Mega Man Legends 3, a DS sequel to a long-dormant sub-franchise of one of Capcom's biggest franchises, was cancelled last week to much fanfare across the internet. While several of Mega Man's friends like Tron Bonne and Zero are in the latest Marvel Versus Capcom incarnation, the Blue Bomber himself is nowhere to be found, with no plans to add him in any incarnation in the newest installment of the series. And (though it is almost certainly not true) rumors abound that the complaints of Mega Man fans at the San Diego Comic Con were squelched by Capcom's unforgiving soldiers. Some people are calling this the death of Mega Man in general, signalling an end to the franchise for Capcom.
Waving his last banner are the fans of the series, who are starting new revival petitions on Facebook, editing Wikipedia to express their anger and frustration, or in some cases simply writing nostalgia-filled memorial articles about the series as it was. Capcom Europe, meanwhile, made a perhaps ill-advised tweet saying that the cancellation of Legends 3 was actually the fault of the fans - that their support was simply not enough to convince Capcom the game was worth promoting.
The truth is, I thought the cancellation of the title was a fairly predictable move. We can come up with a lot of conspiratorial theories as to why this happened. It's possible that Keiji Inafune leaving the company at least caused the Legends 3 project to lose momentum, even if it wasn't a direct cause of its cancellation. Or maybe Superboy Prime did, in fact, just think the game sucked. But the primary reason by my estimation is pure market forces.
The 3DS has not done as well for Nintendo as it may have hoped. Putting a lot of money and development time into an exclusive for an unpopular console, for a series Capcom wasn't sure was a big-seller, was a risky gamble. Sure, Capcom also made bets on Mega Man games for PSP, but these as far as I know haven't done as well as they had hoped, with no plans to continue the Maverick Hunter X or Powered-Up reboots. Mega Man Universe, an experiment in a Mega Man with user created content, is also already cancelled. The most successful Mega Man game in recent years was Mega Man 9, the retro clone of the old games that was designed with the sensibilities of a modern masocore title - the snake(man) eating itself as Mega Man evolved based on titles that evolved based on it. Mega Man 10, by contrast, had less-exciting sales performance, as the sheen of novelty that surrounded "the new retro" had already worn off.
Other than the hardcore Mega Man fans, it's not entirely clear who Mega Man Legends 3 was being made for. The Street Fighter and Resident Evil franchises are doing well for Capcom to appeal to the western audience that they're looking to continue to net. In some cases, Capcom doesn't seem to understand what appeals the most to Americans, but it's fairly sure that, at least where it comes to Americans writ large, the soft, anime aesthetic of a 3D Mega Man handheld is not really "it."
This is my take on it. Among hardcore Mega Man fans, there is a split, based mostly on generational lines. The younger Mega Man fans are members of the Millennial Generation, or Gen Y. They were introduced to the series some time along the middle of the Mega Man X saga, when the games shifted to Playstation and added long FMVs with a heaping helping of overwrought anime drama. The hand-wringing speechification of anime protagonist Mega Man X appeals to this generation, and they fell head over heels for the Mega Man Zero series with its complex stories and long talky bits. They like the anime aesthetic quite a bit and have no problem combining this art style with the idea of a serious story, because they grew up with manga.
The older Mega Man fans, in Generation X, are operating mostly off of nostalgia for the old series. Some of them simply enjoyed the difficult platforming and don't care a whit if the game has much of a story; these are the people who enjoyed Mega Man 9 simply because they wanted to play a game like they remembered from childhood. However, the hardest of the hardcore old Mega Man fans also want the series to have a more serious story. They would just prefer that this story center around the story that they remember: Dr. Light powering up his innocent boy robot to battle the robots of the Evil Dr. Wily. These are the people that listen to The Megas and the Protomen for their darker takes on the tale. However, they aren't as interested in the anime aesthetic that the younger generation likes, and frequently reject the "cute" redesigns of the Powered Up series... in favor of more mature, more "badass" takes in Mega Man artwork and custom action figures.
I am a Mega Man fan, and with my age, I bridge the gap between the Gen X and Gen Y fans. However, I lean toward Gen X just a little bit (which is probably obvious from the way I categorize both camps). As a Mega Man fan, I wanted Mega Man Legends 3. We all did as fans, but just because we want Mega Man, himself, to continue to exist as an idea. The game, itself, was not for us. It was not really for the Millennial fans, who want a more serious, darker story. It was certainly not for the Gen X fans, who want the original Mega Man, and prefer a grittier and grimmer style of art. And it was probably not right for the children that Capcom courted with its Pokemon-lite Battle Network and Star Force series, though, it was for kids if it was for anyone at all. To top it off, the console it's exclusive to isn't a hit. Unclear target market equals unclear sales equals cancellation.
However, Capcom did a strange thing with Mega Man Legends 3, a kind of unprecedented thing. It asked the fans to put their money where their mouth was, and, before the game even came out, aid in its development by submitting ideas to the developers. Fans were asked to submit concepts, and vote in polls about which ones to use. Capcom has done this with previous Mega Man titles (with design your own robot contests), but not quite on this level. It's a good idea in theory, but as these calls to participate were posted on their development site specifically, which didn't get continuous coverage in the game press, it wasn't really easy to find these participation pages unless you were deliberately looking. Early response was good, but then came human nature: fatigue set in as fans were being asked to participate more and more.
As a fan, I did participate in polls, at least early on. I would have participated more directly, but, kept having the sneaking sense that, as a primarily Gen X fan, and an adult, this game was not really for me and I really should leave this stuff to the kiddies. Though I've found the development blogs interesting, I personally didn't need the insight in to the development process because I already understand it fairly well. (I thought "the creation of the heroine" 3D modeling guide was particularly good and useful, and a fantastic introduction for pure newbies to understand the process of character modeling, so I have used it in classes. The comments on that article series are so precious, things like someone wanting the character's UV unwrap "check checkers" as an alternate skin for the character because it looks cool to them.) One thing I did understand about the process that most fans who participated obviously do not is that video games are cancelled all the time. It's actually quite common, especially if there's a feeling the audience/market isn't there. However, since Capcom made the fans so involved in the development process, many of them were shocked and angry by the cancellation and thus the backlash. If you are going to put all your cards on the table, it really looks bad when you fold.
A few years ago, Tomb Raider wasn't doing so hot, and I waxed armchair designer about what would fix it. Now it's on-line to do a gritty reboot that looks pretty fantastic. Transformers, a series that banks mostly on the nostalgia of Generation X combined with a heaping helping of ridiculous 3D explosions, also did a gritty reboot that makes incredibly mad bank at the box office completely irrespective of the poor quality of the actual films. Now there will also be a gritty reboot Spider-Man film. So... Gritty Mega Man reboot, anyone? Or maybe we could reboot it as a real-time strategy, to make it extra contemporary.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Very Fast, Made of Meat
I started writing this post a few months ago when the Super Meat Boy Post-mortem showed up on Gamasutra, but I never got around to completing my thoughts. Fortunately, the timing of a video post-mortem on GDC Vault gives me another relevant link to share in regard to the game. I actually bought Super Meat Boy when it initially came out - multiple times, as it turns out - but it ended up in my backlog for a little until I got the encouragement to bring it out courtesy Valve's Potato Sack promotion.
Every once in a while you come across a game that is about something. I don't mean "about" something in the Heavy Rain sense, where someone wrote a story, then put a sort of game around it. I mean about something in the sense of creating meaning through the mechanics and dynamics of the game.
Super Meat Boy is such a game.
Every once in a while you come across a game that is about something. I don't mean "about" something in the Heavy Rain sense, where someone wrote a story, then put a sort of game around it. I mean about something in the sense of creating meaning through the mechanics and dynamics of the game.
Super Meat Boy is such a game.
In Further Cthulhu News
Posting here simply because of its relevance to my previous article, indie RPG Cthulhu Saves the World is now available on PC. I have to say I was waiting for this, since when I heard it was coming to PC I decided to give it a pass on X-Box and play it at my desk instead. I wonder if anyone else was in the same boat there.
Anyway, enjoy, despite my substance-free article!
Anyway, enjoy, despite my substance-free article!
Friday, July 08, 2011
Tabletop Games I Have Played - Call of Cthulhu
This is the first entry in a occasionally-updated series I'm going to start about different tabletop RPGs that I have played, and my personal tales. There's no particular timeframe I have picked for when I'll write tabletop stuff, but I've played a really diverse amount of tabletop games in various convention and home settings, so I could feasibly write on this topic for a long time. You have been warned.
I'm going to start with a game that I play a lot at Origins, which is the grand old game of Cthulhu. Cthulhu these days seems to have infected popular culture in surprising ways. Since becoming a lovable, public domain Elder God, the Great Old One has been seen in plushie form, heading up his own indie video game, and taking orders from Eric Cartman on South Park. But Call of Cthulhu, the tabletop RPG by Chaosium, was my first exposure to the Mythos, as it wasn't so mainstream back in the days when I was first learning to play RPGs.
Actually, it was one of the first RPGs that I ever played. As a bright, impressionable young college student, I showed up at the annual Halloween meeting of the Bowling Green Gaming Society with no real expectation of what I was getting in to. They were playing Call of Cthulhu Versus the Ghostbusters, and had an extra character. Since Call of Cthulhu is extremely easy to pick up, even for the novice gamer, I played a character who (I struggle to remember but think I am accurate) turned out to be the team nerd a la Egon. (These were original character Ghostbusters, with a franchise business based out of Cleveland.) Even though the Ghostbusters ought to be able to handle a threat like Cthulhu, our novice status in 'busting and the game's punishing rule set left one Ghostbuster incurably mad, and one dead… As for my character, he ended up falling off of an under-construction skyscraper and shattering his spine, but, with his sanity intact he was able to live to tell the tale, even if he would never walk again.
…Good times.
So yes, Call of Cthuhlu can be a brutal, unforgiving game. But it's easy to pick up and play. Most conflict resolution is straightfoward: your character sheet shows your percent chance of accomplishing any task, in a specific set of categories. Since you typically play as an "investigator," an ordinary person with no super powers, your chances to do something are generally small, especially if it falls out of your area of personal expertise. Roll your dice to get a percent under the skill number on your sheet, however, and you can succeed. There are a few extra rolls you might make involving damage and sanity loss and such, but the player doesn't concern with them too much. You'll lose your sanity points now and then, but, if you actually get in to combat, you probably did something wrong. The strongest person you should ever actually be fighting is a cultist who is about at your power level. If you see an Elder God or even one of his mutated minions, you should run. If you can.
If you've played a lot of Cthulhu, there's some common sense rules to survive, if that's what you really want to do. Never read any mysterious books you find; you're better off burning them. Never touch any mysterious-looking objects or artifacts. Don’t go anywhere alone. Don't bother with a gun.
Of course, playing the game to survive makes it a lot less fun, so actually you should ignore the above advice and allow the game to kill your character or drive them insane whenever possible.
I've played the game about a dozen times, mostly in convention settings. Because it's just begging to be subverted by its oppressive horror atmosphere, it's not always played "straight." I've seen Scooby Doo Vs. Cthuhlu and Clue Vs. Cthulhu and The Penguins of Madagasgar Vs. Cthuhlhu. (OK, we played that with a different dice system, but, the concept is still funny, so including it anyway.) This year at Origins I played a few different rounds, but it was always with one or more seasoned vets who understood both the system and how to survive in it. We weren't taking great pains to be no fun, but in the two actual Call of Cthulhu sessions I played (one historical, one modern), it was Slow Pitch Cthulhu Softball, with no deaths, only minor injuries, and maybe a pip or two off the sanity bar.
I was kind of disappointed by one session this year. The roleplaying at the table was fantastic on the part of the players, and the GM was highly prepared with different props, photos, mood music and even an intro video. But the actual scenario left our well-crafted characters with very little to do. Early teases about supernatural involvement in our situation turned out to be red herrings or false alarms. The session culminated in us attending a ritual where the correct action was to simply not interrupt it, then win the scenario. We may have been the first team to deduce this, since the GM just had to half-heartedly admit it was over and we won, then told us with laughter how many previous tables had interrupted it and caused lots of death and carnage. Note to GMs: If the correct action in the finale of your scenario is "do nothing," please consider rewriting your scenario. At best, the players will get annoyed with this a bit; at worst, you're making them look like idiots by trying to trick them in to making the situation worse for your own amusement. Yes, even in Cthuhlu. (Then again, I guess "show up and do nothing" was also how you win Raiders of the Lost Arc.)
By contrast, last year I played in a game where the world was destroyed -- mostly due to our characters' fear, uncertainty, and overall bumbling -- and that was cool and hilarious. I could tell that one guy at the table felt a little upset by it because he really wanted to play the hero. In straight Cthuhlu, though, playing the hero can be entertaining, but is ultimately folly. There are no heroes in Cthuhlu. There is a lot of dead meat.
If I had one complaint about the game from a player standpoint, it wouldn't be its ruthlessness, but that its ruthlessness has an unintended side effect: it takes too long to get to the interesting bits. At a con, a GM will give you a mundane character. Then, likely, you'll play around several hours of this character doing entirely mundane tasks, with no supernatural involvement. The session needs to last a certain number of hours, and the moment supernatural stuff gets involved in a major way it's all going to go to Hell very quickly. From a storytelling standpoint, the boring setup stuff is necessary for contrast. Then again, it's also… you know… boring. Your mileage may vary there.
I know of a few PC game adaptations of Call of Cthuhlu, but I haven't played them. I did really enjoy the obviously-Cthuhlu-insipred Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, on the Gamecube, and I see some Cthulhu inspirations with the sanity system in the very scary Amnesia: The Dark Descent. If you have any experience with the Cthulhu video games and happen to stop by, let me know if they're worth a play!
I'm going to start with a game that I play a lot at Origins, which is the grand old game of Cthulhu. Cthulhu these days seems to have infected popular culture in surprising ways. Since becoming a lovable, public domain Elder God, the Great Old One has been seen in plushie form, heading up his own indie video game, and taking orders from Eric Cartman on South Park. But Call of Cthulhu, the tabletop RPG by Chaosium, was my first exposure to the Mythos, as it wasn't so mainstream back in the days when I was first learning to play RPGs.
 |
| And yes, of course someone made a Hipster Cthulhu |
Actually, it was one of the first RPGs that I ever played. As a bright, impressionable young college student, I showed up at the annual Halloween meeting of the Bowling Green Gaming Society with no real expectation of what I was getting in to. They were playing Call of Cthulhu Versus the Ghostbusters, and had an extra character. Since Call of Cthulhu is extremely easy to pick up, even for the novice gamer, I played a character who (I struggle to remember but think I am accurate) turned out to be the team nerd a la Egon. (These were original character Ghostbusters, with a franchise business based out of Cleveland.) Even though the Ghostbusters ought to be able to handle a threat like Cthulhu, our novice status in 'busting and the game's punishing rule set left one Ghostbuster incurably mad, and one dead… As for my character, he ended up falling off of an under-construction skyscraper and shattering his spine, but, with his sanity intact he was able to live to tell the tale, even if he would never walk again.
…Good times.
So yes, Call of Cthuhlu can be a brutal, unforgiving game. But it's easy to pick up and play. Most conflict resolution is straightfoward: your character sheet shows your percent chance of accomplishing any task, in a specific set of categories. Since you typically play as an "investigator," an ordinary person with no super powers, your chances to do something are generally small, especially if it falls out of your area of personal expertise. Roll your dice to get a percent under the skill number on your sheet, however, and you can succeed. There are a few extra rolls you might make involving damage and sanity loss and such, but the player doesn't concern with them too much. You'll lose your sanity points now and then, but, if you actually get in to combat, you probably did something wrong. The strongest person you should ever actually be fighting is a cultist who is about at your power level. If you see an Elder God or even one of his mutated minions, you should run. If you can.
If you've played a lot of Cthulhu, there's some common sense rules to survive, if that's what you really want to do. Never read any mysterious books you find; you're better off burning them. Never touch any mysterious-looking objects or artifacts. Don’t go anywhere alone. Don't bother with a gun.
Of course, playing the game to survive makes it a lot less fun, so actually you should ignore the above advice and allow the game to kill your character or drive them insane whenever possible.
I've played the game about a dozen times, mostly in convention settings. Because it's just begging to be subverted by its oppressive horror atmosphere, it's not always played "straight." I've seen Scooby Doo Vs. Cthuhlu and Clue Vs. Cthulhu and The Penguins of Madagasgar Vs. Cthuhlhu. (OK, we played that with a different dice system, but, the concept is still funny, so including it anyway.) This year at Origins I played a few different rounds, but it was always with one or more seasoned vets who understood both the system and how to survive in it. We weren't taking great pains to be no fun, but in the two actual Call of Cthulhu sessions I played (one historical, one modern), it was Slow Pitch Cthulhu Softball, with no deaths, only minor injuries, and maybe a pip or two off the sanity bar.
I was kind of disappointed by one session this year. The roleplaying at the table was fantastic on the part of the players, and the GM was highly prepared with different props, photos, mood music and even an intro video. But the actual scenario left our well-crafted characters with very little to do. Early teases about supernatural involvement in our situation turned out to be red herrings or false alarms. The session culminated in us attending a ritual where the correct action was to simply not interrupt it, then win the scenario. We may have been the first team to deduce this, since the GM just had to half-heartedly admit it was over and we won, then told us with laughter how many previous tables had interrupted it and caused lots of death and carnage. Note to GMs: If the correct action in the finale of your scenario is "do nothing," please consider rewriting your scenario. At best, the players will get annoyed with this a bit; at worst, you're making them look like idiots by trying to trick them in to making the situation worse for your own amusement. Yes, even in Cthuhlu. (Then again, I guess "show up and do nothing" was also how you win Raiders of the Lost Arc.)
By contrast, last year I played in a game where the world was destroyed -- mostly due to our characters' fear, uncertainty, and overall bumbling -- and that was cool and hilarious. I could tell that one guy at the table felt a little upset by it because he really wanted to play the hero. In straight Cthuhlu, though, playing the hero can be entertaining, but is ultimately folly. There are no heroes in Cthuhlu. There is a lot of dead meat.
If I had one complaint about the game from a player standpoint, it wouldn't be its ruthlessness, but that its ruthlessness has an unintended side effect: it takes too long to get to the interesting bits. At a con, a GM will give you a mundane character. Then, likely, you'll play around several hours of this character doing entirely mundane tasks, with no supernatural involvement. The session needs to last a certain number of hours, and the moment supernatural stuff gets involved in a major way it's all going to go to Hell very quickly. From a storytelling standpoint, the boring setup stuff is necessary for contrast. Then again, it's also… you know… boring. Your mileage may vary there.
I know of a few PC game adaptations of Call of Cthuhlu, but I haven't played them. I did really enjoy the obviously-Cthuhlu-insipred Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, on the Gamecube, and I see some Cthulhu inspirations with the sanity system in the very scary Amnesia: The Dark Descent. If you have any experience with the Cthulhu video games and happen to stop by, let me know if they're worth a play!
Friday, July 01, 2011
Ctrl + Alt + Defeat July
The slick, graphically designed e-zine Ctrl + Alt + Defeat has something to say this month about violence in video games, particularly, within the context of war games. Unsprisingly, I'm not against it. I'm in the article starting on page 17 along with several other smart cookies and some lovely photographs. Check it out.
Video Games Win: Fatality
Political opponents of video games suffered a blow this past week as the Supreme Court ruled, 7-2, that California's law restricting the sale of violent video games to minors was unconstitutional per the First Amendment.
This ruling is not surprising to anyone who followed the case and the series of appeals that lead us to it. However, some of the coverage of the ruling (such as the above) may not be interpreting it correctly. To understand the nuances of the justices' opinions on this matter, it's worthwhile (if challenging) to read the official court opinion (PDF). Justice Scalia's majority opinion is the most pro-game of the series and, to me, the most logical, as it compares video game hysteria to hysteria surrounding dime novels and other once-new media, compares video game violence to violence in classic fairy tales, and mentions the role of parents and their judgement in restricting what content children experience.
Justice Alito, below him, has an opinion where he backs the majority vote, but for different reasons. It's basically saying: I sort of agree, but. "In some of these games, the violence is astounding." There's points awarded for creative mutilations (this would have been hyperbole a few years ago but is not anymore). And Alito says the studies about their effects are inconclusive... in other words, Alito is in favor of restricting this material, but the California law itself was the problem, not having defined the restricted material clearly enough.
Last night on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart also had something interesting to say about this ruling.
I was surprised to see this. This is what prompted me to want to write again about this topic. The Daily Show generally has a tech-savvy, young audience and that audience is probably largely in favor of the ruling. When he cringes exaggeratedly at Mortal Kombat, Stewart is showing an unusually "old man"-like response. (Later in the broadcast he did admit to playing the game and that it is fun. (It is.))
I'd like to say something about the clip they chose to illustrate the level of violence in the game. First of all, though we were verbally warned: they were allowed to show it on the show without censoring it. Second of all, Stewart talks about how it would only be bannable if the woman in question suffered a "nip-slip" while being disemboweled. Fair enough...
You can definitely see Sheeva's nipples while she's being disemboweled, which doesn't change the rating on the game. (This is the kind of observation you come to this blog for, right?) In fact, Duke Nukem Forever (about which I may write more later) is basically wall-to-wall nipples in some portions and only received an M rating. California's law would also have no problem at all with Sheeva being disemboweled in this manner. The law restricts the sale of games that "depict serious injury to human beings in a manner that is especially heinous, atrocious or cruel." I don't see any human beings in that segment of the clip, do you? I see a ninja ghost and a Shokan. Totally legit.
And that in a nutshell is why the law had to be struck down. Because it comes from a place that doesn't entirely understand video games in the first place. Because it has too many loopholes, since it relies on the sticky word "human" which creators of fantasy universes can easily bypass. Even if you feel as if the law does have a right to restrict access to this material, it's going to be next to impossible for any legislature to write a law carefully worded enough to cover all the situations that the common person would consider offensive without leaving any holes. And even if you think there's no justifying the obscene violence in Mortal Kombat, this kind of law can have a chilling effect across other aspects of the media.
The real problem with censorship in America isn't that we're too easy on violence. It's that we're too puritanical on sex, which makes extreme violence the more accessible taboo. The Adults Only rating given out to a very small minority of games is the kiss of death for those titles, unless they were planning on selling the game as a specialty porn game anyway. The difference between "people under the age of 17 shouldn't purchase this game" and "people under the age of 18 shouldn't purchase this game" is also the difference in whether or not the game can be carried in Wal-Mart. I would really like to know what magical thing happens between the ages of 17 and 18 where violence is OK for just one year but sex still is not. (I know that, for whatever silly reason, Manhunt 2 almost got an AO for violence alone, until the takedowns were censored a touch. That seems really odd given the fact that the game showed above is still an M. The AO/M line is really weird, which is a topic I'm sure I'll return to.)
I've said before that I felt we needed games like Bulletstorm and Duke Nukem to keep pushing the envelope, until video games' opponents were so worn down that they had nothing more to say. In the end it was Mortal Kombat - again - that ended up taking that baton and running. And, why wouldn't it? It's perfect because the title has been around for so long, already associated with over-the-top violence and gore for almost ten years. Even someone who knows nothing about video games can understand it. By contrast, Duke Nukem Forever had mainstream controversy prior to its release, but when it actually hit stores, it was only controversial among the video game press. Mainstream media didn't pay attention to it.
Leland Yee, who worked in drafting California's law, vows to keep trying. Some of the Supreme Court justices may back him in his attempts. However, no matter what the Daily Show may pretend to be astonished by, I think this ruling means: it's over. Sexual game content may still prove controversial at times, but it's very inconsistently monitored and mentioned; the gaming press is itself still divided about it. But in the USA, it's too hard to restrict violent content, the laws won't stick, and games are now less of an easy bipartisan scapegoat.
I'd like to say something about the clip they chose to illustrate the level of violence in the game. First of all, though we were verbally warned: they were allowed to show it on the show without censoring it. Second of all, Stewart talks about how it would only be bannable if the woman in question suffered a "nip-slip" while being disemboweled. Fair enough...
You can definitely see Sheeva's nipples while she's being disemboweled, which doesn't change the rating on the game. (This is the kind of observation you come to this blog for, right?) In fact, Duke Nukem Forever (about which I may write more later) is basically wall-to-wall nipples in some portions and only received an M rating. California's law would also have no problem at all with Sheeva being disemboweled in this manner. The law restricts the sale of games that "depict serious injury to human beings in a manner that is especially heinous, atrocious or cruel." I don't see any human beings in that segment of the clip, do you? I see a ninja ghost and a Shokan. Totally legit.
And that in a nutshell is why the law had to be struck down. Because it comes from a place that doesn't entirely understand video games in the first place. Because it has too many loopholes, since it relies on the sticky word "human" which creators of fantasy universes can easily bypass. Even if you feel as if the law does have a right to restrict access to this material, it's going to be next to impossible for any legislature to write a law carefully worded enough to cover all the situations that the common person would consider offensive without leaving any holes. And even if you think there's no justifying the obscene violence in Mortal Kombat, this kind of law can have a chilling effect across other aspects of the media.
The real problem with censorship in America isn't that we're too easy on violence. It's that we're too puritanical on sex, which makes extreme violence the more accessible taboo. The Adults Only rating given out to a very small minority of games is the kiss of death for those titles, unless they were planning on selling the game as a specialty porn game anyway. The difference between "people under the age of 17 shouldn't purchase this game" and "people under the age of 18 shouldn't purchase this game" is also the difference in whether or not the game can be carried in Wal-Mart. I would really like to know what magical thing happens between the ages of 17 and 18 where violence is OK for just one year but sex still is not. (I know that, for whatever silly reason, Manhunt 2 almost got an AO for violence alone, until the takedowns were censored a touch. That seems really odd given the fact that the game showed above is still an M. The AO/M line is really weird, which is a topic I'm sure I'll return to.)
I've said before that I felt we needed games like Bulletstorm and Duke Nukem to keep pushing the envelope, until video games' opponents were so worn down that they had nothing more to say. In the end it was Mortal Kombat - again - that ended up taking that baton and running. And, why wouldn't it? It's perfect because the title has been around for so long, already associated with over-the-top violence and gore for almost ten years. Even someone who knows nothing about video games can understand it. By contrast, Duke Nukem Forever had mainstream controversy prior to its release, but when it actually hit stores, it was only controversial among the video game press. Mainstream media didn't pay attention to it.
Leland Yee, who worked in drafting California's law, vows to keep trying. Some of the Supreme Court justices may back him in his attempts. However, no matter what the Daily Show may pretend to be astonished by, I think this ruling means: it's over. Sexual game content may still prove controversial at times, but it's very inconsistently monitored and mentioned; the gaming press is itself still divided about it. But in the USA, it's too hard to restrict violent content, the laws won't stick, and games are now less of an easy bipartisan scapegoat.
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