Supreme Court Has Ruled; Now Games Have a Duty

[Commentary] It is now the law of the United States that video games are art. It is now the law of the United States that video games are a creative, intellectual, emotional form of expression and engagement, as fundamentally human as any other.

As Justice Scalia pointed out, the Supreme Court originally found motion pictures unworthy of First Amendment protection. (You know, that freedom of speech thing). In 1915 the court ruled that states could broadly censor films because movies could be “used for evil.” It took until 1952 for the court to grant film constitutional recognition. (It bears noting that television historically has not been entitled to full First Amendment protections from the state because television uses the public airwaves.) And now video games — as vulgar, crude, disgusting and thoroughly unredeeming as they often may be — have finally been fully recognized as a worthy element of our culture. Of course those of us who actually play games figured this out a long time ago. We knew that the most important video games were not merely matters of technology or neuromuscular coordination, but of finding new ways to explore and think about both human relationships and the wider world around us. Not all games allow this. Not even most of them. Most video games — like the vast majority of any medium — are insipid junk. But of course one person’s insipid junk — whether books, movies, TV shows or games — is another’s masterpiece. The point is that as a basic principle, those decisions about value and worth and importance must be left to the individual and protected from politicians. That is what the First Amendment is all about.