“It has been said, ‘Censorship is the bastard child of technology,’” attorney Lawrence G. Walters writes on his new website, GameCensorship.com. “Technological advances in videogaming software have created a rapid evolution from 1970s arcade-game technology to today’s role playing games, featuring an almost lifelike level of realism, which mirrors the natural world in all of its graphic violence and sexual activity. In tandem with electronic gaming’s rapid evolution and realism has been a meteoric rise in popularity and revenues which now rivals that of the motion picture industry.”
That, in a nutshell, is the reason Walters, a longtime First Amendment defender and new member of the Interactive Game Developers Association, created the site. He says it will serve as “a clearinghouse for legal, legislative, and political information regarding videogame censorship issues.” Currently, the site houses an original article titled “Sex, Lies, and Videogames,” a transcript of the game-censorship talk Walters presented in June at the first Sex in Video Games Conference, and a legislative table showing the status of all recent state and federal bills directed at violent or sexually oriented videogames, but Walters promises more is to come.
“The videogame industry is going through similar issues to what the adult industry has experienced over the past couple of decades,” he says. Other than a “certain amount of naiveté as to the potential consequences” of incorporating adult topics in videogames, the two industries are similar in many ways, he says. Both dance along the hemorrhaging edge of technology (although the adult industry primarily focuses on content distribution, while videogaming focuses on software advancement), and both face not only vocal condemnation by ultra-conservatives, but also increasing legal and regulatory scrutiny.
“There’s a lot of crossover between the two industries,” Walters says. “To the extent you stigmatize the materials and the consumers of the materials, you violate expressive freedoms. Decisions made about videogaming stand to directly impact the adult industry, and vice versa.” In fact, he adds, restrictions on violence and adult content applied to the videogame industry also stand to affect Hollywood.
Consequently, Walters says he believes the adult and videogame industries should work together for both sides’ benefit.
“When it comes to our interests and our future, it makes sense [for each industry to pay close attention to the other],” he says. The videogame industry is fighting free-expression battles currently, too, especially in the realm of simulated activity. The adult entertainment industry recently was dismayed to learn that 2257 documentation must be maintained not only for specifically sexually explicit conduct, but also for simulated sexual activity, and the “simulated” portion of both industries may see increased legislative attention in the near future, Walters opines.
“The impact on the viewer of a simulated anything can be just as profound as the impact of the real thing,” he notes.
That’s part of the reason Walters believes adult and videogames should “join forces to push back legislative action,” he says. Collectively, “we need to drive a wedge between conservative extremists and parents while working to address the real concerns of parents and legislators.”
