esa posts

Retailers in the US continue to be strong at enforcing the ESRB ratings when approached by children without a parent, according to the newest "secret shopper" survey by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC sent a number of children, aged 13 to 16, to stores to see if they could purchase games not suited for the game's rating. The results show that only 13 percent of those underaged teenagers were sold M-rated games by retailers, down from an already pretty low 20 percent from the last FTC survey.

By contrast, a whopping 64 percent of underaged teenagers were able to purchase music with its Parental Advisory label in the secret shopper survey. 38 percent of underaged teens were able to purchase R-rated DVDs while 47 percent of them were able to purchase unrated DVD movies. Finally 33 percent of kids were able to buy a ticket to an R-rated film in movie theaters.

E3 2011 is being held on June 7-9 but this year the trade show's organizers at the Entertainment Software Association are apparently trying to limit the number of media badges issued to attend the Los Angeles-based event. Our sister site Joystiq received a note sent to an unnamed gaming web site from E3's media team that describes how E3 organizers are now using web site traffic to determine which web sites will receive media badges and how many media badges each site will receive.

According to the note E3 organizers stated that it is making such a move "due to the tremendous number of requests for media badges" for this year's show. It is using web site traffic tracking sites like Compete.com, xinureturns.com, Quantcast.com and Alexa as part of its efforts. Those sites must show that media web sites have at least 8,000 monthly unique visitors and be in operation for at least six months before at least one media badge will be approved. There have been some concerns that such a set up will favor larger media organizations who will be able to have a larger team at E3 compared to smaller sites.

On Thursday the Entertainment Software Association made the unusual move of attacking a study about the effects of playing games on children before its official release. The ESA claims that the study that it says links playing games to mental health problems with kids in Singapore, is "flawed". The ESA specifically attacked the author of the study, Douglas Gentile of Iowa State University. claiming he "has a long history of attacking video games based on claims that have been the subject of substantial criticism."

Gamasutra managed to contact Gentile who stated that it was "surprising" that the ESA would attack his work, saying, "... they give no credible evidence of significant flaws. Furthermore, the article was subjected to peer-review by independent experts in a top medical journal, experts whose interest is in evaluating the quality of science." In fact Gentile calls himself a gamer and says, "My position is and always has been that games are powerful, and that they can have many effects. Some effects are beneficial, others can be harmful."

The US game industry trade group the Entertainment Software Association has decided not to wait until an new study on games and their alleged effect on children comes out before it attacks it as being "flawed". The ESA sent over a press release today to protest the results of a study that's due to be published next week in the February issue of Pediatrics.

The ESA singles out the creator of the study, Douglas Gentile, in its press release. The study itself, according to the ESA's description of it, "seeks to link video game use to mental health problems in children in Singapore." The ESA says Gentile talks about the term "pathological gaming" in the study which the ESA claims "is neither scientifically nor medically accepted and the type of measure used has been criticized by other scholars. "

Last month the E3 2011 web site allowed folks in the game industry to register to attend the annual PC-video game trade show in Los Angeles. Today the web site started to allow media to register for attending E3, to be held on June 7-9 at its usual home of the Los Angeles Convention Center. One interesting twist for media registration is that badges won't be mailed ahead of time. Instead a bar code will be emailed to approved media members that will be scanned at the convention center for the final badge.

The web site also has a preliminary list of exhibitors that are already signed up to attend the 2011 trade show. At first glance it looks like most of the major publishers and a lot of smaller companies will be attending this year. One notable exception is NCsoft who is once again missing from the list. The MMO game publisher has chosen not to attend E3 for the past three years.

Update: Gamasutra reports that the changes for the delivery of media badges for E3 were made in order to keep physical badges from being resold or even copied before the show.

The US PC-video game trade group the Entertainment Software Association has confirmed to Big Download that it has added two new companies as members. Both the graphics chip company Nvidia and the MMO game publisher Perfect World Entertainment are now listed as members on the ESA's web site. ESA PR rep Dan Hewitt confirmed to Big Download today that Nvidia and Perfect World came aboard officially as members in the latter half in 2010.

The ESA currently shows 36 member companies on its official web site. However two of the members listed, Eidos Interactive and Realtime Worlds, are no longer active companies. Eidos merged with Square Enix in 2009 and Realtime Worlds shut down operations in 2010 following the disastrous launch and later shut down of its FPSMMO game APB.

The ESA, which owns the annual E3 trade show event as well as the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, lost a number of high profile members in 2008 including Activision, LucasArts and id Software. Hewitt told Big Download today that the ESA has a constant dialog with the industry about bringing in new members as well as perhaps bringing back older ones.

Yesterday was the last day that groups could file a brief that either supports or fights against a California game law to the US Supreme Court. A group called the Media Coalition took the opportunity to do just that as the fight heads to oral arguments in front of the nine judges on November 2.

The Media Coalition represents a number of entertainment industry trade groups in the US that cover the movie, book, comic book, music and other industries. They are attacking the California law that would restrict the sales of certain games with violent content to minors if it is allowed to pass. The Media Coalition fears that if the US Supreme Court allows this law to stand it could open the floodgates and allow other entertainment forms to be regulated in the same manner. As the group states in its press release, "There is no First Amendment exception for violent speech in books, movies, music, or other mediums, and we believe that the Supreme Court should not open the door to a new category of unprotected speech for video games or otherwise."

Update: Doom and Quake creators id Software have also filed their own brief against the California game law. Thanks to Blue's News for spotting that.

The hearing at the US Supreme Court on the proposed California law that would restrict sales of certain PC games with violent content from being sold to minors will be held in early November. On Friday the Entertainment Software Association trade group announced it had filed a brief to the court on the law which it considers unconstitutional.

The brief states the game industry's opinion on the California law which was signed in 2005 but has yet to be enforced thanks to the ongoing court battle. The ESA states that other court decisions over the years "have repeatedly ruled that there is no credible evidence that computer and video games cause harm to minors." The ESA also believes the law "threatens to chill a far broader array of speech than even California purports to target." The ESA says if the Supreme Court were to uphold the California law it would "create an unprecedented category of speech restrictions, chilling freedom of expression in other media."

The US-based game trade group the Entertainment Software Association is perhaps best known as the owner and operator of the annual E3 trade show. However, the organization has a number of different interests and activities. Today the ESA offered up its 2009 annual report to the public.

The PDF-based document goes into detail on all of the ESA's activities such as running the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, the US game ratings system. The annual report also details the ESA's activities in federal and state governments, its dealings with fighting game piracy and protecting intellectual property rights, its charitable ESA Foundation and more. Currently the ESA has 35 game developers and publishers as members.

Just how much does the entire game industry add in terms of its economic impact to the US? According to the Entertainment Software Industry trade group, nearly $5 billion was added in 2009 to the US economy because of the game industry. The numbers come from a new study commissioned by the ESA (you can check out the full PDF study right here).

Some highlights from the study include that there are more than 32,000 people directly employed in the game industry in 2009 in the US. That number goes up to 120,000 if you put in people who are indirectly employed in the industry. The average annual employee compensation is $89,781. As expected, California still has the highest number of employees directly involved with game development with 13,041 people. Texas and Washington are a distant second and third with 3,307 and 2,986 game-based employees, respectively.