WIRED publishes an AP wirestory on the opposition to violence in videogames (Violent Video Games Under Attack). Why violence? Perhaps it is because not too many games feature sex. I expect this to change over the next couple of years. In any case, this article is yet more evidence that the fight for free expression for this media form is not even close to over.

Of course, the good AP editors must still be on holiday:

There is also the inescapable fact that the military uses video games to train its soldiers. A 2003 University of Rochester study found that young adults who played a lot of fast-paced video games showed better visual skills than those who did not.

It is also an inescapable fact that the military uses movies, pictures and print media to train its soldiers. Why is this relevant? Is the military using the games to teach aggression? Perhaps they are using them to train for better visual skills, at least that is what the second sentence of the paragraph seems to imply, or maybe it isn't related to the first sentence at all. Who knows?

Author Evan Wright ponders the effects of video games on U.S. soldiers in the current Iraq war in his new book Generation Kill. In an endorsement that Grand Theft Auto creator Rockstar Games would probably rather not get, he quotes one U.S. soldier as saying an ambush felt just like playing the game.

"It felt like I was living it when I seen the flames coming out of windows, the blown-up car in the street, guys crawling around shooting at us," the soldier says.

A truly touching anecdote. Go back to the first Gulf War and you will undoubtedly find references to the resemblance or non-resemblance of war to the movies' depiction of war. A reader-submitted review of the book on Amazon claims that the book includes a similar anecdote about another media form as well, "someone recites gangsta rap lyrics as he ecstatically sprays machine gun fire on the enemy (A very admirable piece of wartime journalism). Read the book and I'm sure you'll find other shocking examples of our culture being invoked by our soldiers in Iraq. Imagine that, our soldiers evoking our culture to describe war.

Still, the notion that games should be restricted is accepted elsewhere. New Zealand, Brazil, Germany and several other nations have outlawed some games.

They are also restricted in countries like China, too. However, the article doesn't note some other censorship characteristics. Germany outlaws all media (including games) that depict Nazism in particular ways, something our First Amendment wouldn't allow. New Zealand's Office of Film and Literature Classification has outlawed some movies as well.