Hooray! The Supreme Court likes us!

(Posted By: Alex Deckard)

The Supreme Court has spoken, and we won.  Video games have been provided with the same protection as books, movies, music and all other forms of art.  One of the majority Justices, Antonin Scalia wrote:

Video games qualify for First Amendment protection. Like protected books, plays, and movies, they communicate ideas through familiar literary devices and features distinctive to the medium. And "the basic principles of freedom of speech . . . do not vary"

Wow.  Looks like we’ve got friends in high places, or at least non-crazy people in high places.

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The decision was 7-2, with Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan, Alito and Roberts making up the majority, and Justices Thomas and Breyer making up the dissenters.

This is a landmark case.  This deals a killing blow to legislators and parents groups hoping to restrict the medium.  A killing blow that can totally be represented by a video game with as much gore and violence as the designers want, then sold openly in the street.

"Who wants Postal 3?"

See, video games have been blamed for societies ills since their creation.  Laziness, antisocial tendencies, obesity, oversexualizing and desensitization are all evils that have been laid at the feet of gaming.  But only the big one, violence, was something that could be legislated on.  Something that could be sued over.  You can’t sue Square-Enix because you think Final Fantasy turned your kid into a fat, lazy friendless chronic masturbator who likes to look at pictures of crime scenes, even if you’re right.  None of those things are illegal.

But they are very, very creepy.

  But two Doom enthusiasts in Colorado shoot up a school, and it’s the game's fault?  Forget the fact that those kids were dejected loners with crappy home lives, no supervision, easy access to firearms and no one to help them deal with their bullshit, not to mention the litany of psychological disorders they undoubtedly had.  People wanted something to blame.  They didn’t want to believe that “polite society” could have created such monsters.  So instead they blamed a simplistic game in which you wander around Mars killing demons.

Pictured: Apparently a super-accurate murder simulator.

Video games have always had enemies, and those enemies aren’t gone.  But when Leland Yee and the Governator decided they wanted to get the government involved, it turned out 7 out of 9 of the Supreme Court Justices weren’t enemies.  As their reward, I’m assuming they get to be in a special release of “NBA Jam” or something.  Justices Thomas and Breyer will have to be on the sidelines, so that Ginsburg can taunt them and call them “suckas” after she pops off a sick finger roll.

I'm just not that good at Photoshop.

Still, we need to look forward.  Sure, it’s unconstitutional to legislate video game content, but there will always be people standing in the way of progress.  There will always be small minded parents groups refusing to blame shitty parenting for poor behavior.  There will always be scumbag lawyers like Jack “Jackie Boy” Thompson who want to exploit dead children and grieving families to make a quick buck, because it’s easy to blame video games and he’s an amoral vulture.  There will always be people that just don’t get it.  But there will also always be games.  And gamers that love them.  So today, sit down and curl up with your favorite game, and quietly celebrate your hobby’s new constitutional protection.

Seriously though, this guy can eat a dick.