Video Games as ‘Kid’s’ Toys - Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games - page 47

demographically average gamer. Gamers quickly parsed the discourse, not-
ing that the game was not intended for children, but the lingering memories
of better days of yore, when Pac-Man was a hit, shapes the discursive envi-
ronment surrounding games, placing game companies and game players in
a position where they are forced to defend their habits against those who
simply do not understand the context of the video games they discuss.
VIOLENCE AND GAMES: SCHWARZENEGGER V.
ENTERTAINMENT MERCHANTS ASSOCIATION
In addition to potentially objectionable sexual content in games, violent
content in video games also fuels public outrage, which led to the passage
of a California law prohibiting the sale of violent video games to children.
The law would treat violent video games like pornography, 44 establishing
a system in which there “can be a type of video game that would be legal
to sell to adults but illegal to sell to kids.” 45 The assemblyperson introduc-
ing the law developed it because he believes that “ultra-violent games can
harm kids in ways other forms of entertainment can't.” 46 This feeling led
him to construct a bill that would require the labeling of “violent video
games” and “provide that a person who violates the act [by selling a pro-
hibited game to a minor] shall be liable in an amount of up to $1,000 for
each violation.” 47 The bill lays out several criteria to determine what would
make a game obscene, including a reasonable person standard to assess
that the game as a whole possesses “appeals to a deviant or morbid interest
of minors” and that the violence in the game “causes the game, as a whole,
to lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientifi c value for minors.” 48
The law was ruled unconstitutional by the courts, largely because if it were
to be enforced it would mean that video games were held to a dif erent stan-
dard than most other forms of media, ef ectively “saying there is something
dif erent—and more potentially damaging—about video games compared
to topics, movies, [and] music.” 49
Oral arguments in front of the U.S. Supreme Court revolved around a
number of issues including: violent content in Grimm's fairy tales, whether
laws like this could be applied to music, 50 and “how the gaming industry
could say that prohibitions against the sale of some sexual content to kids
was ok but the same against violence are not.” 51 One analysis suggested that
the industry's lawyer ducked justices' repeated requests to help identify
ways of regulating violent games that would pass muster. He contended
that America has long presented violence to children in topics, movies,
comic books, and other forms, so violent video games fi t a tradition. 52
In response, Chief Justice John G. Roberts responded that some acts, in
particularly violent video games, were something that “we protect children