A Tree Falling in the Forest

Having written about all this stuff already, as we close in on the United States Supreme Court's hearing of arguments in a history making case which will define the future of the game business. The Supreme Court will determine whether the legislation described in this post is Constitutional. While other US Circuits determined games to be Constitutionally protected free speech, the 9th Circuit never has and the Supreme Court will likely determine once and for all whether our work product is protected by the First Amendment. If you read the post, you will see State Senator Yee, who introduced the legislation, unbound by the strictures of reality or truth, was able to create quite a compelling argument in favor of regulation of games sales. Unfortunately, as explained here , the same tactics were used at the Federal level when two congressman misrepresented data relating to sales of games to minors. They used a three year old FTC secret shopper report to show a failure to ...

The United States Supreme Court will hear a case to determine the constitutionality of a law banning the sale of violent video games to minors. Arguments surround a California law (I wrote about in depth here ) - which was signed into law and found to be unconstitutional before it went into effect. This will be the highest court to determine whether video games are afforded the free speech protections of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution - and it is very, very important to our industry. Free speech sounds like it addresses the things we say, but it protects everything from strippers to protest marches- just about anything to bring a tear to each American's eye. Thanks to the great work of The ESA, every time the question was raised in the past, the court's found the legislation to be unconstitutional, but the highest courts ruling on the issue were at the district court level. This means the decisions are not binding nationally and may be over turne...

I never wrote about politics before, and I am certainly not qualified to do so. However, as I sat and listened to the vilification of the American Dream, I needed a place to vent. In this election cycle, Horatio Alger and Warren Buffet are being replaced by aspirational figures like out of work factory workers and single moms. Don’t get me wrong. I want to see job growth in America and support for people in difficult situations, but helping and aspiring to be are completely different. These guys are both saying it is bad to be rich - USD 75K per year in the case of Obama. It is bad to be a big corporation, like the ones who supply jobs. It is bad to be a special interest group – those people who speak on behalf of minority interests, which would otherwise not have a voice in government. It is all propaganda intended to create a bad guy, a target for anger. A way to focus those bitter feelings we heard about. Through these statements, both parties seem to be asking me to figure...

There are well-intentioned people out there who want to protect my son. I am grateful for their concern. Before anything else, I am a parent, and the more help I can get, the better. Unfortunately, the people offering help by telling us what we can and cannot put in our games consoles, and they are out of their ever-loving minds. It’s not the first time they’ve done this. They did the same thing to the comic book industry, and it died. Thanks to a new book by David Hajdu, The Ten Cent Plague we can see the damage done to comics and appreciate the significance of the threat to our industry. We are at war and our best weapon is communication. The United States Department of Defense’s definition of Psychological Warfare: The planned use of propaganda and other psychological actions having the primary purpose of influencing the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of hostile foreign groups in such a way as to support the achievement of national objectives. Can you...

Today Ben Fritz ran a "revealing" interview about why Activision withdrew from The ESA. In his post, he quotes Bobby Kotick as saying: I said don't view [pulling out of ESA] as anything but time off... With the combined companies [from the merger with Vivendi], the [ESA membership] dues went up enough that I said for it to make sense [to spend that money], we have to make a strategic plan. We don't have that because nobody owns it for us right now. We have our own issues that are not the industry's issues. Our challenges are sufficiently different from other publishers' issues that we need our own point person. We'll have someone soon. I appreciate Ben's efforts, but isn't this exactly everything I wrote on May 6 in my earlier post on the subject (bad grammar and all - I really have to proof read better) If you think about the company as an organization, the answer is more than clear. Activision is one of the most bottom line oriented companies i...

California State Senator Leland Yee wants to protect California's children. Unfortunately, his zealotry is somehow interfering with the fact receptors in his brain.  Senator Yee was one of the primary sponsors of the California Assembly Bill 1179. The bill was approved by Governor Schwarzenegger but found unconstitutional by the California Supreme Court. While the court found a compelling interest in protecting our children, the law was not narrowly tailored.  Had Senator Yee done his homework, he would have seen there is no definitive evidence of a causal link between video games and violence, and an effective system is in place to prevent children from purchasing M rated games.  Senator Yee portrays the law as being simple. You will be punished if you sell a violent video game to children.  That doesn't sound so bad. Most of us probably even agree.  The question is how we define violence.  If we can't clearly define it, we don't know how to comply with the law. ...

In a painfully obvious effort to ride the GTA IV wave, otherwise lackluster representatives Jim Matheson and Lee Terry introduced a video game bill into Congress on Wednesday. The mainstream’s limited understanding of game players and game content drives them to eat this shit up like ice cream on a hot day. Very few national issues are subject to virulent attack without encountering resistance. As you can see from chart I stole from the FTC secret shopper report, the film and music industry have a much higher failure rate, when it comes to preventing sales to minors. And their trendline doe not show the year to year improvement shown by the game business. Because the mainstream public knows more about these industries, they do not support efforts to restrict sales . . . and as Gore and Lieberman learned in 2000, the industries bite back. Jim Matheson hails from Utah, one of the leading States in anti game legislation efforts. In 2006 Utah’s State house of representatives approve...

I don't agree with a lot of things Obama says, in fact, most things, but this is really cool. He is the first politician I am aware of who puts games in the right perspective. He says GTA IV is not for kids. He says kids will play, but is the parents' responsibility to raise their kids. He says, parents have to be parents. More thoughts on this topic, here: what-world-parent-edition.html

Games are constantly being attacked for sex and violence - even though we have none of the first, and strictly control the second. Politicians, media, parents and crazy lawyers all attack the industry with a broad brush, sweeping kids together with adults, and M rated games together with E’s. The industry is diverse enough to accommodate Mario and Snake Plisken but the media and politicians still portray our market as one for children. The average aged gamer, who is 33 years old , probably enjoys playing Mario, but he also wants to play some Halo, a bit of GTA, some Call of Duty and a touch of Zelda. Just to place some perspective on the market, I pulled some information from The Entertainment Software Associatio n and the list of the top selling games from Next Gen . According to The ESA, eighty five percent of the games sold in 2007 were E, E10 or T. This equates to the G, PG and PG13 ratings in the film industry. The rating system is administered by a self imposed oversight...