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Video Game Violence: Protecting the Frontiers of VR with ESA Ratings

 

Mike Gallagher is the CEO of the Entertainment Software Association, which is the political arm of the interactive industry. The ESA established the Entertainment Software Ratings Board in 1994 in response to criticism of violent content found in video games. They also won a Supreme Court case that established video games as a form of protected speech under the First Amendment. Mike suspects that VR will face a lot of political pressures similar to what video games have faced in the past.

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The ESA is preparing to defend VR content creators as a part of their mission to protect the frontiers of the interactive industry. He sees VR as just a part of a larger trajectory of media ranging from cave paintings to books to movies to video games that has been moving towards more immersion and realism. Now that the ESA has established video games as a protected First Amendment right, then the burden of proof is going to be on the counter argument as to why VR should be treated any differently than any other media.

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