Before you say anything about my parents, I'm pretty sure that more and more in contemporary times, parents spend more time at work and less time with their kids. If you want to point and say that's the problem, be my guest- but what I am trying to make clear is that the failure of parenthood, the raising of a child that is unfit for society, doesn't simply bear down on the parents: the consequences leak out to the society that we live in. It is reasonable that as you get to the smaller scales (although I wouldn't say that the California State level is at the level of the community) that the community begins to make these decisions for the whole of the community.

I know it's a really American thing to hate everything that involves a community, to hate communal things, but you have to realize that we all live on this world together. There are things that I believe shouldn't be taught in the world, and to simply shrug that off and say "It's none of your business" is stupid and backwards. I'm not saying that this is cut and dry, and that we should be enforcing this sort of censorship on the national level and blah blah blah. This is a complicated matter, and I feel that something like this law, requiring minors to have their guardians purchase for them a violent or sexually perverse game is reasonable and probably a good idea.

Obviously since you own businesses and your profit is directly related to things like this you are going to be opposed to that. I don't find it surprising that you would be- something like this means that the industry is no longer able to exploit sex and violence to sell games to little kids. I'm sure you feel the same way big tobacco felt when they found out they weren't allowed to sell cigarettes to kids anymore, and I can understand why you have a problem with that. It's your livelihood, and you don't want people to take the easy money from you. It's perfectly understandable, but what I'm trying to say is that from the perspective of the person on the ground floor, from the perspective of a common person, that I think this could be a good idea, and that from the perspective of an artist, I also (albeit a lot more tentatively) feel that this could be a good idea.


Laws already exist that punish violent crimes. What you are championing is preventive laws. Like Thought Crimes. What a load of crap based entirely in superstition (see my argument where science does not yet back violent video games having any effect on crime). At least the speed limit in neighborhoods full of kids has SOME merit. You've just got being a massive dick to the free republic.

Your argument that games graphically so intense that "IT'S PRACTICALLY THE REAL THING!" insinuates that you would RATHER these people be committing the actual rapes and murders on real people. You're a piece of work.

If there's a venue where a psychotic animal may vent his frustrations and socially unacceptable actions and violent crimes inside his own home against fake bits of data that harm absolutely no one, I say three-goddamned-cheers for technology.
I feel that what you are trying to do with my words is twist them around and blow them up to the extent that they become these giant, grotesque balloon animals that you can parade around.

I mean if you want to get all "fuck fuck fuck you fucking stupid fuck cunt shit etc. etc." with your capslock and your unnecessary incivility isn't there some violent video game that you can go let out your rage and then come back and talk with any amount of class?

I guess that's kind of the point you're trying to make anyways.
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Re: Supreme Court hears arguments on video game censorship

Post by DrumsofWar »

Hunter_Killers wrote: Um no.

Blizzard is the only one turning modding into a problem and completely refuses to ackowledge the existance of mods beyond their own personally tailored definition.

Tolerance means shit all when they are controlling the only means of playing it, D3 won't be moddable at all if they do away with LAN without someone programming up their own server which Blizzard has been fighting against even more now.

Modding on most games was against the EULA and no one cared because you didn't have to use their online service to play them or risk being banned for doing so, the loss of LAN/Direct really is just more bullshit that didn't need to happen and now any sort of modding has to be played by their rules instead of what the community wants to do.

How do you think Valve got this far? they didn't fuck with their community and actually paid attention to what was being done with their game and supported them (free Source engine license) instead of blacklisting them off the face of the earth.

I did say overall. I'm not saying their hiring on the founder of Camsys or quiet allowance of tinkering with D2 files excuses what they've done in Starcraft 2 (or suing to prevent a SC conversion in WCIII because it might "hurt" SC2 sales).

Blizzard is one of those big evil corporations now but the lesser of many evils is still something to remember. Their many preconditions for "modding" in SC2 is their idea of a compromise, which is still further along than the other big evils who will drop twenty hammers on anyone within a mile of a mod.

And yes, Valve is infinitely more open-minded and where I wish Blizzard would be but it's not going to happen given that most of the employees who might've had half a heart all left Blizzard years ago.
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Re: Supreme Court hears arguments on video game censorship

Post by IskatuMesk »

most of the people at camsys should never have been hired, it hurt us and gave Blizzard excuses for lazy programming that persist to this day.
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Re: Supreme Court hears arguments on video game censorship

Post by DrumsofWar »

It was only 2 guys and from what I remember, it was mainly for the Bnet patches and the replay feature. Diablo 2's crazy coding was all Blizzard.
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Re: Supreme Court hears arguments on video game censorship

Post by Archangel »

aiurz wrote: I'm pretty sure you're not really getting the point that I was making so I'll try to spell it out in language that you might be able to get:

I didn't bother reading your other post in this thread on how all the stupid things I'm saying have already been implemented in other countries like Germany to crippling end, allowing the U.S. to rise above everyone else in each market with our free enterprise system.

So what I'm going to do is simply repeat all the negatives you've listed while saying that they're positives and pretend that proves anything.


Well shit. Thank you for spelling it out.

Will somebody please warn me about the plebes on this forum before I tear into them? I'll do it anyway, but at least I'll have a heads-up that they're completely worthless so that I shouldn't try so hard.
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Re: Supreme Court hears arguments on video game censorship

Post by aiurz »

Archangel wrote:
aiurz wrote: I'm pretty sure you're not really getting the point that I was making so I'll try to spell it out in language that you might be able to get:

I didn't bother reading your other post in this thread on how all the stupid things I'm saying have already been implemented in other countries like Germany to crippling end, allowing the U.S. to rise above everyone else in each market with our free enterprise system.

So what I'm going to do is simply repeat all the negatives you've listed while saying that they're positives and pretend that proves anything.


Well shit. Thank you for spelling it out.

Will somebody please warn me about the plebes on this forum before I tear into them? I'll do it anyway, but at least I'll have a heads-up that they're completely worthless so that I shouldn't try so hard.
According to Archangel, 75 percent of the people who buy video games, the consumer base for the video game industry, are kids under the age of 18 that buy violent video games, and only violent video games.

Also according to Archangel, requiring stores to not sell games that have excessively violent or sexually perverse materials to minors is akin to forcing the automobile industry to have unions.

According to Archangel, the main reason that requiring minors to have their guardians buy their excessively violent and sexually perverse video games is that it will "maim" his bottom line.

According to Archangel, if we even remotely consider this, we will let the thought police into our homes and it will be 1984 all over again.

I think I understand all your points sir, the problem is that you are so much a fun of this grotesque kind of hyperbole that every word you post looks to me like a clown car rocket ship alien laser blaster roller coaster ride. You want to cite to me that there's scientific proof that violent video games and pornographic or sexualy perverse materials are in fact good for you and won't interfere with the normal development with a young child's mind with one side of your logic, and then you go ahead and turn around, in the same thread, and say that underaged violent video game sales account for 75% of the industry?

If we are going to be doing this whole hyperbole game, this whole "make up the evidence as we go along" and just call everyone a fuckwad while we're at it, what's the point?

You can keep putting your fingers in your ears and shouting to protect your own little mind from any outside influences as long as you want. When you finally do decide actually form any semblance of real civilized argument I'll probably still be looking around.
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Re: Supreme Court hears arguments on video game censorship

Post by Archangel »

aiurz wrote: I know more about the entertainment industry and business in general than you do because I neither own a business nor have I operated one within said industry. For this reason, any well-informed opinion you have on the subjects you are actually a professional practitioner of will be regarded snarkily as "According to Archangel."

Furthermore, comparing two countries from the year 2010 is equivalent to spouting 1984 hysteria because EVERYBODY knows that facts don't mean shit when I'm promoting Government Expansion.

I also like to conceitedly pretend that any sound arguments you make are irrational fits because you use collections of letters and vowels that I consider to be "vulgar" and just as I blindly equate Violent Video Games to Crime, I also instinctively pocket violators of my blanket moral vocabulary in with finger-eared radicals.

By the way, I refuse to look at History to help in my decision making. If something has been tried a thousand times and doesn't work in other countries, it's simply because it wasn't tried the right way. Which I know how to do, because I have also never led a country before.

Keep going man. You're like a Ghetto McDonalds in hipster shades. Da-da da da da I'm loving it.
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Re: Supreme Court hears arguments on video game censorship

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Re: Supreme Court hears arguments on video game censorship

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Mucky wrote:Image
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Re: Supreme Court hears arguments on video game censorship

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Mr. wrote:
Mucky wrote:Image
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