Industry Insider Offers View on Political Landscape
GP loves hearing from that rarest of birds - a video game business insider who actually dares to break ranks and advocate that the sluggish game industry try new tactics to win hearts and minds.
Hence, we refer you to a terrific op-ed in today's GameDAILY Biz. Jayson Hill, former PR guy for Infogrames/Atari, Hasbro and the Classic Gaming Expo.
Hill's main points?
"The video game industry has recently been pummeled with a rash of legislative attempts to place vague restrictions on the games that may be made and sold... the industry has used conventional weapons and tactics to fight back for too long. It is time to reevaluate our adversary and adjust our tactics accordingly."
"I don't have to remind anyone how long this has been going on. United States Senators Lieberman and Kohl held hearings over a dozen years ago on the subject of violence in video games and its effect on children, and threatened legislative action if the industry did not do something about it. The industry's response was the Entertainment Software Rating Board..."
"But the fact is the criticism of the industry has not stopped since. Each year more states enact legislation to limit video game sales and each year those laws are struck down on constitutional grounds... These losses have in no way deterred states from continuing their efforts, and even the Federal government is moving forward with legislation that will likely be just as unconstitutional."
"As we reevaluate our adversary, we have to accept that legislators are not really interested in resolving this issue. They pay lip service to working with the industry, but this is an issue politicians have framed as 'child safety,' and it is too valuable a soapbox to abandon. These legislators have distorted the industry and the ESRB to make their constituents fearful and exploited that fear for votes.'
"The conventional tactics employed by the industry to combat this rising tide are to lobby the politicians and challenge the unconstitutional laws in court. The lobbying results can be debated. The legal work, while professional and successful from a cases-won-versus-cases-lost perspective, has left a more clear-cut legacy: the politicians get to characterize our industry as being afraid of child-safety legislation and only interested in the bottom line."
"The new tactic I propose is a grassroots campaign: get to the voters; educate them on the industry, its rating system and the retailer associations; and arm them to choose the right games for their children without government regulation."
"True, the ESRB been running consumer education campaigns with ads and brochures at point of purchase for years, but it does not seem to be enough. Sadly, many parents are still clueless about interactive entertainment and how to shop for it... The answer is to go to the places the parents are and give them the information face-to-face, explain how simply things work and directly answer the individual questions they may have. The places to reach them are organizations like civic groups and Parent Teacher Associations. Once the information is in the parents' hands, they feel empowered and the fear the politicians seek to breed goes away."