Letter to Congress; follow-up
Jun 26, 2006
In case you hadn't been paying attention, the games industry is facing a pretty serious threat right now from the US Congress and various other legislative bodies. it's an election year, and a popular theme these days from all stripes of politicians is social conservatism.
As usual, the politicians have sought an enemy, and when it comes to this socially conservative trend...folks that enemy is us.
While there are a myriad of reasons for why games have been identified as the enemy, I think that foremost is that we have made ourselves an easy target. Just like movies, rock and roll, and especially comics before us, we have made ourselves terribly easy targets for politicians to attack us. To wit:
• Most of the practitioners and players of games are young, and politicians are perfectly aware that we do not vote.
• A lot of the content in our games is fairly outrageous, particularly when looked at out of context.
• We have not made a strong case for our medium being worthy of first amendment protection, i.e. that games are "speech" as interpreted under that amendment.
There are things we can and should do to address all three of these issues, and though I believe that the legislative approach is a ridiculous dead end, nonetheless I find these to be healthy ideas for our industry.
Yo, Just Vote!
The first is, simply, vote. I'm not suggesting that you become a single-issue voter; that's irresponsible. But keep an eye out at the video game voter's network website...stay informed. And acting stupid vis-a-vis video games seems to be a completely bipartisan effort, so any faith in either of the parties to act reasonably is misplaced; you'll have to do research yourself on this one. It stuns me how many of my colleagues do not vote, and there's no excuse for it.
Find the Big Picture
Second, take care in conversation to contextualize the games that are being singled out for their violent and/or sexual content. While scenes viewed on their own are most certainly shocking, if you're speaking to someone who might not really 'get' the issue, point out that these are very much taken out of context.
I find it interesting for instance that there seems to be a linear relationship between a game's level of violent content, and its depth of story. This cannot be coincidence. And when a game fails to meet this standard, the result is usually intra-industry derision, such as with a game like Postal, which we pretty much love to hate. Ted Price did a marvelous and somewhat insidious job of pointing this out in his amicus brief filed in the appeal against the now-infamous Louisiana law; by detailing the intricate plots of the games in question (and giving away more spoilers in 21 pages than should legally be allowed), he demonstrated clearly to the reader that these games put their violence in a complex context.
Don't Be Afraid of the Art
Last and most importantly, we need to talk seriously about whether video games constitute a protected form of self-expression, or what the constitutionally minded hoi-polloi call "art". This is a discussion we need to have more of in general, and is about to become a fixation of this blog. But let's just kick it off here, shall we?
First, let's set something straight about where the medium and the content intersect. To say that a medium is capable of rising to the level of "art" is by no means to say that all of its content will rise to that level. There's a hell of a lot of crap on the shelves of Barnes and Noble, but there's also Moby Dick and The Satanic Verses (which is a great book, by the way).
Yet, games are currently being judged using a 'guilty until proven innocent' standard, under the assumption that the core values of games are inevitably prurient and/or exploitative. You and I both know this is is garbage. But in order to effectively counter the argument, we need to, subjectively and qualitatively, single out the games, and the game artists who rise above and create genuine art. If you can't think of any, think harder.
If you find games that you think qualify, do a little research and find out exactly who is responsible for the portions of the game you feel are artistic. Drop that person's name in conversation. Think about it: it's a hell of a lot easier to condemn a faceless industry as cynical and tasteless than to condemn the ambitious auteurs of games. Here are some names to get you started: Ueda, Kojima, Takahashi, Mizuguchi. (Hey, isn't it interesting that the Japanese are so much more willing to promote their individual designers than Americans and Europeans?)
By positing the games medium as being inherently capable of rising to the status of art, which I believe it is, it becomes a lot easier to make the argument that games deserve the same default protections as are already afforded to other entertainment media such as film, books or music.
It is up to us to make this argument, and it starts with looking our own selves in the mirror and seeing a potential artist. This is a Good Thing. Will we all create "art"? Certainly not. I'd argue that I personally have not (more on that in a later post). But I would just as powerfully argue that if I had the right vision and business opportunity, there is nothing about games as a medium that would prevent me creating art. Maybe someday I will; indeed I fervently hope so, and I hope that many of you do too.