M-rated games can't ride the bus anymore in Boston or Portland, Oregon. Can't ride the train, either. The respective transit authorities in those towns have banned all future ads encompassing M-rated games.Of course, the game they were really gunning for -- but missed -- was a Grand Theft Auto title, Vice City Stories. Transit ads promoting GTA:VCS which ran last November set the Boston censor-crats off. But by censoring GTA, critics like the Parents Television Council and the Campaign for a Commercial-free Childhood have closed the door to advertising for every other M-rated game as well. Victims of the ban will include some very artistic titles like Jade Empire 2 and God of War 2 as well as games like Halo 3 that, while violent, don't include hot button content such as shooting cops or robbing hookers.
Why then are games singled out? Why is it okay for HBO to place a huge advertisement for the final episodes of The Sopranos on buses in Boston and Portland while the M-rated video game based on the hit show would be banned from such advertising?
Games ads very nearly got kicked off the bus in Denver, too. There, a committee of the Regional Transit District (RTD), responding to a request from the local chapter of the Parents Television Council, recommended banning ads for M-rated games system-wide. Fortunately, the organization's board rejected the ban, citing legal concerns.
Now I'm already on record as not being a fan of GTA-style game play. But this new tactic -- and that's exactly what it is -- needs to be addressed by the video game industry, and quickly. Otherwise it will snowball into a national movement. I'm not sure why the ESA sat on its hands during the Boston controversy. There, under political pressure, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority revised its guidelines for accepting ads for video games. As a justification for doing so, the MBTA equated M-rated games with X-rated movies. That's a comparison that is both wrong and one that the industry cannot afford to let stand.
So it was good to see an ESA representative getting involved in the Denver case. It obviously had the desired effect, since the RTD backed off the ban. Having won in Denver, the ESA should immediately file suit against the MBTA to reverse the Boston decision. After all, the transit authority is a quasi-public agency which receives government funding. It has no business being in the censorship business.
The point here is simple. The game industry needs to vigorously defend its creative products. Sure, GTA rubs a lot of people the wrong way. But unpopular speech is always most in need of protection.
Dennis McCauley is the Political Editor for the Entertainment Consumers Association (www.theeca.com), tracks the political side of video games at GamePolitics.com and writes about games for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Opinions expressed in The Political Game are his own. Reach him at
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(Page 1) Reader Comments
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It doesn't make since to ban one form of violent media (video games) but allow another form that has the same violent content(tv,movies).
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>> advertisement for the final episodes of The
>> Sopranos on buses in Boston and Portland while
>> the M-rated video game based on the hit show
>> would be banned from such advertising?
Why? Because for the past few decades the traditional entertainment industry has been a puppet and financial contributor of the National Socialist party (i.e. Democrat Party). The Dims certainly aren't going to punish the film and TV industries when they provide boatloads of cash to the party and use celebrities to indoctrinate gullible individuals into supporting the party's greedy Marxist agenda. Since the new video game industry has tons of cash and hasn't bought or been bought by a single political party then it's open for attack.
BTW, the Free Speech protection under the First Amendment only protects individuals from the Federal Government. The Constitution doesn't prevent the states from legislating against the concept of free speech (So you'd have to check their specific state Constitutions and laws). I prefer to go by what the Constitution says, and not what the Pope...er...I mean Supreme Court decides that it means but many do. For what it's worth, the Supremes seem to apply this amendment to all levels of government.
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I'm glad Denver thought sensibly about the issue... of course, as I'm in Boston, I get to see first-hand the effects of the decision. That the ESA didn't lift a finger is rather chilling. It wouldn't surprise me if that was deliberate, since the ESA and Rockstar don't get along. But if so, the ESA let petty disagreements weaken it and its membership's interests.
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Next, let's point out that Steve apparently stopped reading the Constitution after the first couple of amendments. The Fourteenth Amendment clearly states that the Constitution and its Amendments applies equally to all levels of government and not just to the federal level. So while you also have to invoke the 14th Amendment when discussing this case, the 1st also applies.
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You basically just said that the Supreme Court doesn't have the authority to rule on state laws, which is not so much an error as pure ignorance.
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I've seen plenty of Republicans opposed to violent video games as much as Democrats. In addition, I don't see these same Republicans complaining about violent movies or television either. But criticizing the Republican party only "emboldens the enemy" so I'd better stop.
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Well, that's patently false. The 1st Amendment protections are clearly extended to all U.S. citizens through the 14th Amendment to prevent the restriction of speech by State and local governments unless said restrictions are narrowly tailored to meet a compelling government interest. [I do admit to paraphrasing; it's been a long time since I took con law as a first year law student.] Be that as it may, it is very safe to say that courts look at speech restrictions with what they call strict scrutiny, and all that means is that if you want to restrict speech, you better have a damn good reason.
I imagine that the reason that Denver backed off is the same reason that Boston would lose in court if challenged: they do not have a damn good reason. They have a feel-good, appealing on its face reason that might get them some press in the squibs in USA Today, but as far as meeting Constitutional muster- nothin'.
The reason why they don't get all up in arms about the Sopranos et al isn't because the Democrats have been purchased on Hollywood's collective American Express Black card; the reason is that people *like* the Sopranos. And when I say "people" I mean "people who matter". People who vote. Legislators. Parents. So-called Christian Conservatives. Our chosen avocation of video games does not have an entrenched place in mainstream society and entertainment as your traditional modes of art, theater, movies, and music. How could it? Those modes have head starts ranging from decades to millenia, while video games have been pushing the envelope for less than 20 years. I suspect that as we grow older, continue to play games, become judges, congressional representatives, senators, governors, and soccer moms who actually have some kind of remote of idea of what they're talking about; we'll see these doomed-to-fate attempts by idiots like our friend Jack wither away and die.
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Good point there, but the thing is that this wasn't someone standing up and advertising. It was a company wanting to buy space on a train. I don't think the government has trouble finding advertising, they just took the easy way out and got something non-threatening.(probably avoiding the lawsuit of some parent whose kid went on a shooting spree saying it was the train that talked him into it)
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A free speech issue arises when a city attempts to regulate advertising on private buses, trains, billboards, buildings, etc.
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And yes lawyers are the bane of any civilized society. We gamers will have to start going to law school if we want any decent content out there.(micro-flame there?)
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2. Is it hypocrisy that the gov't will allow R-Rated movies or TVM-rated TV shows to be advertised in the space, but not M-rated video games? You're damn straight it's hypocrisy.
3. Lastly, let's save our energy for the idiots who want to actually ban and/or censor the games, and be less concerned about where they're advertised.
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Lastly, there's plenty of energy left to fight this issue and also the outright bans on video games. Just like Dennis wrote, they're just different ways for the morality police to get video games relegated to the same status with porn. I will fight anything that does that, no matter what it is.
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Not that this isn't a paranoid, puritanical, suit-happy "Christian" nation in the first place, or anything.
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As for whether the 1st in partnership with the 14th Amendments apply, while it might be able to act as a private individual in terms of ad sales, a government-based entity still has to obey the Constitution. It doesn't get to skirt the 1st Amendment just because it's acting as a private sector entity for these purposes. And because they have made their decision on a business matter based on the restriction of speech it might find problematic, it does in fact become a 1st Amendment issue - Denver wisely saw this and decided to allow the ads.
Finally, on the comment about lawyers and them being "banes" - it's worth noting that in dictatorships, they often work very hard to restrict the reach and capability of lawyers. This is because lawyers are the ones who often are responsible for ensuring the government and its laws are not overstepping their bounds. One of Shakespeare's characters once said "The first thing we do, is kill all the lawyers," and that was a sign the character in question was a ruthless autocrat out to subjugate the populace.
Of course, that's lost on many people, because lawyers aren't overly concerned with the PR for their profession.
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