tipereth wrote:Turn your argument around: Who really gives a fuck if future video games wont allow the player to engage in hideously violent (or generally 'obscene') acts? It's not like video games have any artistic merit, or like they're culturally significant enough that no longer being able to shoot the heads off imaginary characters will matter to anyone. Oh, no, you say, YOU care. Why? Because it's OH GOD CENSORSHIP GET IT AWAY? Censorship is bad because it stifles artistic creativity. Video games are a business, not an artistic medium. (and the ones that do try to push the GAMES ARE ART thing aren't the ones under fire, anyway) BUT THE CENSORSHIP JUST STARTS THERE FOOT IN THE DOOR shut the fuck up. Think about how many people would REALLY care about video game censorship, compared to like, film or TV or media censorship. There is no way in hell that the government would be able to use censoring video games as a staging point for other forms of censorship.
Obscenity in literature (Ulysses, Beat authors, and the like) has historically been a way to push the medium beyond what the last generation did with it, a way to express emotions that they felt the old methods of prose just couldn't handle properly. Video games are made strictly for profit. There's nothing wrong with that, and I think that companies should have the right to produce a product if the public will buy it. If video games are censored, people will still buy them.
I know I'm not going to sway your position on this, but try to understand that the majority of the people who aren't with you on this aren't against you, they just don't fucking care.
I love it. "Games aren't art, so WHO CARES ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT STOMPING ON CIVIL LIBERTIES?" You are so unapologetically lazy about the monster that is Government Expansion that you'll stand by and watch (and even shout down those who would oppose) Government trampling of our every-day lives. Until they come after you. At which point nobody will be left to fight for you because you let them all get eaten first. Because you're an idiot.
You're assuming a whole fucking lot to stay on your side. Let me help you out.
YOU may not care.
BUSINESS does.
I'm a pretty big business owner, I have several corporations under my name. I employ roughly 1,000 individuals in North Florida, so just sit down for a minute and let me educate your fuckwad careless brain.
BUSINESS doesn't want to fight tooth and nail to sell a product. BUSINESS doesn't want to stay in a market where the customerbase dwindles. BUSINESS likes easy, likes predictable, likes security, likes profit.
Now, none of these things are definite in any industry, in fact, some of them don't exist at all. But what IS definite is that absolutely NO BUSINESS is going to jump headlong into an industry they know is going to throw whatever supernanny shit their way.
Government supernannied the fuck out of the auto industry, forcing corporations to bow to Union dues. So the auto industry closed their doors and traveled to a place where Government and Unions didn't exist. Those that stayed (through force and pressure of outside entities) have suffered tremendously and now one of them is owned by the Government.
tipereth wrote:If cars are censored, people will still buy them.
Absolutely correct! And they still do! But don't tell that to Michigan!
When you tell a Game Developer (which you can look at as a BUSINESS that HIRES PEOPLE (read: PROVIDES JOBS)) that they can make a game - no problem! - "only, we're going to cut your consumer base by 75% because we're fucking vagina-sticked bitchmongers" that Game Developer is going to do two things:
1) Make less games that fit the non-existing demographic
and
2) Hire less people because they're making less games
What? What did you just think in your ridiculously vapid balloon head of yours? They'll just make the same ammount of non-violent video games? Do you even understand the market, shithead? WHO'S GOING TO BUY 15 DIFFERENT VARIANTS OF ANGRY BIRDS?!
We already have a non-violent video game SYSTEM on the market. It's called the Wii. If you have a pussy for a gut, just go buy that and shut the fuck up about everybody else.
Yes. People will still buy violent video games. But not everybody and not as many. If you think the market won't take a hit from this, you may not be a goddamned moron, but you sure as fuck know absolute dick about Business and you shouldn't be talking about it. But since you are, that makes you a goddamned moron anyway.
Censorship isn't just about needlessly chopping off the dicks of your peers to make them as fucking twat as you. Censorship is about hurting business and crippling economies. YOU may not care, because you don't rightly understand. But the people directly affected by this stupidity, that are counting on their jobs absolutely do.
See, this is the problem. You ass clowns don't care enough to understand bigger pictures. So you open that hole in your face that vomits a bunch of nonsense shit and muddles the debate. If you don't care anyway, then do us all a favor and shut your goddamned pie hole.
I as an American citizen protected under the core principles of our Constitution, despise censorship because it violates those principles as obnoxiously soon as RULE NUMBER FUCKING ONE.
I as an American business owner despise censorship because it is a gateway drug of the Federal Long Arm to endlessly regulate my business, maim my bottom line and jeopardize the securities of me and my employees.
When you're talking about censorship of a video game, you're not talking about the video game. You're talking about government politik. If you don't understand that, or you don't care enough to try, then you shouldn't be talking. All you are is a useful idiot to the Federal System.
And if you think this ends here, censorship on this level creates Judicial Precedence over any similar issue. You really want that rabit hole gaping wide? If that answer's "yes" you're a bigger idiot than I thought at the start of this post.