by Levi Ritchie

Created on: June 20, 2008   Last Updated: November 03, 2008

Allow me, for just one tiny moment, to play the bad guy that nobody likes. Censorship in video games isn't the worst thing to ever happen to video games. Yes, it is true that it limits designer creativity and, yes, it is true that most censorship is completely unnecessary because the target audience of a game is rarely going to be offended by the content anyway. However, we need to think realistically about this. Video games, regrettably, are NOT the only form of art that goes through censorship right now. Nearly every form of media, including those in the US and the UK, goes through a process like the ESRB handles for games. That's one form of censorship that, while pesky, isn't doing a whole lot to the sales of the aforementioned forms of media. The sorts of judging undergone by the ESRB for games doesn't technically prevent the media from being sold. It can simply limit it to being sold only to adults (or persons over the age of 17) and only in certain locations.

Fortunately, the government doesn't try to take control over video game content. Politicians have made popular efforts to prevent children from playing video games with violent content, but there is yet to be a law that specifically prevents publishers from releasing games with violent content or excessive language. That's one issue we won't need to discuss in great detail.

We then have the more pressing matter of direct censorship administered by publishers themselves. Money is a dreadful little force in our society. Publishers listen to any number of statistics and voices, including their own, and they are forced to make a decision about whether or not something will offend someone. Everything is going to offend someone, of course, but not everything will offend a particular someone. In this case, I'm referring to the target demographic of the publisher. Of course, the censorship rarely ever makes a real difference here, but the driving force of money prevails as always, and the publishers are convinced that the game needs to be censored.

Ultimately, I'm not trying to say that video game censorship is good. It's just one more sadly inevitable roadblock that stands in the path of a creative mind and a fine piece of work. Like movies and television, there are reasons for the censorship, sometimes good, and sometimes bad. We can hope for a day in the near future where all of the fuss about video game violence cools down and censorship is relaxed. Until then, we must enjoy the creativity of comparatively nonviolent developers like Sid Meier, Will Wright, and Chris Taylor with no filter, and the work of more violent game developers in questionably sheltered light.

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