After five years in the California court system, the Supreme Court finally made a decision June 27 to allow game companies complete control over the violence they include in their video games.
The debate concerning video games began five years ago when governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law affecting the sale of violent video games to minors.
The evidence showing that video games causes aggression in children was inconclusive, however. In fact, Brentley Choate, sophomore in pre-architecture, said he uses video games as a way to release tension and if it increased aggression, it would defeat the purpose.
"In my case, I play video games to relax," Choate said. "You can take your frustrations out on video games much easier than any other thing because it's a computer you're playing against. It's not that big of a deal if you're a little more aggressive toward a computer than you are an actual person."
Neil Bernstein, teen psychologist and author of "How to Keep Your Teenager Out of Trouble and What to Do if You Can't," has had experience with children who say video games relax them as well, though he is not necessarily a proponent of video games as a whole.
"Some kids even say it's an outlet for them," Bernstein said. "It gets anger and frustration out of them playing the games. I'm not saying that the games are necessarily useful, but they're not all horrible. They're not all created equal. Some are much worse than others. There's a rating system in place and that's a good thing."
Information provided by Dan Hewitt, representative of the Entertainment Software Association, supports the idea that video games can be a safe outlet for aggression as incidents of underage violence have actually decreased since the '90s.
"According to the Department of Justice, crime statistics have been going down steadily since the 1990s," Hewitt said. "At the same time, the sales of computer and video games have broken new levels. In the mid-'90s we were just selling 3 to 5 billion dollars, but now last year we're up to $25 billion."
Detractors of video games, however, say that video games are able to have a bigger negative affect than other forms of media. The interactive nature of the games is seen as detrimental to children who were actively participating in the violent scenarios presented.
Justice Scalia, however, wrote in the court's opinion that viewer interaction was not limited only to video games, and it was unfair to censor only them.
"California's argument would fare better if there were a longstanding tradition in this country of specially restricting children's access to depictions of violence, but there is none," Scalia said. "Certainly the books we give children to read -- or read to them when they are younger -- contain no shortage of gore. Grimm's Fairy Tales, for example, are grim indeed."
Hewitt attributed the court's narrow focus in this case on the knee-jerk response society often has toward new forms of media."Any time you have a new entertainment form," Hewitt said. "Be it jazz music or rock 'n' roll or comic books or even movies, when these new entertainment mediums came out, there was a large amount of resistance and what folks call the moral panic."
"You see it time and time again, and the fact is that because video games are the new entertainment, the new artistic expression that's popular, we're going through the same thing that other art forms and artistic mediums have before," Hewitt said.
Bernstein also said he approved of the court's decision because he thought such a broad law would only hinder parents in their efforts to raise their children in their own way.
"It's a parenting issue," Bernstein said. "Parents should be able to monitor what kids do or don't do, and I don't think we should have a big-brother-is-watching-you mentality to get things done."
He also questioned the overall effectiveness of the law in question and said the law will only turn violence in video games into forbidden fruit, and it should be the parents' responsibility to instill their children with an appropriate set of values.
"The best reason for kids not to do things is not because you'll be punished," Bernstein said. "It's because you understand why it's wrong and why it's not appropriate for you."
There is still concern, however, that the violence in video games can cause irreversible damage to children.
Justice Stephen Breyer, in his dissent, even said video games might cause children to have an adverse effect on our system of government as a whole.
"This case is ultimately less about censorship than it is about education," Breyer said. "Our Constitution cannot succeed in securing the liberties it seeks to protect unless we can raise future generations committed cooperatively to making our system of government work."
Breyer said in order to create an environment for children that will cultivate the attributes necessary to become a productive citizen, the government should be able to help parents enforce certain protocols that will help them rear children who are even-tempered and reasonable members of society.
"Sometimes, children need to learn by making choices for themselves," Breyer said. "Other times, choices are made for children-by their parents, by their teachers and by the people acting democratically through their governments."
Hewitt said he thinks the response from video game companies concerning the Supreme Court decision will be a sustained effort to uphold the video game industry's rating system in order to provide consumers with the information they need.
"I think what you're going to see is that they're going to continue supporting the video game industry's rating system which, according to the FTC, is the best rating system in entertainment media," Hewitt said. "What you're going to see is a continued support for providing parents the tools and information they need to make the right decisions for their families."
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