First Amendment Project - Violent Video Games

      One thing I will definitely agree with lawmakers is that children should not be exposed to explicit and violent material. Parents need to understand that there are ratings on the back of the cover. However I believ that children will still try to find a way to access these games because they are fun and entertaining. That said, in regards to almost everything else from the law about their opinions about violent video games and censorship I disagree with, some of these games are fun and entertaining and nothing more than that, and to assume that it causes real life violence by poisoning the minds of children and teens is untrue and ridiculous. Some games are trying to be more of an art form, and when violence is contained in it it is trying to make a point like a book, play, or movie would.       One criticism I would give would be that a lot of people against lawmakers, not just people working in the law is that I believe a lot of them are out of...

     A Timeline of Video Game Controversies.  National Coalition Against Censorship.            https://ncac.org/resource/a-timeline-of-video-game-controversies      Price, Anna.  To Play or Not to Play: Video Game Ratings and the Law.  Library Of Congress Blogs.          https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2023/09/to-play-or-not-to-play-video-game-ratings-and-the-law/#:~:text=Video%20Game%20Case%20Law&text=This%20case%20arose%20in%202005,prohibited%20under%20the%20First%20Amendment.      Russell, Lauren.  Police: 8-year-old shoots, kills elderly caregiver after playing video game.  CNN, August 26, 2013.         https://www.cnn.com/2013/08/25/us/louisiana-boy-kills-grandmother/index.html      Video Game Law.  Justia.          https://www.justia.com/entertainment-law/video-game-law/ https://www.pbs.org...

I think the one thing our group can agree on video game violence is the fact that children cannot be exposed to violent scenery or obscene material so early in their lives. Parents being angry with the content in video games from the 1990's, 2000s, 2010's, and today is redundant becasue of the ratings on the covers that say who this games appeals to, children, 18+ teens, and adults. The simple actions of looking at the back of the cover should be easy. Parents need to supervise their children and what they watch, say, or play. Without supervising, it enables the children to play as many violent games as they please. Thus, their growth and development hurts them because of the effects from the violent and obscene material. Parents must check on what their kids are watching, or playing to make sure they can grow up to live healthy and active lives. We agree that parents need to be aware of the video game their child plays, and that children should not be exposed to violence ...

     The relationship between law and video games have changed over time. The hysteria over violent video games was once something that ocurred in the 80's and 90's. The law's view has differed, and violent video games have changed. Video games as a whole has changed over the decades, and the ones that are rated for adults are even more violent than the ones that were released during the 80's and 90's. The law's view of violent video games has changed a lot, but has still remained the same slightly.       In an article titled "Are Modern Video Games Too Complicated?" from the  The   Boss Rush Network it states that "Recently at a social gathering with new friends and acquaintances, the subject of video games came up, and someone quipped that modern video games aren’t as good as older games. The graphics have improved, but the gameplay has not, they claimed. Another person vocally agreed. The insinuation was that modern video games are overly ...

 Video games, they are a form of entertainment to not just children, but to grown ups as well. Many people including myself are fascinated by video games, and enjoy playing them to entertain themselves. However, to the eyes of the law, while they may be a work of entertainment to some, to them it can be the contrary. The censorship of video games has not been a private matter, as there are a lot of violent video games being released that lawmakers feel they should not be playable at all to the public. Specifically, they should not allow the children to play violent video games, along with the protesters who want to reduce the violence that children are exposed to by some of these games.  In 2011, Supreme Court case Brown v. The Entertainment Merchants Association ruled that California law prohibited the sales or rentals of violent video games to minors as a violation to the First Amendment rule. These video companies had made the defense that there was no connection between vi...

    Could you name a more iconic duo than creative work and censorship? It seems that as long as there have been creative works being made by people, whether it's music, movies, television, and yes of course video games, there has always been this opposing element of people demanding that these different forms of art be subject to censorship.    You could track this activity back to the 1800's when Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein. Many people of that time found the book to have blasphemous elements in it. Books through out history have been censored due the controversial subject matter that they talked about. If you look back at the Silent Era of film, movies such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari were also the subject to controversy due it's early depiction of on-screen violence. Movies have been referred to as the defining art form of the 20th century, and as movies progrssed and got more advanced, they also got more daring in experimenting with what they could and cou...

Throughout the time violent video games have been out, there have been many attempts to set bars by state lawmakers to prevent minors from buying violent video games at a young age. From Mortal Kombat to GTA, the range of violent video games out there are plenty. While there are plenty of minor laws, parents have been pushing to get violent video games to get banned or at least reduce the violence shown in video games.  According to the article "Video Games and Children & First Amendment Law" published by Justia, it writes that the state of California had law try to regulate the sale or rental of violent video games to children. Writing for the majority however, Justice Antonin Scalia had ruled that video games qualify for full First Amendment protection which is similar to books, movies, films, and plays. Unfortunately for the parents, the law makers claim that there are no long standing traditions of restricting children's access to depictions of violence. The stric...

As I mentioned in my previous article, video games have had a long history of facing the wrath of censorship. In the early stages of video games, such as during the Era of the Atari 2600 for example, it was sort of a wild west Era for video games. Anybody could theoretically program a video game, and sell it to the public.  After the release of videos games such as Mortal Kombat and Night Trap  in the early 1990's, the ESRB was founded, and similarly to the MPAA, it acted as a rating system for video games. The important thing to remember is that the ESRB is not government affiliated. One of the biggest reasons why the ESRB was founded in the first place was so that they could act as a mediator between the gaming companies and the government. The ESRB acting as the mediator meant that the government did not have to take a censorship role themselves. The rules were simple. If your video game was rated M for mature, then only people over 17 could purchase that game. If your game...

      When it comes to the law's view of video games it is split down at the midde. This means anyone working in law, such as district attorneys, lawyers, and judges. Many lawyers have tried to push blame on video games for the violence that has been afflicted in communities. Games such as Grand Theft Auto, Doom, and Mortal Kombat are some examples of the games who have received criticism and started controversies, and the reason for this is their violent content, religious sacrilege, and criminal activity. The law's view of this is that all of it is glorifying these acts that the player does in the game, and that it is glorifying satanism, murder, and criminals.       However, when it come to the court cases every one of them ruled out video games as a motive for the crimes that have been comitted since court cases sometimes have to be unbiased when it comes to crimes.There are examples of some crime scenes that are investigated where there is a conne...

Throughout the years, video games have found a way to get increasingly more violent each year as time has gone on. These video games have been appealing for the younger generation. They enjoy the content of violent video games as they feel it is a form of entertainment and enjoyment to kids and teenagers around the world. But how do parents feel about violent video games? How do they view it? Do they agree with what is being put out there?  According to a PBS article "Do You Know What Video Games Your Children Are Playing?", shows that parents simply do not know that there is violence connected to video games. A recent study that was conducted by the American Academy of Pediatrics claims that more than 90 percent of parents do not monitor ratings on video games played by their kids. As a matter of fact, there are lots of parents that do not know that video games ratings exist. Even more concerning is the fact that there are parents who are unaware that violent video games hav...

The video game industry got it's start in the late 1970s. Since then, it has morphed into a multi-billion dollar industry that has soared in popularity in the ensuing decades since it's inception. Early on, video game titles such as Pac-Man, Pong, and Donkey Kong helped to cultivate a popularity for video games among young people. Even from this beginning phase, video goes drew the ire of parents and parents groups. An example of this would be in 1976 with a game called Death Race, which was an arcade game where the objective was to run over gremlins, and when the player did so, a tombstone would appear signifying the death of that gremlin. Despite being a primitive arcade game, this is considered by historians as the first major video game controversy, and parents took their wrath to this game. Due to the public outcry, the game was eventually taken off the market by the manufacturer; a win for parents and parent groups in what would be prove to be a long and eventful history ...

     My name is Irving Reyes, and I am majoring in liberal arts at Mount San Antonio college, and I plan on transferring to Cal Poly Pomona. I am taking a class on journalism because it is one of the classes that is able to get me to transfer to Cal Poly, but I am thinking about being a journalist as a job, so this will be somewhat supportive. I also really enjoy reading as a hobby. A journalist whose work I am interested in reading would be H.L. Mencken. I don't have a background, or experience in writing, personally, but I do have some in my education. I had a Summer School literature class in High School in what I think was 2019 where I had to write essays for the novel Of Mice and Men and the short story The Masque of the Red Death. I would later have the same class and teacher in 2020 for my Junior year of High School where I would once again write essays for novels, a poem, and a play we read. I had two other classes in high school for creative writing for literatur...

My name is David Fascio, and I am currently a sophomore at Mt. SAC. Prior to coming to Mt. SAC, I attended Chaffey College for a few semesters. I am taking this mass media class in order to expand my knowledge of journalism. I have had an interest in writing amd journalism. I am semi experienced in writing, because I run a sports blog on Instagram on my spare time. I plan to keep on learning about the field of journalism even after thus class is over.

Hello everyone! My name is Juan Zamudio and I am a sophomore here at Mount San Antonio College. My major is in Film, TV, and Electronic Media, but my goal is to transfer to the University of Oregon and major in journalism. Some things you should know about me is that I love discussing and playing sports, listening to music is one of my favorite hobbies, I enjoy shopping for clothes, and I love spending time with my family and friends. This is my first time ever doing something like this in any class I have ever taken. I hope all of you guys can learn and enjoy the content that me and my colleagues will post about video game violence. Best of luck to everybody working on this assignment!