The Supreme Court’s decision to hear arguments on a California law prohibiting the sale or rental of violent video games to minors that a lower body had ruled unconstitutional has the industry chattering today.  

Here’s a sample of the reactions from people in and around the video game world:

“Courts throughout the country have ruled consistently that content-based regulation of computer and video games is unconstitutional. Research shows that the public agrees, video games should be provided the same protections as books, movies and music.

“As the Court recognized last week in the US v. Stevens case, the First Amendment protects all speech other than just a few ‘historic and traditional categories’ that are ‘well-defined and narrowly limited.’ We are hopeful that the Court will reject California’s invitation to break from these settled principles by treating depictions of violence, especially those in creative works, as unprotected by the First Amendment.

“A poll recently conducted by KRC Research found that 78 percent believe video games should be afforded First Amendment protection. We look forward to presenting our arguments in the Supreme Court of the United States and vigorously defending the works of our industry’s creators, storytellers and innovators.”

-         Michael D. Gallagher, president and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association

“EMA obviously would have preferred that the Supreme Court decline review of the lower court decision finding the California video game restriction law to be unconstitutional. We are confident, however, that when the Supreme Court conducts its review, it will conclude that the lower court correctly analyzed the law and reached the appropriate conclusion.”

-         Bo Andersen, President & CEO, Entertainment Merchants Association (formerly Video Software Dealers Association)

“We have a responsibility to our kids and our communities to protect against the effects of games that depict ultra-violent actions, just as we already do with movies. I am pleased the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to take up this issue, and I look forward to a decision upholding this important law that gives parents more tools to protect their children, including the opportunity to determine what video games are appropriate.”

-         California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

This is another sign that gamers need to wake up and get organized to protect their rights. Censorship and content restrictions are a very real threat to videogames. Any gamer who has not registered with the ESA’s VideoGame Voter Network, loses the right to complain when government starts taking games off the market.

-         Jeff Brown, Director of Corporate Communications, Electronic Arts

The debate over whether violent video games are bad for minors is going in front of the Supreme Court. The Court on Monday agreed to review a California law that bans the sale or rental of violent games to children.  

It’s a bit of a surprise move by the Court, which many expected would decline to hear California’s appeal of the case after last week’s decision overturning a ban on depictions of animal cruelty for being too broad. (Experts say the wording of both laws in question were similar.)

In 2005, California passed a law prohibiting the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. The video game industry immediately appealed it and a series of courts sided with publishers, saying the state did not have the right to regulate sales of titles, since it did not produce sufficient evidence that the games cause physical and psychological harm to minors.

The Supreme Court, though, wants to take a second look – and that could have some broad implications. Most obviously, the ruling (which will take place in the Court’s next term, beginning in October) will determine how far free speech protects games. If it rules that community standards outweigh the artistic elements of games, it could open the door for states to regulate the sale of violent games such as “Modern Warfare 2” and “Grand Theft Auto”.

It also indicates that the Supreme Court may believe that games should be looked at differently than music or television. And, depending on the ruling, it could dramatically impact publisher earnings as holiday blockbuster sales could suffer. 

“Mortal Kombat,” Spencer Halpin's award-winning 2007 documentary on the subject of game violence is now free to watch. Babelgum will host the film for the next 30 days. We’ve embedded it below if you can’t wait to see it.

The film won a Director’s Choice Award from the Dallas Film & Video Festival for its examination of video game violence. As you might guess given the topic, the film raised some hackles in the gaming community – especially since it features statements by Jack Thompson, whose brushes with the industry are legendary at this point.

Some gamers call it biased. Henry Jenkins, one of the most respected video game academics dubbed it fair. You can make up your own mind.

Comments, as always, are welcome, but keep ‘em civil folks. 

Don’t look for any more “Godfather” or “Grand Theft Auto” games in China.

The Chinese Ministry of Culture has forbidden websites from featuring or publicizing games that heavily feature gangs, obscenity or gambling -- and says it will severely punish sites that try to skirt the law.

“These games encourage people to deceive, loot and kill, and glorify gangsters’ lives. It has a bad influence on youngsters,” said a report from the Culture Ministry carried on the Xinhua news agency.

My colleague Clifford Coonan has more on the ban itself, but the implications for the gaming industry are notable.

Gang games are still a big part of the industry these days. Beyond the examples above, there’s also THQ’s “Saint’s Row,” Take Two’s “Mafia II” and the upcoming “APB” – a massively multiplayer online game for the PC, which are the most popular types of games in China.

And, depending on how broad a definition of the word ‘gangs’ the Ministry of Culture decides to take, the “World of Warcraft” juggernaut could even find itself at risk. While Blizzard Software banned casinos in the game four years ago, zealots could label Horde guilds as a gang – particularly in the PvP zones (where players are permitted to kill each other’s characters).

There are implications beyond big, traditional publishers as well. Facebook’s most popular game is “Mafia Wars” – which could give the government further reason to continue blocking the social networking site. (After the riots in Xinjiang earlier this month, China blocked access to Facebook and Twitter. It’s unknown if that ban will be permanent or not.)

Like it or not, the ‘gang’ subgenre of gaming is not going away anytime soon. And China is a growing market for the industry, as developers and publishers finally begin to get a handle on ways to combat the country’s significant piracy problem. This move by the government could eventually have notable effects on the industry as a whole. 

That headline up there is a question I hear all the time.

No matter how big the gaming industry’s revenues get; no matter how much a hit title becomes part of the pop culture lexicon, people (often non-gamers or people from large media companies) want to know when gaming will be accepted as a mainstream form of entertainment.

My answer is always the same. As Baby Boomers get older and Generation X begins taking over the boardrooms and governments, you’ll see attitudes toward video games begin to shift. And that shift may be starting to take place now.

Kotaku has a nice write up of a luncheon hosted by Mike Gallagher, president of the Entertainment Software Association, which lobbies for the video game industry in Washington and is the parent company of E3.

Gallagher talks about his perception of President Obama’s attitude toward gaming (generally positive), but the story’s most interesting nugget was a throwaway sentence at the very end of the story.

"For the first time we have a console in the White House," says Gallagher. "We understand the president has a Wii and we're very excited about that. Having a degree of exposure to the technology is very, very positive."

Ain’t that the truth? Obama may or may not be a gamer himself, but we’re creeping up on an era when the leader of the free world spent parts of his childhood dropping quarters in a Pac Man machine and has played at least a few levels of “Grand Theft Auto”. 

And that, I believe, is when we’ll see gaming acknowledged as an entertainment medium far and wide, instead of a slightly estranged cousin.

Yesterday Variety released our Videogame Impact Report, complete with a list of 40 people who have had a big impact on the industry in the past year in various ways. There was only one person from the political arena: Leland Yee, the California state senator who has been a leading figure to pass legislation banning the sale of violent games to anyone under 18.

Today I got the only e-mail I have received from somebody complaining they didn't make the list: Anti-videogame violence crusader, media figure, and lawyer (if he doesn't lose his license) Jack Thompson, who sent me this rather peeved one-line e-mail:

Mr. Fritz, I'm not sure how you can include Leland Yee and not include me.

I'm just touched that Jack cares what Variety thinks. (and yes, I'm assuming it's really him; I have no reason not to).

Update: Jack left a comment calling me a "knucklehead."

Ever since Activision (and its newly merged partner, Vivendi) dropped out of the Entertainment Software Assn., the videogame industry trade group, there has been a lot of speculation about what it means. Is Activision unhappy with ESA head Mike Gallagher's leadership? Was it the quadrupling in fees following the shrinking of E3, as Kotaku reported? Is there a bigger problem with the ESA, given that other companies including LucasArts, iD and Crave Entertainment have also quit?

Sort of, as it turns out. I posed the question to Activision (and now Activision Blizzard) CEO Bobby Kotick (right) during an interview for an upcoming story and he seemed pretty eager to clear things up.

First of all, Kotick says he told Gallagher not to view it as Activision leaving the ESA. "I said don't view it as anything but time off," he explained.

So what is the reason for the "time off?" Kotick says that given the scale of the merged company, its dues were going up substantially and it needed to justify the expenditure.

"With the combined companies, the dues went up enough that I said for it to make sense [to spend that money], we have to make a strategic plan," he explained. "We don't have that because nobody owns it for us right now."

Translation: Kotick feels that Activision Blizzard needs its own executive handling governmental relations. The ESA can't handle that for the company, he went on, because Activision Blizzard is not the same as other publishers.

"We have our own issues that are not the industry's issues," he went on, citing Blizzard's reliance on subscription revenue and the company's substantial business in China as examples. "Our challenges are sufficiently different from other publishers' issues that we need our own point person."

"We'll have someone soon," he promised.

And when that happens, will Activision Blizzard be ending its "time off" and rejoining the ESA? "We'll consider it," Kotick said noncommittally.

Not everyone is sympathetic to Kotick's position, though. I was interviewing the head of another videogame pubisher and asked him about members dropping out of the ESA. He said he wasn't too happy that some in the industry are "free riding" on others who choose to pay their dues to give the industry a public face.

Looks like my post last week that a few publishers leaving the ESA might not be so big a deal could turn out to be wrong.

GamePolitics reports that id Software has left the ESA. That's no. 4 of the D.C. trade group's 28 members who have left recently (though to be fair, Vivendi leaving doesn't really count since there very soon will no longer be a Vivendi Games).

And as GamePolitics reports, and I can also confirm through what I've been hearing, "there are rumors of additional potential exits."

When will enough publishers have left the ESA that it reaches some sort of a breaking point where we have to start questioning whether the ESA could be falling apart? How many publishers does it have to still represent in order to safely say it is the industry's trade group?

With big names like Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony and EA still in there, I think the ESA can still safely make that claim. But if the defections do indeed keep coming as rumors indicate, that question is going to become more and more pressing.

While Activision/Vivendi and LucasArts' decisions to leave the Entertainment Software Assn. are interesting -- and definitely not good news -- it's worth keeping some perspective. Such things aren't too unusual in the world of DC trade groups.

As one of the TV reporters here at Variety reminded me, the National Association of Broadcasters operated for several years without any of the nation's four major TV broadcasters. ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox had a dispute with NAB over the issue of station ownership and decided they weren't sending their money to a group that disagreed with them.  So around 2000, they all left. ABC re-joined in 2005 and NBC came back last year, but the other two are still not part of it.

Of course, NAB had a more diverse membership than ESA, what with all the local stations, radio broadcasters, etc. Based on Kotaku's reporting, however, it appears that the dispute Activision and LucasArts have with the ESA is simply a huge increase in dues (Vivendi Games is soon to be non-existent, so it has an excellent reason to stop paying dues). That makes a lot of sense, since Activision is famously the tightest of all the big U.S. publishers with its cash (that's partly how it ends up with the biggest profits).

So, unless there's truly a mass exodus from the ESA, which looks unlikely given EA's recent words, the group will probably be just fine. And given that LucasArts is participating and Activision is having an independent event at the same time in the same city, E3 won't be too different either.

Variety's DC reporter Bill Triplett has a story on the latest attempt to turn the ESRB ratings system into law.

Reps. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) and Jim Matheson (D-Utah) (thus making the bill bi-partisan) today introduced the" Video Games Ratings Enforcement Act," which requires ID checks for M or AO-rated games.

Most major retailers already have ID policies, of course, but the industry is understandably wary about making it a crime if one of their employees doesn't perform the check. According to Bill's story, the penalty is a $5,000 fine.

As I often do, I feel like it's worth noting that the Federal Trade Commission reported last year that it's tougher for kids to buy an M-rated game than an R-rated DVD. Though I suppose you could argue that M-rated games are worse for them.

Anyway, as Bill notes, similar bills passed by numerous states have been struck down by the courts, so if this one ever manages to become a law, its chances of staying one don't seem too good.

Get all the details right here.

California's crusading anti-game state senator Leland Yee (left) has his eyes on "Grand Theft Auto IV." His office just put out a letter in which the Democrat "URGES PARENTS TO AVOID LATEST ULTRA-VIOLENT VIDEO GAME."

For those who don't know, Yee has battled for a long time to regulate video games. In an interview with me in 2005, he said they are more comparable to alcohol and tobacco in their negative impact on children than movies and TV. Last year, a bill he sponsored to prohibit the sale of games deemed "violent" to would-be buyers under 18 was overturned by a federal district court judge. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is appealing that decision.

I must admit that I'm amazed Yee already knows that "Grand Theft Auto IV" is "ULTRA-VIOLENT." I've only gotten to play it for an hour. But if he's making a claim like that, he must have gotten to play it for several hours at least. After all, a state senator wouldn't make a claim like that if he hasn't yet played the game? He wouldn't just make assumptions, right? Man am I jealous he already got to play.

Some of Yee's assertions are just a tad bit misleading, though. So I thought I'd provide an excerpt of his press release with some interruptions for my own commentary.

“It is imperative that parents avoid purchasing this game for their children and always review the video games their children are playing,” said Yee, who is also a child psychologist.  “Unfortunately, the makers of Grand Theft Auto have a history of deceiving the ratings board and the public on the true content of their games.  Parents beware: this game undoubtedly glorifies violence, is extremely realistic and designed for adults only.”

Whether Rockstar was "deceiving the ratings board and public" about content that couldn't be accessed by anyone except hackers and which many people at the company arguably didn't know was in there is questionable.

Based on what I've played, I'd say it is "extremely realistic" and is definitely "designed for adults only." Whether it "glorifies violence" is, I suppose, debatable. There is a lot of violence, but shooting anyone and everyone is definitely not the way to win all the missions.

In June 2005, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) and GTA’s creator Rockstar, were involved in a multi-million dollar scandal called “Hot Coffee,” in which Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, a game originally rated M by the ESRB, was found to have hidden animations allowing players to watch graphic scenes of oral sex, nudity, and simulated intercourse. 

Which could only be accessed by hackers able to download and implement a mod on their PC.

The scandal resulted in the game being pulled from most store shelves, a $2.75 million class-action settlement, and the stocks of Rockstar’s parent company (Take Two Interactive) losing nearly half their value.

The game was indeed pulled since versions with the "hot coffee" mod were re-rated "Adults Only" and most retailers won't carry AO titles. The class action settlement does cost up to $2.75 million. I have no idea where he gets the claim that Take-Two stock fell by 50%. From the time the "hot coffee" mod was released on June 9, Take-Two stock didn't really move at all that summer (even during the initial controversy in July). Later that year, and into 2006 it started falling substantially, but that only partly because of "hot coffee." Take-Two was having lots of other financial problems at the time.

The ESRB rates a game based solely on a short video clip and information supplied by the game’s maker and does not actually play or review the full content of the game.

I don't think the ESRB would say the video clips are "short," but they don't play the entire game, that's true. Of course, playing an open world game in order to rate it would probably be tough since you can play the game all the way through and miss lots of stuff.

While M-rated games are designed for adults, there is no prohibition to selling such games to children.

No legal prohibition. But all the major retailers have strict policies to enforce ESRB ratings. This sentence is highly misleading. It makes it sound like the "M" rating is just a suggestion and any kid can go in and buy the game.

In fact, the Federal Trade Commission reports that 42 percent of unaccompanied children 13 to 16 years of age can successfully purchase M-rated games.

True, but that number is substantially lower than the the number of teenagers who can buy R-rated DVDs or CDs with explicit lyrics. In fact, the FTC specifically noted that "while video game retailers have made significant progress in limiting sales of M-rated games to children, movie and music retailers have made only modest progress limiting sales." Though of course if you, like Yee, think video games are more like cigarettes than movies, this isn't too relevant.

In addition, a recent report by the National Institute on Media & the Family found complacency among retailers, parents and the gaming industry regarding video game rating awareness, enforcement and usage.  Among the report’s highlights was a retailer grade of C-, with national retailers receiving a D and rental stores collecting a failing (F) grade.  The game industry as a whole received a C and the ESRB received a C+.

Misleading. I just looked at the actual report. The C- for retailers is for their education of employees and families (called "retailers policies). While national retailers did get a D and rental stores an F, specialty retailers (like GameStop) got a B. The ESRB got a C+ for its ratings process, but a B- for its ratings education. Oh, and the parents who Yee is warning? The NIMF gave them a C and said they have to get more involved. Apparently parents are doing worse than the ESRB and specialty retailers and just the same as the industry. (It's also worth noting, though I'm sure it's obvious, that the National Institute on Media & the Family is a pretty conservative group).

I doubt many readers of this blog are sympathetic to arguments like Yee's, but it's worth considering what they're saying, since I'm sure the mainstream media is going to be all over this "controversy" in the next week as "GTA IV" comes out. Tomorrow or Monday I'm hoping to run an interview with one of the groups that's speaking out against the game.