Delaware Politician Readies for California SCOTUS Win

[Formica Archonis]

A Delaware politician says she's keeping a close eye on the California videogame law currently being deliberated by the Supreme Court and says that if it's upheld, she plans to introduce similar legislation for her own state.

The wolves are already baying. And they say we're savage.

"I still don't think that it is appropriate for young children to see that amount of violence," Keeley said, noting specifically the examples of games like Postal 2 [http://www.amazon.com/Grand-Theft-Auto-IV-Xbox-360/dp/B000FRU1UM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288898588&sr=8-1].

She forgot Custer's Revenge.

"I don't believe it is protected speech when you are showing someone, a young adult, how to beat up a homeless person," she added.

Ah, yes, Vagrant Murderer III. Great game. (Sigh.) Knowing how to beat someone up is something humans just know. Any slight or geeky kid who went through school knows that because they were often the practice dummy.

The only ones who don't know how to hurt people are the beloved jocks, like football players. It's such a nice nonviolent pastime. Better than games!

And Rambo doesn't teach you to beat up and kill state deputies does it?

What you talking about? Rambo's a hero! And Born in the USA is a really patriotic song!

 

[Sixties Spidey]

Is it just me? Or does that picture just scream "HERP A DERP"?

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

"I still don't think that it is appropriate for young children to see that amount of violence," Keeley said, noting specifically the examples of games like Postal 2 [http://www.amazon.com/Grand-Theft-Auto-IV-Xbox-360/dp/B000FRU1UM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288898588&sr=8-1]. And although state-level courts have ruled unanimously on numerous occasions that such laws are in violation of the First Amendment, Keeley disagrees. "I don't believe it is protected speech when you are showing someone, a young adult, how to beat up a homeless person," she added.

Besides that fact that it is protected by the first Amendment as far as I know I'm not American so not 100% sure but she is really talking out of her ass here. If people that are too young to play these games are playing them then that is the parents fault. If they are letting children be exposed to things they shouldn't be exposed to then the parents are at fault and not the games. They should stop expecting these things to be banned when there much worse things in movies like a Serbian Film(I think that is what it's called).

 

[talenos]

Exactly. They want the government to parent for them, instead of watching what their children do, and making informed purchases for them.

 

[TheAmazingHobo]

If people that are too young to play these games are playing them then that is the parents fault. If they are letting children be exposed to things they shouldn't be exposed to then the parents are at fault and not the games.

Here, I´ll give you the answer any American politican would give you to this statement:

How dare you SIR ?
How dare you suggest ANY responsibility lies with the parents ?
Those PERFECT, DEDICATED, AMERICAN people are of course without any fault at all.
And I´m not just saying this because those dudes are allowed to vote and blaming them for the state of their children would maybe kind of piss them off....

I SAID GOOD DAY!

 

[subject_87]

The thing is, the anti-game people seem to have forgotten that there are video games other than Postal 2.

And like I've said, a lot of this outcry seems to be ineffective parents projecting their own bad decisions onto the government, which has quite enough to do already.

 

[Canid117]

(I live in Delaware, thus am completely pissed off, hence the all Caps. I promise to never do all Caps again, but I think this occasion deserves it.)
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

In all seriousness:
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

SEE?! I EVEN POSTED IN 2 OTHER FORUMS THAT OTHER STATES WOULD BE GETTING READY FOR THIS SHIT IF CALIFORNIA WON! I FUCKING CALLED IT! BUT FFS, WHY IS MY HOME STATE THE FIRST ONE GETTING READY, BEFORE THE CASE IS EVEN FUCKING DECIDED?!?!?!?

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD LET THE EMA WIN THIS CASE!

/rage

*sighs* Sometimes I am ashamed to live in Delaware...

 

[asinann]

Postal 2 is popular? Maybe in her sick, depraved household, but everywhere else it's never heard of. These sanctimonious asshats need to go solve some real problems. Economy in the toilet? Stop talking about some bloody software and get cracking on employment, public works, and otherwise non-head-in-ass policies.

Why would they want to fix the economy when they can tear apart an entire industry and cost a few hundred thousand more people their jobs.

 

[findler]

Personally I am all for teaching kids how to beat up the homeless. Maybe then they will be motivated to get a job and buy a house so packs of roving tweens won't assault them anymore. It's really two birds with one stone, kids are happy/homeless smarten up.

 

[bruunwald]

Those of us who survived being told by "concerned" parents and pastors during the gigantic Moral Panic of the eighties and early nineties, that D&D, video games and heavy metal would cause us to kill our loved ones with axes before sending us all to hell know these things are always hot air blown up a puckering ass.

You can take the band or the game company to court, but you're always going to find the real reason Johnny grabbed a gun was because his dad molested him and his friends regularly beat him up. Through all of it, the Court always up holds the Constitution. Just ask Tipper Gore or the estate of the late Patricia Pullman.

I have zero fear of this.

Just tell 'em they have almost four decades of role play to draw examples from and the only real research done on the subject revealed a lower propensity for gamers to become violent than the normal populace. Tell 'em if I didn't drop an anvil on my buddy Jim's head after the fifty-millionth viewing of Wile E. Coyote versus the Roadrunner, then Junior is not likely to beat some dude on the street because a video game "instructed" him to.

If they fear their children that much, they must seriously be doing some bad parenting.

 

[Kaymish]

i read all 59 pages of the court transcript and was concerned with how short it was one day on something as big as a law i spent 3 weeks on a murder trial that wasnt even finished before the jury was dismissed and the transcript for that was 500 pages long

 

[Quiet Stranger]

Who let this dumb bimbo become a politician?

 

[Gudrests]

You know, I often tell people I'm eagerly awaiting the zombie apocalypse. I take back every time I've said that, it's already happened, only the zombies are in places of power... >_>

i think id..."missfire" and hit some people...JUST SAYIN...zombies are slow..im not..i have a gun..dont need it to kill zombies...people are dumb,....ya know..., and she's an idiot

 

[MaxwellEdison]

Keeley disagrees. "I don't believe it is protected speech when you are showing someone, a young adult, how to beat up a homeless person," she added.

...how many kids DON'T know how to beat up a homeless person? It's pretty damn simple. Take fist, put in face. You don't need play a video game to learn this shit.

I promised myself I'd be more eloquent in my defense of games, given my opinion on their ability to become a great art form, but honestly, fuck that *****. Go play some GTA for yourself instead of listening to the dumbass news channels and see if your mind will actually fuck itself over and force you to kill people.

Hint for you, games are harmless, unless you count the impact they can make on one's point of view as a harm.

Once again, fuck that, and please let us win.

 

[Therumancer]

What game instructs you in how to beat up a homeless person?

And why does beating up a homeless person require special instruction?

Condemned and Condemned 2 come to mind in the beginning where it's teaching you how to perform the combat actions. The game provides homeless dudes (who are actually possessed which the case doesn't get into, the plot matters IMO) that is set up so you can easily beat them up to practice the game's combat moves and see how it works before proceeding. This ending with a set up to demonstrate how to perform enviromental kills. Impaling enemies on rebar and the like.

They might have had something else in mind, but that is what I think of given the example.

Not saying that they are right, just that the example exists, even if simply referring to it as "beating up a homeless person" doesn't actually do the situation justice given the nature of the enemies in what is a horror game. As Yahtzee points out this is a game that in both installments eventually made it quite clear that you were dealing with supernatural elements, and even from the beginning these homeless guys were known to be very wierd, and being converted towards some purpose because those who fell between the cracks were easy prey for the forces behind it all.

 

[LightOfDarkness]

(I live in Delaware, thus am completely pissed off, hence the all Caps. I promise to never do all Caps again, but I think this occasion deserves it.)
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

In all seriousness:
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

SEE?! I EVEN POSTED IN 2 OTHER FORUMS THAT OTHER STATES WOULD BE GETTING READY FOR THIS SHIT IF CALIFORNIA WON! I FUCKING CALLED IT! BUT FFS, WHY IS MY HOME STATE THE FIRST ONE GETTING READY, BEFORE THE CASE IS EVEN FUCKING DECIDED?!?!?!?

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD LET THE EMA WIN THIS CASE!

/rage

*sighs* Sometimes I am ashamed to live in Delaware...

Every time a law like this was even heard by the SCOTUS, it was shot down, never to be seen again. Plus, the states had to reimburse the EMA/video games industry for their legal fees. (about 2 million at this point)

MANDATORY SADNESS LEVELS NOT ACHIEVED.

Oh fine, all that cost has been trickled down to taxpayers.

MANDATORY SADNESS LEVELS ACHIEVED.

 

[Therumancer]

Okay, well it seems like our champions dropped the ball here from the transcripts I've been reading, and I think we're in trouble.

The proper direction to go in was to focus on the issue of free speech as a whole, and how the goverment is not supposed to be involved. Going by the transcripts linked here on The Escapist and the highlights mentioned in the article itself, it seems like comments being made about how the founding fathers couldn't possibly have envisioned this medium were going unchallenged when said by the court itself. An important response to that is that things like Radio, TV, and movies were also comparitively alien, yet remained unregulated to the degree suggested by this attempted law. If a law similar to what is proposed here was actually passed for those other mediums it would have been catastrophic.

As a result the big question is whether we are going to be ready for a revolution should this ruling go through, because as things look now it's mostly down to technicalities. The Supreme Court seems more concerned about how to perform the wording of the law in what it will cover so as not to become too broad, rather than whether such a law should exist at all.

Such are my thoughts, but truthfully with the way the lines were drawn this is kind of what I expected. Who knows, I could be wrong, but as they say... hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

Truthfully though I doubt much will happen except nerd rage if this doesn't go our way.

 

[minimacker]

If violent games cause violent behaviour, why haven't I gone out and murdered an entire population? I played Grand Theft Auto 1 when I was 8.

 

[beddo]

Seriously it's just an age rating system which will help parents who don't understand games, I honestly fail to see the problems.

Some of the wording should be changed to avoid too broad definitions but other than that, why not just go with it.

 

[IronStorm9]

"I still don't think that it is appropriate for young children to see that amount of violence," Keeley said, noting specifically the examples of games like Postal 2 [http://www.amazon.com/Grand-Theft-Auto-IV-Xbox-360/dp/B000FRU1UM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288898588&sr=8-1]

I continue to find it hilarious that the most obscene video game anyone can really come up with is Postal 2. Comparing it to some of the films on mainstream release and making millions of dollars at the box office, Postal 2 is almost tame in terms of violent content. There's always the argument that games like Postal 2 glorify the violence due to interactivity, but I think very few people went to see Saw 3D last weekend for the smart writing and clever plot.

Yeah. All anyone ever cites when talking about violent video games is Postal 2, GTA, or Bully. Imagine what they would do if they saw God of War. Compared to that, GTA is really tame. If they wanted to build a case, they should look at the Hack n' Slash genre.