Ken Paulson: How obscene is video-game violence?

  My generation blew up blobs.

  Sure, the multicolored objects on the screen of my Atari 2600 video game system were supposed to represent alien invaders or menacing spaceships, but they were pretty much indistinguishable blobs with an occasional appendage or two. In the heat of battle, pixels would scatter, but nobody got hurt.

  Contrast that 1980 technology with the imagery of the highly sophisticated video games that are now the subject of a pivotal Supreme Court case (Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association). The justices are grappling with whether to uphold a California law that bans sales or rentals to minors of highly violent video games such as Postal 2, which graphically depicts beheadings, amputations and young girls pleading for mercy.

  It's not pretty stuff.