Mortal Kombat: two movies directly about the game, and several movies based on the premise of a fighting championship. Rocky, Bloodsport, Best of the Best one and two (and for all I know there are more)… the list goes on and on.
Fear Effect: simply put, an animation-based adventure. Most of the game is a shooter, with a slight supernatural undertone (until the end, where the story turned strictly supernatural). This describes several Disney movies (with the exception of the shooting) and most japanimation cartoons (including the shooting… and nudity!). The game really did have an awesome story, too, including endings which were based on explicit choices made throughout the game.
Resident Evil: Duh. Need I mention any of these movies?
Doom: Well, here we are. The most beloved of the press: first person shooters. Why these are much different from James Bond movies is beyond me.
Issue of game vs story vs game-and-story: Uninteresting (IMO) as a matter of legality. Clearly video games can be shown to either directly inspire movies (Resident Evil, Tron–I think, MK…) or to be directly inspired by movies (Fear Effect, Resident Evil, MK…). Noting that many games seem to act as a waypoint of entertainment, where games like resident evil are based on stories told in movies, after which they make movies based on the game that was based on previous movies… well, it seems to me that the only issue here is that the actual interaction—the gameplay—is not protected under freedom of speech. This seems startlingly obvious: behavior in general is not speech-related. Driving a car is not a standard outlet for expression, even if Mazda would like to convince you otherwise. Eating dinner is not a standard outlet for expression, even if Fridays and Applebees would like to convince you otherwise.
The key of videogames is the immersion of behavior, previously gained only by ingenuity (pong, Tempest, Tron games), but now gained through suspension of disbelief, intriguing stories, and blurring the line between playing and watching. RPG like Baldur’s Gate lean heavily on choices the player makes… the story is based on the game, unlike most console games which has it more or less the other way around, though alternate endings have been around since NES days (Metroid, anyone?).
Because of the merging of two otherwise disparate media, I can see why the judge may haev made the error that he did. But I can pick paintings, movies, pictures, and stories which have no intellectual or artistic merit (hell, I can make those ;)). I do not believe the games he picked lacked artistic merit or even interesting expression, but it is perhaps easier to ignore them in those games.
A ruling like this is looking at the issue entirely too simplistically. It is like thinking badminton (sp?-- too lazy here), tennis, raquetball, and ping-pong are all the same game, which I think is obviously BS, though is is also fairly uncomplicated to abstract away to a level where they are equivalent.
Games haven’t traditionally been a vehicle for great expression, but how many of us cried when Aeris died in FF7? (come on, I couldn’t be the only one!) We didn’t get to love her character just because of the story, but because we were there when it happened. We rescued her, we fought with her, we took her out on a date because we though Tifa was too stuffy. And let’s not even get into the big picture of ecological soundness that the game had as a major theme. (actually, every FF game I’ve played has had some serious themes running through it, even if some were kinda shallow)
We can look at games in two ways (as mentioned above). We can look at games as actions which are motivated by stories, or stories which are motivated by actions. Some games, of course, only have actions (like Tetris, for instance), and some are basically all story with limited interaction (some crappy RPGs come to mind). But the issue is that the line between these two types of games cannot be clearly drawn, and never was drawn. I remember Rendevous with Rama, a game for the Commodore 64 that was based on a novel. And the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game? No, obviously nothing resembling expression there.
The distinction is philsophically interesting, but entirely too arbitrary. Games always have, and always will have, an ability to express ideas. That we happen to be part of the interaction there instead of just passive observers is a petty, petty distinction to make.
