My Rant Is Printed
The Deseret Morning News published my rant, apparently. I can't see the print version since I'm down in Cedar City this morning, but I'll be back tomorrow. They trimmed it down a little bit, but they do have it online here:

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,635175840,00.html

Kudos to Deseret News for printing it, at least.

The full text of what I submitted is as follows:


Videogames burst onto the public scene in the mid 1970s with blocky graphics and intense action that mainly appealed to young men under the age of 16. Times have changed, those early gamers have grown up, and the gaming market has matured. Regrettably, much of the industry and public understanding have been slow to keep pace with these changes, as evidenced by the Opinion article on January 8th.

According to the Entertainment Software Association, the average videogame
player is 30 years old, and the average videogame purchaser is 37. Only 5%
of computer game purchasers are under 18. The adult female gamers (age 18+)
outnumber the young male gamers (age 6-17) by 4 to 3! The fastest growing
segment of the videogame industry is, in fact, women in their late 30’s and
older playing “casual” games, such as matching games and solitaire.

Obviously, videogames haven't been "kid's stuff" for quite some
time. But that hasn’t stopped them from being labeled as such to be used
as a convenient scapegoat for society’s ills by anyone with a need to add more
“family values” padding to their bullet-point list of accomplishments.

Based on public demand, the videogame industry has already adopted
a voluntary rating system (modeled after the MPAA’s movie ratings system).
Despite Representative Jim Matheson's recent ill-informed assertions to the
contrary, major game retailers - including Wal*Mart, the single largest seller
of new videogames in the U.S. - have already made age validation for "M"-rated
games standard company policy. These retailers often have no such policy against
selling other “mature” media to minors – videogames are getting special
treatment and scrutiny. If retailers are already voluntarily adhering to the
ratings system, why should we throw additional tax dollars to accomplish the
same thing?

The ESRB rating system is a private ratings board,
which the government should not turn into an effective lawmaking body. Beyond
that, it is a flawed system, a fact made noteworthy in the media last summer
with the “Hot Coffee” scandal. By giving this private ratings system the gravity
of federal law, this would make any attempt to move to a more reliable or
informative ratings system in the future nearly impossible.

There
are more downsides. There is a rapidly growing "independent" game development
segment of the industry. These makers of these games are usually small
business owners often operating out of their garage or college dorm room. Their
budgets are far, far below that of their mainstream, “triple-A” cousins that are
advertised on TV, and usually do not allow them the significant expense of
obtaining an ESRB rating. These games include small, non-violent “casual” games,
as well as religious, educational, experimental, and “family-friendly” titles.
Forcing them to ante-up with the deep-pocketed big publishers for ratings would
run most of these small, struggling companies out of business. It would also
greatly increase the ESRB’s ratings load each year, potentially causing greater
cost and decreased quality and reliability of their ratings.

Most importantly, the proposed federal enforcement of ratings
compliance fails in its aim to protect children. Many surveys demonstrate that
parents are buying age-inappropriate games for their children – either by an
informed judgment call, or in ignorance of the posted ratings. Children also
trade, borrow, re-sell, and even (unfortunately) pirate videogames from many
vectors outside of domestic retail and rental channels. Console manufacturers
have already announced plans for future consoles to add a parental lock-out
control, thus solving the problem where it should be solved: in the home. The
push for federal mandate of ratings is really just a race to see whether the
politicians can get their expensive paper victory before technology solves its
own problem.

THAT version is trimmed down a bit from what I first wrote after reading the editorial Sunday. I had several additional points that were less valuable to the argument (and made it less likely to be printed). Mainly I tried to say three things:

#1 - Videogames aren't any more for children than television or movies or books are for children - more adults play games than kids, so quit pretending that these games are being marketed to 8-year-olds.

#2 - Federal (or State) mandation of ESRB ratings, and enforcement at the retail level (especially Matheson's attempt to do it on the Internet as well) has LOTS of unintended consequences that will hurt the industry as a whole (and our industry is struggling already in the U.S., in spite of appearances of the mega-publishing giants).

#3 - Making the ESRB ratings part of federal (or state) law at the sales channel will not achieve the goal of protecting children from inappropriate material in the first place.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:28 PM (Permalink)