Kotick Uses California Case to Prove He is Not A Complete Idiot

We all know Schwarzenegger v. EMA, the upcoming Supreme Court case that will determine whether “violent” video games can be sold to minors in California, is a load of BS. First amendment rights aside, there’s also the fact that the law is too vague to actually be enforced; what the hell constitutes a violent video game?

Still, the Governator for some reason insists on wasting everybody’s time by taking the case all the way to the highest court available, but he’s not doing it without opposition. Now Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick has voiced his opinion on the matter, and for once, you aren’t going to want to slap him in the face.

“Our First Amendment has survived intact for 219 years amid far greater technological, historical and social challenges,” he says in the 27th amicus brief filed so far for the case. “The argument that video games present some kind of new ominous threat that requires a wholesale reassessment of one of our nation’s most treasured freedoms and to take that freedom away indiscriminately from an entire group of our population based on nothing but age is beyond absurd.

“These are the same attacks Americans have witnessed against every previous emerging entertainment medium and genre including books, comics, rock ‘roll, movies, TV and the Internet. In each case, freedom prevailed.”

Well said. Even though Kotick tries to gouge fans out of every cent he possibly can, and even though there’s a real possibility that he doesn’t like video games at all, it’s still nice to have him on our side for once. Activision Blizzard’s EVP George Rose piped up, as well:

“Some proponents say they want to act on behalf of parents,” he says, “when all this law will do is swap a self-regulatory program the federal government itself has shown is extremely successful with a taxpayer-funded bureaucracy the state can’t afford and attempt to enforce rules that are vague and impossible to comprehend.

“At a time when our schools are out of money, child care centers are closing and health clinics are unfunded, how is that exercise of common sense? Law enforcement time is more productively spent on our streets and highways eradicating real crime, not patrolling check-out lines at our neighborhood stores.”

He’s right about the ESRB’s existing system working fine, as proven by the FTC in their latest handy dandy chart, above. Of course, rational information and intelligent arguments won’t sway the likes of the state government of California, but hopefully the Supreme Court is a different story.