Sean Sands makes the argument that it is in a very powerfully worded editorial today over at The Escapist entitled “Sink the Pirates“:
PC developers are being forced to make more dramatic decisions in the face of overwhelming piracy, an issue that Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crysis developer Crytek, recently enumerated at one legitimate copy to every twenty pirated. […] Yes, I think Cevat is inflating his 20 to 1 statistic, but he’s probably not nearly as far off as you or I might think. Looking at arguably one of the largest P2P torrent sharing sites on the web (no, I’m not going to link to it), and the number of Games torrents currently available, the evidence is absolutely damning. Despite PCs’ relative weakness in the marketplace, clearly in the backseat by orders of magnitude in relation to the next gen and handheld systems, it represents 50% of all torrents. Let me stress that – the number of illegal PC downloads are, at any given moment, equal to or greater than the illegal downloads for every other system combined. […] Here’s the bottom line: Yes, piracy is destroying PC gaming. That is an immutable truth, evidenced by the exodus of PC developers defecting en masse to make games for consoles. End of story.
I’m not prepared to offer an opinion one way or the other, but I have noticed the slowdown in the PC gaming market recently and wondered about why many developers were moving over the more secure gaming consoles. That doesn’t necessarily prove that piracy was the primary factor, but it certainly could be part of the explanation.
What do you think?
GamePolitics.com points out that Minnesota will reimburse the video game industry to the tune of $65,000 for their attorneys fees it incurred when challenging Minnesota’s 2006 “fine-the-buyer” law. The Minnesota law was unique in that it sought to impose fines on the buyers rather than the sellers of games rated either “M” for Mature or “AO” for Adults Only under the industry’s voluntary ratings system. Other state and local laws that have been struck down in recent years imposed penalties mostly on game retailers who sold games rated M or AO to minors. In a scathing opinion handed down back in August 2006, James M. Rosenbaum, Chief District Judge of the District Court of Minnesota, struck down the Minnesota law as unconstitutional.
But here’s what’s really important about the fact that the industry recovered legal fees in this case and others. As the Entertainment Software Association noted in its press release about the Minnesota settlement: “The ESA [has] prevailed over similar unconstitutional laws in nine other jurisdictions [and] now has been awarded close to $2 million in fees and expenses spent in defending gamers, developers and publishers’ First Amendment rights.”
As I have noted previously, these cases make it clear that there is a significant opportunity cost associated with censorship efforts. That $2 million in recovered legal fees could have been plowed into educational efforts to help explain to parents how to use the excellent voluntary ratings systems or console-based parental control tools that are at their disposal. Moreover, that $2 million in recovered industry legal fees does not account for the resources that state and local officials put into these regulatory efforts. So, we are talking about a much greater deadweight loss for society and taxpayers.
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Dennis McCauley of Gamepolitics.com takes on that issue today in a column:
In the United States, the FBI tracks annual statistics on police officer slayings as well as assaults on police officers. I compared these figures to the various release dates for the three major GTA console game releases to date (GTA III, GTA Vice City, GTA San Andreas) and plotted the whole thing on the chart below. It’s a bit like the well-known video games vis-a-vis juvenile crime graph created by Duke Ferris of GameRevolution a few years back, although with a much narrower focus.The FBI statistics portray a much different picture than that painted by critics like Thompson and Grossman.
In the chart, I’ve plotted FBI figures for police officers feloniously killed (blue line) and police officers assaulted (red line, listed in thousands). As can be seen, police officer murders peaked at 70 in 1997 (i.e., four years
before GTA III) and again in 2001. GTA III was released in late October that year, so if the game caused that year’s spike, it would have had only two months in which to do so. (also, the 2001 figures don’t count the 72 officers lost when the World Trade Centers collapsed).
The chart shows that since GTA III was released police killings have been trending downward to a low of 48 in 2006. Although the FBI has not yet posted 2007 numbers, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund lists 68 police officers as having been shot to death in 2007. But it’s worth pointing out that while there may have been a spike in police slayings last year, there was no corresponding GTA release. There hasn’t been a new Grand Theft Auto console title issued since San Andreas in October, 2004.
I’ve commented more on these issues in my essay on “Why hasn’t violent media turned us into a nation of killers?”
Dr. Kourosh Dini is a Chicago-based adolescent and adult psychiatrist who has just published a new book entitled, Video Game Play and Addiction: A Guide for Parents. [You can learn more about him and his many talents and interests at his blog, “Mind, Music and Technology.“] Dini’s book arrives fresh on the heels of the fine book, “Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do,” by Drs. Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson. [See my review of that book here.]
Like Kutner & Olson’s book, Dini’s provides a refreshingly balanced and open-minded look at the impact of video games on our kids. One of the things I liked about it is how Dr. Dini tells us right up front that he has been a gamer his entire life and explains how that has helped him frame the issues he discusses in his book. “I have played games both online and off since I was about six years of age, and I have also been involved in child psychiatry, so I felt that I would be in a good position to discuss some inherent positives and negatives associated with playing games,” he says. Dini goes into greater detail about his gaming habits later in the book and it makes it clear that he still enjoys games very much.
Some may find Dini’s gaming background less relevant than his academic credentials, but I think it is important if for no other reason than it shows how we are seeing more and more life-long gamers attain positions of prominence in various professions and writing about these issues using a sensible frame of reference that begins with their own personal experiences. For far too long now, nearly every book and article I have read about video games and their impact on society at some point includes a line like, “I’ve never really played many games” or even “I don’t much care for video games,” but then–without missing a breath–the author or analyst goes on to tell us how imminently qualified they are to be discussing the impact of video games on kids or culture. Whenever I read or hear things like that, I’m reminded of the famous line from an old TV commercial: “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” Seriously, why is it that we should continue to listen to those critics who denounce video games but who have never picked up a controller in their lives? It’s really quite insulting. Would you take automotive advice from someone who’s never tinkered with cars in their lives but instead based their opinions merely upon watching them pass by on the road? I think not.
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Don’t judge a book by its cover (or its title, for that matter). I’m usually faithful to that maxim, but I must admit that when I first saw the title and cover of “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Grand-Theft-Childhood-Surprising-Violent/dp/0743299515/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208179493&sr=8-1″>Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do,” I rolled my eyes and thought to myself, “here we go again.” I figured that I was in for another tedious anti-gaming screed full of myths and hysteria about games and gamers. Boy, was I wrong. Massively wrong.
Lawrence Kutner, PhD, and Cheryl K. Olson, ScD, cofounders and directors of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media, have written the most thoroughly balanced and refreshingly open-minded book about video games ever penned. They cut through the stereotypes and fear-mongering that have thus far pervaded the debate over the impact of video games and offer parents and policymakers common-sense advice about how to approach these issues in a more level-headed fashion. They argue that:
Today, an amalgam of politicians, health professionals, religious leaders and children’s advocates are voicing concerns about video games that are identical to the concerns raised one, two and three generations ago with the introduction of other new media. Most of these people have the best of intentions. They really want to protect children from evil influences. As in the past, a few have different agendas and are using the issue manipulatively. Unfortunately, many of their claims are based on scanty evidence, inaccurate assumptions, and pseudoscience. Much of the current research on violent video games is both simplistic and agenda driven. (p. 55)
They note that these groups, “probably worry too much about the wrong things and too little about more subtle issues and complex effects that are much more likely to affect our children.” They continue:
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Today and tomorrow I am attending a terrific conference at Penn State University called, “Playing to Win: The Business and Social Frontiers of Videogames.” It features panel discussions about various legal and business issues facing the video game industry, as well as discussions about how video games are used to aid teaching and learning. There are also panels on multiplayer online worlds and virtual reality environments and the issues surrounding both. [They will apparently be posting videos from the conference on their site shortly.]
The folks at PSU were kind enough to invite me to deliver the luncheon keynote on Day 1 and I decided to provide a broad overview of the policy issues facing video games that I have covered in some of my past work. My presentation was entitled, “Video Games, Ratings, Parental Controls, & Public Policy: Where Do We Stand?” and the entire 36-slide presentation is now available online here. Down below, I thought I would just outline a couple of the key themes I touched upon in my presentation.
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The long-awaited final report of the UK’s Byron Review on Children and New Technology is finally out. It is called Safer Children in a Digital World. It focuses on the benefits and risks associated with the Internet and video games. I will be posting more about the specifics in coming days, but the general thrust of the report–at least from the executive summary–looks quite good. Here’s a few key quotes:
* Technology offers extraordinary opportunities for all of society including children and young people. The internet allows for global exploration which can also bring risks, often
paralleling the offline world.
* “New media are often met by public concern about their impact on society and anxiety and polarisation of the debate can lead to emotive calls for action.” … “Debates and research in this area can be highly polarised and charged with emotion.”
* “I propose that we seek to achieve gains in these three areas by having a national strategy for child internet safety which involves better self-regulation and better provision of information and education for children and families.”
* “We need to take into account children’s individual strengths and vulnerabilities, because the factors that can discriminate a ‘beneficial’ from a ‘harmful’ experience online and in video games will often be individual factors in the child. The very same content can be useful to a child at a certain point in their life and development and may be equally damaging to another child.”
I like the focus on education and parental oversight that I see in the report. Here’s a particular good recommendation that closely parallels what I have called for in my own work:
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PFF has just releasing an updated edition of my booklet on “Parental Controls and Online Child Protection: A Survey of Tools & Methods.” The new version, Version 3.0, includes two new appendixes and updates to each section to reflect new parental control tools and programs developed in the last nine months.
The updated report is timely as it comes on the heels of the recently-announced Internet Safety Technical Task Force, which is being chaired by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. I am privileged to serve as a member of the Task Force, which is evaluating various online safety technologies and strategies and then reporting back to state attorneys general with our findings.
Those issues and much more are covered in the latest edition of my report. The report explores the market for parental control tools, rating schemes, education efforts, and initiatives aimed at promoting online child safety. I believe that the parental controls and content management tools cataloged in the report represent a better, less restrictive alternative to government regulation. As I conclude after evaluating that state of the market: “There has never been a time in our nation’s history when parents have had more tools and methods at their disposal to help them decide what constitutes acceptable media content in their homes and in the lives of their children.”
Version 3.0 of the special report, now over 200 pages, contains over fifty exhibits and numerous updates in all five sections of the book. Major updates have been made to the Internet, social networking, and mobile media sections, reflecting the growing importance of those sectors and issues. A greatly expanded section on video empowerment technologies has also been included. Finally, two appendices have also been added: a comprehensive legislative index cataloging over thirty bills introduced in Congress on these issues (complied with John Morris of Center for Democracy & Technology), and a glossary of 35 relevant terms and cases.
The report is available free-of-charge on the PFF website, as are the previous editions. And I am happy to provide hard copies to those who are interested.
http://documents.scribd.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=2887320&access_key=key-um5xjvf98bfnuu8811v&page=&version=1&auto_size=true
Over at the popular gaming site 1up.com, a gentleman who worked briefly for the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has posted a provocative article entitled, “How to Fix the Game Ratings System: An insider’s take on what’s wrong with the ESRB.” In the piece, Jerry Bonner, who worked at the ESRB for 6 months according to GamePolitics.com, argues that “Something desperately needs to happen [to reform the ESRB] because the alternative — a government mandated and controlled rating scheme — is a downright frightening concept.” He continues:
“let’s fix [the ESRB ratings process] before things really get out of hand and a new government-appointed ‘Secretary of Interactive Entertainment’ is making the decisions as to what we can and can’t play. I know I don’t want that. I know you don’t want that. And I know that the people at the ESRB don’t want that. Let’s all make damn sure it doesn’t happen, shall we?”
Well, I can certainly agree with Mr. Bonner that a “Secretary of Interactive Entertainment,” or any sort of extensive government regulation of video games, is a very frightening prospect. The problem is, the “solutions” he outlines in his essay could actual put us on that path.
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GamePolitics.com reports on a murder trial in Alabama in which the attorney for a disturbed teenager is blaming video games for his barbaric behavior:
The lawyer for a man being tried for murder is trying to convince an Alabama jury that the defendant believed he was acting out a video game when he murdered an 80-year-old man on Halloween, 2005.
As reported by the Decatur Daily, Andrew Reid Lackey, 24, does not dispute that he stabbed, shot and gouged out the eye of his victim, Charlie Newman. However, Lackey’s attorney, Randy Gladden, is pointing the finger at video games. From the newspaper report:
Actions that led to a deadly confrontation between a defendant and an 80-year-old widower resembled a video game to the accused… [Attorney] Gladden described Lackey… as a computer geek who had immersed himself in video games and lived in “a different world than you and I.”
Tapes of a 911 call made by the victim during the fatal confrontation, however, indicate that old-school greed may have been the motive. Lackey is heard to demand of the victim, ”Where’s the vault?” seven different times. Charlie Newman’s grandson had previously told Lackey that the victim kept a large sum of money in a vault under the stairs. However, no such vault existed.
It’s just disgraceful–but perhaps not all that surprising–that this desperate defense attorney would employ tactics like this. Video games have become the universal excuse
du jour for violent behavior. It’s absurd for all the reasons I have pointed out here before. It’s abundantly clear that old fashion greed and a disturbed mind motivated this particular crime, and if you think that sort of thing didn’t happen before video games came along, then you just haven’t read any history. Of course, they instead just blamed movies, comics, and books for the crimes back then! There’s always someone else or something else to blame. It’s the never-ending search for a universal scapegoat for irrational or criminal behavior. The twisted logic = Don’t blame the individual, blame the media.
Pathetic.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.