video games and the law

In a surprising turn for the sensible, the Supreme Court ruled that video games are protected by free speech in the same way that literature is. Through the ESRB rating system, the video game industry has been policing itself and despite what some crazy parents think, I consider that effective.

I'm still on the fence if video games are art. But I certainly think that they can tell good stories, and by protecting the industry from censorship, they can continue to do so. There's certainly gratuitous violence and sex - god knows some games make me want to destroy the TV and crawl up in my bed and weep for humanity - but sometimes you need those things to craft the world and its tale.

Dragon Age. DA and all its parts have M ratings for blood and gore, sex, and language. They're games for adult players featuring adult characters. Though the arguments focused on violence, I think the inclusion of sex in M games, and in Bioware titles in particular, also plays a part. Fox News had a field day after Mass Effect was released... Something about graphic lesbianism or something, if I recall correctly. Taking out the sex from the romance does a disservice - I mean, damn, we're adults We have sex. Shocking! People who fall in love tend to search for ways to display that feeling physically. Relationships have passion, sometimes bad decisions, sometimes end well and sometimes don't. The culmination of a romance is satisfying because the characters and their relationships are so well developed. Excluding sex doesn't just make the relationship incomplete, it makes it unrealistic.