The First Amendment Giveth—And Taketh Away, Too - Andrew Cohen - National. The fate of two free-speech cases illustrates the Supreme Court's divisions on key constitutional issues The United States Supreme Court ended its term Monday with two major First Amendment decisions.
In the first, the Court struck down a California law that sought to prohibit the sale of violent video games to minors. The ruling prompted strong dissents from one of the Court's most conservative members, Justice Clarence Thomas, and one of its most liberal members, Justice Stephen Breyer, who rarely agree on anything. It also once again brought out the latent parent in Justice Samuel Alito.
The second major decision Monday, involving an Arizona campaign finance law, offered a series of reminders--of the Court's dubious Ctizens United ruling, of its passionate embrace of broad First Amendment principles in political cases, and of the challenges clean-election advocates face in reforming the system. The violent video game case, styled Brown v.
What precious treasure will you find in Echo Bazaar? Gaming Sites. I’m Tired of Being a “Woman in Games.” I’m a Person. Sexual harassment and fightin' drama, together at last! [Update: Miranda felt she was misrepresented as having spoken to Destructoid, due to her quotes not being clearly attributed to her Twitter account.
It wasn't my intention to make it look like anything other than public Tweets, so this has been amended. To be clear, Miranda provided Destructoid with no quotes and everything she is quoted as saying was said on her Twitter profile.] There's been a salty offering of drama in the fighting game world recently, with chatter concerning sexual harassment of a Cross Assault cast member.
Nerds and Male Privilege Part 2: Deconstructing the Arguments. First of all, I want to go ahead and call attention to the irony that I am making this post under the moniker "Gaston," possibly one of the most misogynistic characters of any family feature.
I'm just taking that zinger away from you right away, commenters. Why I’m Glad the Nun Punching in Hitman: Absolution Upset People. (This is another edition of </RANT>, a weekly opinion piece column on GameFront.
Check back every week for more. Opinion: What The Hell Is With That Hitman Trailer? - IGN. We’re all used to a bit of tasteless violence in videogames.
It happens all the time. We’re also used to attention-seeking trailers. The latest Hitman Absolution trailer, though, pairs gratuitous violence with sexualised imagery to create the most troubling piece of marketing material I think I’ve ever seen. Fantasy Armor and Lady Bits - Mad Art Lab. The brilliant tumbler feed Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor has inspired me to add my two cents to the discussion.
Why does my opinion matter? I’m an armorer. I make actual armor that people wear when they hit each other with swords. The Escapist: Video Galleries : The Big Picture : Not Okay. The Tomb Raider scandal: Everybody is right and wrong. To say the new Tomb Raider has been controversial is to put it very lightly indeed.
Ever since last year, speculation and arguments have been had concerning the motives of the game, the content demonstrated, and what Lara Croft's new and tragic portrayal says about the state of women in games. Some are eager to defend it, perceiving attacks on an industry they love and doing what they can to protect its creative freedom. Others see a game that shrouds male power fantasies in the clothing of an emotionally engaging experience, and are ready to condemn the game, the studio making it, and anybody who dares to look forward to it. Both sides are probably wrong. Both sides are probably right.
My personal take on the Tomb Raider reboot is that I feel the developers are trying too hard. Harassment. Feminist Frequency. Tropes Vs. Women In Video Games Vs. The Internet. By John Walker on June 13th, 2012 at 4:00 pm.
The Escapist: Video Galleries : The Big Picture : Tropes vs. MovieBob. Online misogyny reflects women's realities, though in a cruder way than is customary offline. Photo by Adam Berry/Getty Images.
Jessica Coen, the editor at Jezebel, has a soul-searching piece up today about the way that online misogyny grinds at you until you simply stop feeling it anymore, which is your brain's strategy for protecting you, but has the drawback of making you forget how serious a problem this is. The impetus was her realization that she read this story about the harassment of Anita Sarkeesian and felt so inured to it all that she didn't even seriously consider assigning the story. Her post leaves us with more questions than answers about how to deal with online misogyny, especially with regards to striking the balance between not letting the haters get to you and remembering that this stuff actually matters. Fantasy And Reality: Can Gamers Tell? By John Walker on September 21st, 2011 at 12:34 pm.
Did you know that you can’t tell reality from fantasy? No, I’m not a twenty-foot dragon from Saturn, silly! Breivik Testifies About Gaming, Press Ignores The Facts. By John Walker on April 19th, 2012 at 1:30 pm. It is inevitable that during the trial of Norwegian mass murderer, Anders Breivik, that the matter of videogaming will come up. Soon after the horrendous events I dug into what Breivik had actually said about gaming in his ghastly manifesto, and it was pretty much nothing of relevance. Norway: Was Breivik Influenced by Violent Video Games?
Blame video games — that’s the watch phrase these days when something tragic happens. The non-gaming media seem to enjoy zeroing in on video games that are highlighted in horrifying crimes, invoking the rhetorical question: Do video games screw people up? Like the trial of Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik, 33, a right-wing extremist charged with killing eight people in a car-bomb attack near a government building in Oslo last July and 69 others in a follow-up shooting spree at a youth camp run by Norway’s Labor Party. Is Baroness Greenfield A Nuclear Bomb? By John Walker on November 8th, 2011 at 1:19 pm. No. No she is not. But Baroness Greenfield recently came under some considerable fire for making inaccurate and unevidenced claims about gaming’s effects on the brain. Nature’s Neuroscientific Review Of Games. By John Walker on November 23rd, 2011 at 11:05 am. Capcom tries to kill used video game sales with the one-save game. Buying used video games is great for gamers who don't want to pay full price for the latest hits.
Why Every Defense of Online Passes Has Been Bullsh** How Bad is PC Piracy Really? Article - PC - Page 1. "Make no mistake," said SEGA this week, "if one quarter of the people that usually pirate [Football Manager] switch to purchasing Football Manager 2012, the sales of the game worldwide would more than double. " That was the eye-opening statistic used to justify Football Manager 2012 requiring Steam to play. In other words, more than 80 per cent of people playing Football Manager are doing so with a pirated copy. Op-Ed: If You Want To Fight Piracy, Make Better Games. Valve has had tremendous success selling games like Team Fortress 2 on its Steam digital distribution platform.Image courtesy Valve The game publisher Ubisoft set off no small amount of controversy last year when it began shipping its PC games with a restrictive digital rights management scheme that forced customers to stay online in order to play.
The Microtransaction Investigation. The truth behind retailer-exclusive pre-order extras. One of the less popular trends of 2011 was the ramping up of the retailer-exclusive in-game extra. You know the sort of the thing - pre-order a title from Game and get a couple of extra character skins, choose HMV and get some weapon unlocks, or give your money to Zavvi and get early access to a map.
Depending on where you stand, it's either a nice bit of added value or a nuisance that prevents fans experiencing absolutely everything a game has to offer. Until recently it's been fairly easy to ignore. But things took a left turn with the release of Batman: Arkham City earlier this year, when UK supermarket giant Tesco secured a significant slab of DLC content all for themselves - a separate set of missions called Joker's Carnival Challenge Map.
A sign of things to come, perhaps? Couch of Duty - By Michael Peck. Chain World Videogame Was Supposed to be a Religion—Not a Holy War. The USB memory stick contained the sole copy of a videogame unlike any created before. The Benefits of Video Games. Treating schizophrenia: Game on. Flash of Steel — The Best Strategy Game Blog in My House. The Zynga Abyss - Benjamin Jackson - Technology. PC Gaming Ain’t About the Graphics. Ars Guide: How to ruin your PC port in five easy steps. All the world’s a game. The Great Review Debate: Can we find our way back? Don’t Blame Games For Norway Shootings. Videogames Can't Afford to Cost This Much.