July 19th, 2004 by Ashu Mathura Posted in Games | No Comments »
The video game industry seems to delight in pushing the envelope – and the bounds of good taste – with ever-gorier content. That has put it under renewed attack from legislators and activists who claim some titles must be kept out of kids’ hands, though courts have repeatedly granted games First Amendment protections.
Meanwhile, we’re in the midst of a gaming explosion. Deloitte & Touche predicts the worldwide number of “game compliant devices” other than PCs – mobile phones, consoles, and handheld computers, for example – will see a sixfold increase by 2010, from 415 million now to 2.6 billion.
For some legislators, that’s a call to arms. Some want the violence in some games declared obscene.
“You can carve out some exceptions to the First Amendment when it is determined that these things we are talking about – like pornography, like alcohol, like tobacco, and so on – have harmful effects to children,” Leland Yee, a Democrat in the California Assembly. More …
