eca posts

While it likely won't get the attendance or the media coverage of the Rally to Restore Sanity, the Entertainment Consumer Association is prepping its own rally to support the game industry on November 2 on the steps of the US Supreme Court. The rally will begin at 9 am ET, one hour before the highest court in the US hears oral arguments for and against the proposed California law that if approved would restrict the sales of certain games with violent content to minors.

The ECA web site has more info on how to attend both their rally outside the court as well as links leading to info on how people can actually sit in on the actual oral arguments inside the court building itself.

As of the time of this post, the exhibit halls of the Los Angeles Convention Center are now open to all E3 2010 attendees, marking the start of the 15th annual trade show event and the single biggest week in the game industry. While publishers and developers show off what's coming up in the game industry at the show ultimately is the gamer/consumer who dictates what's successul in the industry.

A few years ago the Entertainment Consumers Association was formed, in part to give the gamer more of a voice in the industry. Big Download chatted with the ECA's head Hal Halpin a couple of years ago and now we get an update from him on the ECA's activities and his opinions on some consumer-based PC game issues.

It looks like the gaming-oriented consumer trade group the Entertainment Consumers Association is trying to stave off a near mutiny of some of its members who feel the organization is doing some shady things concerning the renewal of membership fees.

It started a few months ago when the ECA offered a new one-year membership for free. Membership includes using ECA's discount offers from various partners including one from Amazon.com. However soon after that free membership offer was given the Amazon.com discount was taken down. Once more, an option to shut off the membership auto-renewal feature via the ECA web site was also taken away with the explanation that the feature wasn't supposed to be there in the first place.

The upshot of all this is that ECA members have to send a physical mail to the ECA headquarters to disable the auto-renew on their membership. Our sister site Joystiq contacted the ECA and got a response from its founder Hal Halpin. He explained that the Amazon.com discount was shut off after "some of the new members found an exploit in one of our partners' promotional codes and spread the word."

As for the regular mail requirement for shutting of the auto-renew membership, Halpin states, " . . . due to a small but active number of members who were repeatedly joining, leaving and re-joining the organization – in an effort to exploit our member benefits and unduly take advantage of our partners' generous offers – we would require a mailed letter, as per our membership agreement." While we certainly understand the need to stop so-called members who are joining just to exploit discount deals, we do feel that there are regular and upstanding ECA members that should have the option of cutting off their membership fee quickly without having to resort to mailing such a request to the group's offices.

The Entertainment Consumers Association has always tried to inform gamers about certain political and business issues that affect the game industry as well as ordiary gamers. This week the ECA launched a new program that aims to educate and defend the rights of consumers in regard to "digital rights"

Gamers for Digital Rights is aiming to inform consumers about their rights when they purchase a game or own things like virtual property in games. As they state, "Digital rights for gamers must balance the publishers' digital rights with those of the consumer. If you don't know the rules when buying games or playing them with your friends, forget grinding or leveling up, you'll lose the game in the real world." You can become part of the campaign by joining the group's Facebook page.

Launched in 2006, the non-profit The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has been an advocate for game consumers to try to affect change for many different issues such as DRM, universal broadband, fighting against video game sales restrictions and others. The ECA costs $20 a year to join and this week the ECA put in a pretty huge incentive for joining.

While joining the ECA gives its members many different privileges such as 20 percent off purchases at GoG.com, discounts to many different game related events and others, this could be the one that really generates a lot of new members. If you join the ECA you will get a whopping 10 percent off all your game purchases at Amazon.com. As the web site itself states, "If you buy three or more games a year, this benefit alone makes being a member worth it." Indeed.

[Via Ars Technica]

The Entertainment Consumers Association has been around for a little while now with their mission to serve as an "advocacy organization for interactive entertainment consumers." Today the non-profit group has launched a separate charity called the ECA Institute which will focus its efforts on scholarships as well as "public policy research and analysis" for all levels of government.

So why create a new non-profit group? In their press release ECA president Hal Halprin states, "The Institute enables us to work with existing and new supporters in different ways than the Entertainment Consumers Association can and, as a result, will make advancing the wants and needs of gamers more effective." Specific issues that the ECA Institute will deal with will include things like conducting polls on issues like net neturality, universal broadband and First Amendment rights. They will also develop scholarship programes for students to attend game-related education efforts.

Many people in the game industry know of the Entertainment Software Association, the trade group that organizes E3 and also fights in court against restrictive game selling laws. However, there is another organization that is centered not around the publishers but around game consumers. The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) is a non-profit organization that not only goes after restrictive state laws but also is an advocate for gamers and their rights.

Big Download got a chance to chat with ECA president Hal Halpin to find out more about the group, his opinions on various PC game industry issues and more.

The Entertainment Software Association has been in the news a lot lately but mostly for the wrong reasons as four of the trade group organization's members (Activision, Vivendi Games, id Software and Lucasarts) announced that they were leaving the ESA. The Washington Post is the latest media outlet to look at this trend and suggests that more departures may be coming.

The article quotes Hal Halpin, the head of the consumer trade group the Entertainment Consumer Association, as saying that he knows of two more (unnamed) ESA members that he claims are planning to leave. To be fair, the ECA has been in a bit of a feud with the ESA in recent days. ECA web site Gamepolitics.com has questioned the ESA's pick of Texas governor Rick Perry to make a keynote speech at July's E3 event (the ECA states that Gamepolitics.com has complete editorial freedom but the ESA feels otherwise). The article also talks about the relative low public profile of the ESA's current president Michael Gallagher who took over the job from ESA founder Doug Lowenstein about a year ago.

But it's also possible that the companies that have left the ESA might return to the fold. The article quotes id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead as saying their decision to leave the ESA, " . . . is probably temporary and was not political." Fees to join the ESA have gone up because of the decision to make E3 a invite only event.

In the mood for a LAN party but don't have any friends to frag? Eager to spout your geek-dom to other gamers who couldn't possibly know as much about your favorite game as you do? The Entertainment Consumer Association has heard your pleas.

A non-profit organization geared toward hardcore gamers, the ECA will be dispersing its members throughout chapters in a variety of locations. Their goal: to conduct activities and educate their target audience on political matters relevant to gaming. Among those activities are ECA-sponsored LAN parties, as well as attending conferences and shows.

ECA chapters have begun sprouting across college campuses and gaming communities all over the country. Over 40 chapters have already been instantiated, and according to ECA Chapter Relations' Thomas Valentino, the coming months will see the ECA "coordinate group advocacy efforts that continue to preserve our rights as gamers."

Gamers will receive more benefits than verbalizing with (and fragging) other gamers; ECA chapter members and presidents will also be presented with both career and educational opportunities.

Visit the ECA's website to learn more about the organization and chapters located in your area.

There's been a lot of talk lately on how the PC game industry can grow and become more stable. One of the major solutions that has been mentioned is free-to-play game titles which can be downloaded and played for free but can be supported via micro-transactions or in-game ads.

Our sister web site Game Daily has a new editorial from Entertainment Consumers Association president Hal Halpin who advocates this new business model for games. In particular he is looking at how the upcoming Digital Illusions-Electronic Arts game Battlefield Heroes will do when it officially launches later this summer. Halpin seems to think that EA should have made the game browser based (he believes that would have opened up the game to even more audiences) but he seems hopeful that this new business model could work for other games.

In particular, Halpin believes that a move to a free-to-play model will solve an issue that hurts both PC and console games; games that retail for $50 and $60 or more tend to be rented or traded in more and more. Halpin doesn't believe that all games could turn into free to play (although he adds, "that is certainly a possibility in the distant future") he does believe more publishers should look to changing their ways in order for the games industry to survive.