Yikes, okay, sorry about the historical confusion. It's been a while since I studied colonial societies in America so more likely than not I did mix up cultures here and there. God, if there is one thing I can't stand about the Escapist it's how caustic people get. Anyway, the Puritans DID ban books which, as you said, was due to blasphemous and/or against the status quo of their society. (For the record, the Salem Witch Trials are overly exaggerated but having faced false accusations of heinous crimes myself, I find them putrid and disgusting.) Any maybe it didn't lead to the actuall banning of books, the argument about keeping kids indoors was used back then as a criticism of books since farming was so integral to their livelihood.Zachary Amaranth said:No, you may have MEANT to say that, but you didn't say it. Legitimacy will not stop them from petitioning Congress. Teh Rawk n Role is still under the gun....And movies, and literature.dashiz94 said:I never said it would stop them attacking games, I said it would prevent them from having a legitimate basis to petition Congress to ban, restrict, etc. games and gaming material.
Pretty much the EXACT opposite of what you said.
What's wrong with it? It's full of shit.And what's wrong with my comment regarding the Puritans? Puritan settlements banned books because it kept the kids indoors and not working outside, and this happened to be the same culture of people to perform the Salem Witch Trials, I'm not following how my comment on that makes me ignorant.
Puritans didn't ban books. Well, let me back up. The North American Puritans, the culture who was one of the foremost in terms of literature and education, did not ban books. As they were the ones who were involved in the oft-exaggerated Salem Witch Trials, you're either crossing cultures or grossly misinformed. Now, that's not to say all literature was free under them. Maybe you meant certain books were banned, but your followup here says that it was due to keeping kids inside and not working the fields, which is just freaking wrong.
You could have at least gone the religious route, which would be glib but not entirely untrue.
For the record, puritans (in the modern sense of the word) are still trying to ban books, despite them being legitimate. Again, your argument is, well, shit. You seem to think that somehow, if video games attain the same status as books, they will be exempt from the persecution that is still afforded books. And music. and movies. and just about anything else fun, because fun is sinful.
Now to my point on taking games seriously, let me rework my argument. This kind of ties into the "games being taken as art" argument as well, but as it stands games are viewed by contemporary society as a toy. Movies, music, and books have gained respect as "artistic mediums" and therefore can display what otherwise would be normally considered obscene or controversial without fear of the MAJORITY from banning it, because they recognize it as art and therefore it has a, for lack of a better word, privilege to do so. Video games are still seen merely as toys. If say, for example, a new toy came out on the market that had something controversial, guaranteed it would receive a public outcry because it doesn't have the same status as a book would. Even if the message was well intended, it still would be removed from the market because it would come across merely as obscene, not artistic. Games face that similar problem too.
I understand that these mediums will always have people trying to censor and limit them, but when games are "taken seriously" we won't have to worry when these people complain, because society at large will just see them as fun Nazis and nothing more.