Why Games As Art and the word Taliban Matter

When Abbie Heppe reviewed Metroid: Other M on G4TV.com, she took the game seriously as something other than pure commercial property and included some meaningful and appropriate criticism. G4’s management have scrubbed the comments section of the most egregious examples of what I’d like to point out, but fans reacted with vehemence and outright dismissal at Heppe’s commentary in a practical demonstration of the “it’s just a game” mentality.

It’s easy to feel unconcerned about the upcoming Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association Supreme Court case if you’re already an adult, because the ramifications of the videogame industry losing the trial might not be readily apparent. I was carded yesterday in Target buying a copy of BioShock, and they do the same thing for the purchase of DVDs that are marked as featuring violent content. If militance about checking the age of videogame purchasers is the largest, immediate ramification of the videogame industry losing this case, many of us are already dealing with that state of affairs.

Therefore, it may seem like nothing would really change if and when other States followed suit with a law like California's, and I’ve seen enough kids who certainly looked underage buying Grand Theft Auto titles at GameStop to consider that legislation to keep them from playing games that I wouldn’t want my underage kids playing isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but in order to understand why even adult gamers may want to pay attention and care about this court case, we have to go back to the closet analogy history provides us, to wit the Motion Picture Production Code, or Hays Code, which governed the film industry for over 30 years in the early 20th century.

In their Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio case of 1915, the United States Supreme Court ruled that movies were business, not art, and thus not covered by the First Amendment. Foreign films which didn’t adhere to the dictums of the Code were prevented from importation. Joseph Breen, the head of the Production Code Administration, actually had the authority to alter scripts and scenes in movies. Advertising campaigns for movies were held up to the same level of scrutiny.

During the days of the Hays Code, content that was risqué for the time was still produced. Filmmakers just had to be more subtle, and to a point artistic, in how they depicted that content. My concern is that videogame publishers, however, will not show the same moxy that studios did under the Hays Code, and that if Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association goes the wrong way we'll see all kinds of potential subject matter shunned by developers who don't want to take the financial risks of playing to a smaller audience.

Electronic Arts' recent decision to pull the label “Taliban” from the multiplayer portion of the upcoming Medal of Honor seems to validate this fear. The definitive response was written by Ian Bogost over on Gamasutra, but reducing the “enemy” in Medal of Honor to fictional combatants no different than the bad guys in Modern Warfare or Modern Warfare 2 has turned a game sold to us as a fictional depiction of a historical conflict into a fictional depiction of…well, into just plain fiction.

By moving the Medal of Honor franchise into a contemporary conflict, EA had the potential to work some serious, dramatic content into a military first person shooter, which would be unlike anything we'd seen before in the genre. It could have been a watershed moment in what we expect from military FPS titles. Instead, EA cowered from substantive discussion of the issues rather than sticking up for what the Medal of Honor franchise has always been about - honoring the soldier - and watered down thier game, ostensibly for fear of losing money.

If a major videogame publisher can't stick by the intent of an immensely successful franchise, which likely could have weathered this controversy without economic ramification, what hope is there that publishers will stand up to censorship if and when it lands on our industry in full force?

This censorship may begin with concerns over violence, but in America violence is ridiculously more permissible in our media than sex, so when violence gets censored, it’s not unreasonable to think that sex may be utterly wiped from the map of potential videogame content. From there it’s only a few short steps towards thematic censorship, and if we thought that storylines and characters were already being recycled with predictable and often tedious results, wait until the number of options available to videogame writers get truncated by censorship regulations.

When the motion picture industry got slapped with the Code, they had artists with the talent to work around those rules and still get the stories told that they wanted to tell. Other than a few luminaries in video game development, the production side of our industry seems more concerned with issues of AI, graphics and physics engines, and level design than with story and theme. I’m not convinced that we have enough storytellers available in the videogame industry to outwit censorship Codes and Boards.

Unless gamers take videogames seriously as art, no one else is going to take them seriously either, including the major publishers. Considering the ESA's defense in Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association depends on the argument that videogames are artistic expression and therefore covered by First Amendment protections, this is not just a theoretical question anymore.

Dennis Scimeca is a freelance writer from Boston, MA. He maintains a blog at punchingsnakes.com. If you tweet him @DennisScimeca he will get right back to you, because he's officially bored with Halo: Reach.

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Shawn Gordon

October 05, 2010

>>>>Unless we, the gamers, take video games seriously as art even if we never want to actually engage in those debates and conversations, no one else is going to take them seriously, either, apparently including the major publishers if Electronic Arts’ decision to remove the Taliban name from Medal of Honor can be read as such. I’d rather conversations about censorship remain a series of “What if?” scenarios rather than become something we actually have to concern ourselves with for real.

Interesting point Dennis, but until we, as gamers, unite and decide what games are games, there's not going to be any real unifying idea behind games being art. When I hear gamers chide "Linger In Shadows" as 'not even a game', but try and convince me that in any and every way Modern Warfare 2 is as close to high art as DaVinci - there's a problem, especially considering that most casual or abstract games are more like art than any other game type.

In terms of censorship, I think that a lot of people are missing something here. Yes, retailers would be legally bound to do what most already do (no biggie on the surface, right?) At no point does the bill make any kind of connection to the developers ability to produce the content they're already producing - it only limits the retailers ability to sell it to specific audiences. Publishers already stated they dont intend to sell to the kiddies... yet they're pissed off because there'd be a law to secure that? Let's be real and honest - this is in NO way about freedoms or rights for the higher ups in the industry - its about ensuring the bottom line stays put.

Think about it - did they complain when retailers mainly forced publishers into using ESRB? No, not really. Why? Not becuase it's voulenteer, but because by all indications, consumers bought games that were rated over games that were not and eventually retialers only carried rated games. They didn't complain when they had to self censor... and now, they're not being asked to sensor, only told they're not allowed to seel M to under 18. They're being told, "hey, parents will have to know and understand the content at the store, game in hand, and make a monetary exchange."

For things like sex and violence, it's not always needed and frankly, if an artist isn't creative enough to make a point or state something in a creative way, they're not much of an artist. You know, why is it that "liberal" society demands we not have violence in our actions but allow it in our everyday media experience? What's the phrase.... "art imitates life," or if you'd prefer to think about it from the opposing view, "life imitates art"...

Dennis Scimeca

I'm personally bored with the "Are games art?" debate because there's no answer to the question, because no one is working from the same definition. To me, they are art, and I feel that seeking legitimacy for the question like I once did is merely calling the proposition into question rather than helping anything. In terms of "Are games, games," that's also opinion based. IMHO, ludic studies have provided us with an answer for a while now.

Whether or not this specific legislation has to do with limting the artistic palettes of game creators is irrelevant to the larger issue, I think. It's about perception. If the government doesn't think that video games are art, it is more likely to support additional legislation that limits the medium because, hey, they're just video games, right?

In the end, debates about art come down to consensus. It's all about perception and psychology. That's why giving ground on this issue is dangerous for our medium. We need to think big picture here.

In terms of sex and violence, whether or not it's "needed" may also be a fruitless discussion, because we can only speak for our own tastes, and thus "need" doesn't necessarily enter into it. I see sex and violence as colors I want to protect an artist's freedom to paint in.