As a September deadline looms for submitting amicus briefs in the Schwarzenegger v. EMA Supreme Court case, both sides are still hard at work recruiting advocates.

In an excellent Law.com story on the subject, a few claims and quotes jump out, including a comment from Activision Blizzard EVP and Chief Public Policy Officer George Rose, who said, “We wouldn't be surprised if the number [of states siding with the industry] was equal or exceeded the number backing California.”

Meanwhile both California Supervising Deputy Attorney General Zackery Morazzini, who will argue California’s side on November 2, and Louisiana Department of Justice Appellate Chief S. Kyle Duncan, who authored the brief for states backing the California law, seem to think that Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff “is taking the lead in drafting a brief supporting the industry and discussing it with AGs of other states.”
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Kotaku points us towards an interesting Ted Talk in which David McCandless, a self-proclaimed “data journalist” discusses overcoming information overload by visualizing and designing information so we can focus on what’s important.

After showing a graph a “landscape of the world’s fears”, or a chart showing off popular scares over the last decade, which included Swine Flu, Bird Flu, SARS, the Millennium Bug, Asteroid Collisions and Killer Wasps, McCandless pulled up a slide charting the landscape of violent videogames.
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The serial killer game we covered here on GP last week appears to be just an elaborate hoax.

A post on the RPG Codex forums, where the “fake” developer (Crimson King) discussed his creation, led us to a post on the SomethingAwful forums, in which an entry attributed to Crimson King, or the YouTube user who posted the original video, states that the game is a hoax.

The culprits, if it’s really them, opened up on why they performed such an experiment: Read More

GamePolitics reader Dante pointed us towards a short Finnish recounting (translated) of an article from a Danish newspaper, which appeared to indicate that the Medal of Honor “scare” started by Fox News, and perpetuated by UK Defense Secretary Liam Fox, had spread to Denmark.

In a pair of articles published on the Danish website MetroXpress, while the game did come under some criticism—it was described as “disrespectful” to soldiers from that country who served in Afghanistan—reasoning that Medal of Honor is just a game took over after a tersely worded introduction.
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Yesterday we told you about a nasty rape and murder that occured in South Hill Puyallup, Washington, in which an 18-year old man raped and murdered a 16-year old disabled/developmentally challenged girl. The story mentioned that the man had returned home after the murder to play Dungeons and Dragons Online in order to try and “forget” the crime.

However in a new story published yesterday on The Seattle Post Intelligencer website, detectives in the case (or the author of the piece) appear to be playing up the videogame angle even more, as evidenced by the headline, “Murder Motive May Have Been Video Game Fantasy.”
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Imagine what the anti-videogame populace might say in regards to a game about serial killing, which features the preset characters Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz and Aileen Wuornos.

Created by someone nicknamed Crimson King, and unearthed by an Examiner columnist, Serial Killer is billed as a “roguelike” game (akin to a simply animated dungeon crawler). Read More

Tuesday, November 2, 2010 at 10 AM ET is when oral arguments will be made in front of the Supreme Court of the United States for case number 08-1448, better known as Schwarzenegger vs EMA.

The one-hour long session is the first on that day’s calendar (PDF) and will see the Court answer a pair of questions related to a California state law originally authored by State Senator Leland Yee, which sought to ban the sale of violent videogames to minors.

The two questions posed to the Court are: Read More

In what could be a preview of what might happen when the Supreme Court finally addresses the Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association case this fall or early next year, the Institute of Bill of Rights Law (IBRL) at William & Mary Law School will run through the violent videogame case as part of its 2010-2011 Supreme Court Preview.

The two-day event kicks off on Friday night, September 24 and will feature experienced Supreme Court advocates presenting arguments before the IBRL’s mock panel of Supreme Court Justices. Events will conclude in a 9am to 4pm session on Saturday, September 25.

This year’s participants include Lyle Denniston from the SCOTUS Blog, USA Today’s Joan Biskupic, The Wall Street Journal’s Jess Bravin, the New York Times’ Adam Liptak, University of California, Irvine School of Law Dean Erwin Chemrinsky, U.S. Department of Justice Deputy Assistant Attorney General Beth Brinkman and William & Mary School of Law Dean Davison Douglas.
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As each side in the Schwarzenegger v. EMA case attempts to lure state attorney generals to sign on to their respective amicus briefs, Common Sense Media Chief James Steyer is turning up the pressure on one particular person.

The LA Times features an excerpt from a letter by Steyer to Utah Attorney General, and a one-time target of a certain disbarred attorney, Mark Shurtleff (pictured). While Shurtleff might seem like a natural to sign on to a brief in favor of the California law—he argued for a ban of the game 25 to Life in 2005—he has also demonstrated considerable backbone, once challenging a proposed Utah law introduced by a now disbarred attorney as unconstitutional.
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Dr. Acharya Shree Yogeesh is a spiritualist and practitioner of Eastern philosophy with a Doctorate of Philosophy in “The Six Substances of Jainism: A Comparative Study with Buddhist Texts.” Acharya Shree is also founder of Yogeesh Ashram, a California-based non-profit whose sole purpose is “to uplift and awaken souls.” Read More

The National Youth Rights Association (NYRA) is not pleased about the possibility of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of the California side of the Schwarzenegger v. EMA appeal and is asking for assistance from the gaming community as it prepares an Amicus Brief for submission to the Court.

In a blog post, the NYRA theorizes that no Supreme Court member has ever played a game, nor, (most likely) have the lawyers arguing for either side. As a “defender of the rights of youth,” and “as gamers,” the NYRA stated that “we need to make it clear that video games are more than random violence and that no one should be denied access to them.”

Here is what the organization is looking for: Read More

While Penny Arcade could never be called politically correct, a strip that ran last week in the online comic has offended some feminists and rape survivors.

The strip in question, entitled The Sixth Slave, took a jab at quests in massively multiplayer games and featured an extra slave who was not saved because the hero in question had already achieved his quota needed for a quest completion. This extra slave, in an attempt to sway the hero, utters the line “Every night, we are raped to sleep by the dickwolves.”

The use of this term caused a Shakesville columnist (and self-described feminist) to pen a story in which she argued that rape isn’t funny, writing: Read More

Spencer Halpin’s Moral Kombat, the 2007 documentary that focuses on the subject of violence in videogames, is now available for free viewing on Hulu.

The documentary features a wide assortment of game industry luminaries, pundits and critics weighing in on the topic of violence in games, including Lorne Lanning, Dean Takahashi, American McGee, Doug Lowenstein, Jason Della Rocca, Jack Thompson, Hal Halpin and Henry Jenkins.

It can also still be viewed on Amazon’s OnDemand Service, Babelgum, iTunes and Netflix.

Halpin offered: Read More

A teacher arrested after making a threat to kill hundreds of people was acquitted by a jury after clarification emerged that his remark was meant to reference the taking of virtual lives in videogame play, so that he could relieve stress.

Jason Davis was a teacher at Knox Central High School in Barbourville, Kentucky, when a student, and fellow online gamer who Davis often played with, hid some of Davis’ markers. Davis, according to Kentucky.com, was apparently having a rough day and this bit of tom foolery caused him to issue utterances about killing people to relieve stress, which was apparently taken out of context by students and resulted in his arrest in May of 2009 for second-degree terroristic threatening.

A jury needed only 10 minutes to conclude that Davis was not guilty. Davis spent a month in jail before coming up with bond, and is now unemployed as the school, before the incident, informed him that he would not be rehired.

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) has taken on games based on ice cream, given Nickelodeon gruff over making violent games available to kids and is part of a group that is urging the Federal Trade Commission to update the Children’s Online Privacy Act (COPPA). Now the organization is turning its attention towards Marvel action figures included with McDonald’s Happy Meals.
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The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has drafted the Brooklyn Law School as a contributor to its amicus brief that will eventually be submitted to the Supreme Court in response to Schwarzenegger v EMA.

Students from the Brooklyn Law School’s Incubator & Policy (BLIP) Clinic will provide legal research and other assistance to the ECA and the law firm Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP as they draw up the "friend of the court document." The resulting output will be sent over to the nation’s highest court on September 17 of this year.
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California outlined its case for a law that would make it a crime to sell violent videogames to minors in a 59-page brief filed on Monday with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo managed to get his hands on some, or all, of the document and pulled out some of the more interesting pieces.

Once again, the actual text of the currently blocked law at the heart of Schwarzenegger v. EMA: Read More

While the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has until September 10 to file its own brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in regards to Schwarzenegger v. EMA, the organization issued a statement in reaction to a brief filed by the state of California on Monday.

Trumpeting the ESA's dominating string of victories in such cases, and perhaps attempting to take some of the wind out of the sails of California State Senator Leland Yee, ESA President and CEO Michael Gallagher stated: Read More

EA.com Editor-in-Chief Jeff Green took to his corporate blog to write about why gamers should care about Schwarzenegger v. EMA.

Agreeing with EA CEO John Riccitiello, who said that a Supreme Court decision upholding the California law would “screw us up in a real way,” Green argued:

… it could have a chilling effect on the gaming industry as a whole--both the makers and sellers of the games, who will have to seriously think twice about the kind of product they can and want to sell, out of fear of ending up in jail. And therein lies the bigger question at hand. Because if you substitute books or movies or music in the previous couple sentences, you can see just how wrong this is. Read More

After the Supreme Court rules on Schwarzenegger v. EMA later (presumably) this year, if the law is upheld, what could that mean for the regulation of other types of media, such as violent theme park attractions for example?

This is the tack a Technology Liberation Front story takes, applying the argument to, funny enough, a Universal Studios attraction based on Terminator 2, which author took his eight and five year old on. He describes the entertainment:

... it was a surprisingly intense and seriously violent experience. The show features cinematic action combined with real-life actors who run throughout the arena firing shotguns at cybernetic robots that come out of the walls or floors.  During some segments of the show, water sprays the audience, smoke fills the chamber, and the seats and floors vibrate violently as battles take place on stage and on-screen. The actor hosting the show is also choked to death by a cyborg! Read More

Because the California law at the center of Schwarzenegger v. EMA is unable to specifically define exactly what entails a “violent” game, one practicing lawyer predicts a win for the game industry when SCOTUS eventually hands down its ruling on the legality of restricting the sale of such games to minors.

The lawyer behind The Fine Print blog notes that free speech under the First Amendment “has never been unlimited,” especially when it comes to minors. He details two of the better known exceptions:

First, child pornography is outright censored in the United States; it is illegal to make, sell, or own, no freedom whatsoever. The sale of pornography to minors is also restricted, on the theory that while adults can choose for themselves if they can “handle” pornography, children won’t know until it’s too late that something is too much for them or harmful to their well-being. Read More

The office of California State Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) let us know that the state’s Attorney General Jerry Brown (D-Oakland) will submit California’s written argument to the Supreme Court, which voices the Golden State’s backing of a law that would make it illegal to rent or sell “excessively” violent videogames to children.

Yee is, of course, the original author of the law (AB 1179), which has made it all the way to the front of the Supreme Court in the form of Schwarzenegger v. EMA.

Citing a SCOTUS decision in United States v. Stevens, in which the Court declined to ban media depicting animal cruelty, Yee indicated that the law may have been constitutional if it was more focused, stating, “Clearly, the justices want to look specifically at our narrowly tailored law that simply limits sales of ultra-violent games to kids without prohibiting speech.”

Yee added: Read More

When not deflating the findings of game-hating researchers, Texas A&M International University Associate Professor Christopher Ferguson often conducts his own studies, including a recent example which indicates that violent videogame players handle stress better than non-players and can actually feel less depressed and stressful following a session with aggressive games.

The Hitman Study: Violent Video Game Exposure Effects on Aggressive Behavior, Hostile Feeling and Depression (press release) was authored by Ferguson and his fellow TAMIU colleague Stephanie Rueda. The study included 103 students from a “Hispanic-serving public university” in the Southern U.S. 62 were male and 41 were female, with 98 Hispanics, three Caucasian and two who declined to answer.
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GP denizen PHX Corp pointed us towards a Netherlands petition started in reaction to positioning from the Dutch Minister of Justice Ernst Hirsch Ballin (pictured), which indicated that Ballin is seeking criminal prohibition of extremely violent imagery, including videogames.

Ballin seemed to specifically focus on games in his proposed banning, according to an article from Dutch gaming site Bashers (translated). In a letter to the house, Ballin, who intimated that banning violent games would be easier—and draw less resistance— than banning violent movies, wrote (bad translation, sorry): Read More

After years of asking game consumers to get involved in the fight to speak up and care about the issue of videogame violence, gamers have heeded the call, and at a critically important time for the industry, just as it faces perhaps its single most important challenge to date in the U.S. Supreme Court this fall. Read More

Dave Cullen’s comprehensive recounting of the April 20, 1999 school shooting in Littleton, Colorado is built upon innumerable interviews, police files and media reports, along with videotapes and writings made by the killers— Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris—themselves.

The shootings, which played out on live television over the better part of a day, impacted Americans and other people around the world intensely, as was the attackers intent. It also caused society to scramble to look for reasons why this tragedy happened, and some were quick to point the finger at various elements of culture, including violent videogames.
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A man in Wales who accidentally shot a city worker with a .22 caliber rifle was a videogame player, so of course that had to be mentioned in a story about the incident on a South Wales website.

23-year old Ersid Cela of Clas y Bedw, Waunarlwydd, allegedly bought a BSA air rifle “for £200 from a drug dealer in Mumbles after playing the Call of Duty computer game, in which players shoot each other with a range of automatic weapons.”

Cela was additionally described as a “fan of a violent computer game.”

Thank goodness he didn’t buy the gun before playing Call of Duty or there would be no story.

In any case, Cela was attempting to load the gun when it went off, hitting worker Jason Crocker in the shoulder as he worked out side Cela’s home. A second shot hit Crocker’s van as well. How the gun went off “accidentally” a second time was not disclosed.

Cela will be held in custody until he is sentenced on July 26.

A piece on the Scientific American website (thanks Kotaku), attempts to pick apart research from Cheryl Olson that looked into the motivating factors among kids for playing videogames.

Olson’s paper, entitled “Children’s Motivations for Video Game Play in the Context of Normal Development” (PDF) argued that “The debate has moved from whether children should play video games to how to maximize potential benefits and to identify and minimize potential harms.” Querying 1,254 kids on the reason they play games, Olson found that the top responses were “It’s just fun,” It’s exciting,” and “something to when bored.”
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It might be hard to believe that M.I.A., purveyor of such a violent (and politically charged) video for the song Born Free, would be worried about violence in videogames, but as a relatively new mom, she is.

The songstress, born Mathangi Arulpragasam in London, did spend time as a youth growing up in war-torn Sri Lanka, giving her a front row seat for violence in that country, before her family eventually moved back to the UK.

Speaking to Connect magazine, which CVG decoded, M.I.A. alluded to the fighting she witnessed growing up, saying that “My kid's gonna see it [violence], but he's gonna see it in computer games."

She continued:

I don't know which is worse. The fact that I saw it in my life has maybe given me lots of issues, but there's a whole generation of American kids seeing violence on their computer screens and then getting shipped off to Afghanistan. Read More

A special issue of the Review of General Psychology published this month turns its attention entirely to videogames.
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