According to a report on Gamasutra.com, Oklahoma House Bill HB3004, the so-called “Videogames as Porn” bill has been signed into law by the state Governor, Brad Henry. The law would take effect on November 1, 2006, but gamers can expect that the ESA will make a First Amendment challenge to the law soon. The law seeks to regulate violent videogames by amending Oklahoma’s previous pornographic materials law to include “inappropriate violence.” The bill sets the following criteria for determining the standard. First, the violence must be judged to be “patently offensive” to the prevailing standards of the community, and second, the game lacks “literary, scientific, medical, artistic, or political value” based on the following:

1. is glamorized or gratuitous,
2. is graphic violence used to shock or stimulate,
3. is graphic violence that is not contextually relevant to the material,
4. is so pervasive that it serves as the thread holding the plot of the material together,
5. trivializes the serious nature of realistic violence,
6. does not demonstrate the consequences or effects of realistic violence,
7. uses brutal weapons designed to inflict the maximum amount of pain and damage,
8. endorses or glorifies torture or excessive weaponry, or
9. depicts lead characters who resort to violence freely;

Clearly, under these standards, a large percentage of video games could be found to be violating the new law. The ESA will probably attack the law for being vague, as with many of the previously enacted bills. Still, banning violent videogames seems to be the one thing that various state legislatures can agree on, and there are many more bills being enacted.

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