More on free speech and games. Back in the day when the recording industry was butting heads with the PMRC, I lamented that 2 Live Crew and their ‘As Nasty As They Wanna Be’ album was the one that was making all the news. Why? Because it sucked. It’s hard to get the music appreciation troops riled up about a genuinely lousy CD.

The games industry should be happy and proud when the forces of evil attack Grand Theft Auto. Because, at its core, GTA is a great game with great gameplay. The freedom to do anything you want is one of the game’s strengths. It’s easy to draw parallels from it to Goodfellas or the Godfather, violent content in another medium that is nonetheless protected speech, and proves itself worthy of that distinction.

We should be happy for that battle, and we should push it. Because if we let them pick the battles, we’ll end up defending this. Or this. Or this. Or this. Really, isn’t it nice to be able to have a discussion about something that is both controversial, and yet still a great game?