UK Conservative leader, occasional video game violence critic, and potential prime minister David Cameron has been invited by Eidos Interactive to visit a July 23rd media event unveiling Tomb Raider: Underworld, according to MCVUK.

The invitation was extended following an interview with UK newspaper The Guardian in which Cameron compared his political fortunes to playing Tomb Raider: 

There is an element to politics that is a bit like Tomb Raider. Until you have cleared level one, which I have incidentally never done, you cannot get on to level two. Level one is: are you a reasonable, decent, non-discriminating, sensible, practical person who understands the world as it is lived today, who wants to live in a modern world and who accepts what that means? If so, then you can move on to level two, where you can talk about some of the difficult issues about families and about responsibilities which can lead to trouble.

Jon Brooke, Eidos' UK marketing boss, seized the opportunity to invite Cameron:

We’re delighted to hear that David Cameron is talking to today’s voters using Tomb Raider as an analogy. As we build up towards launch, we’d be really pleased to offer him an exclusive look at the latest Lara Croft adventure, so he can see for himself how the series has evolved– and maybe come up with some high definition political parallels. Of course, both [current prime minister] Gordon Brown and [Liberal Democrat] Nick Clegg are equally welcome, provided they all sit together nicely.

There is a good deal of buzz this week surrounding video game-oriented legislation passed overwhelmingly last month by the New York state legislature. New York Gov. David Paterson (left) must decide by July 23rd whether he will sign the bill into law or let it die.

In a story broken by GamePolitics on June 24th, we reported that the NY State Senate passed, by a 61-1 vote, Sen. Andrew Lanza's bill which:

• requires that games carry a rating
• requires games consoles to have parental controls
• establishes a 16-member advisory council on media violence

While the various segments of the video game industry have taken no unified position to date, the Binghampton Press details opposition to the bill from some unusual corners.

Grover Nordquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, said:

This is a feel-good piece of legislation that really doesn't so anything.

GP: That's certainly true (see: NY Video Game Bill Barks, Doesn't Bite)

Robert Perry of the New York chapter of the ACLU, added:

This bill would have the state regulating constitutionally protected speech. The courts will not permit that.

GP: Since the bill doesn't restrict content or sales based on content, we're assuming that the ACLU's Perry is referring to the requirement that games be labeled with a rating, which they already are on a voluntary basis.

Derek Hunter of the Media Freedom Project said:

The bill is unnecessary. The video-game industry is praised as the best at policing itself. They have a great ratings system.

Adam Thierer, writing for the Tech Liberation Front, calls the bill "unnecessary, unworkable, and unconstitutional" in an open letter to Gov. Paterson.

Meanwhile, Jason Della Rocca, executive director of the International Game Developers Association, has apparently issued an alert to IGDA members based in New York, calling upon them to contact the Guv in opposition to the bill.

The key piece of the puzzle will be whether the ESA decides to challenge the law's constitutionality. The game publishers' trade group, busy with E3 this week, has not said what it plans to do in that regard. Their most likely response will be to wait and see whether the Governor signs the bill into law. In the meantime they have urged VGVN members to write the Governor in opposition.

Comments made by the Entertainment Merchants Association, however, give the impression that video game retailers believe they can live with the law's provisions:

The bill is unnecessary and seeks to solve a problem that does not exist. But we do not anticipate that video game software retailers will have a problem complying with its requirements. (It is important to note that NY law already requires DVD packages to display the rating of the movie.)

While Texas Gov. Rick Perry bragged about his state's financial incentives for game developers during yesterday's E3 keynote, legislators in North Carolina have apparently abandoned the idea of game biz tax breaks - again.

As reported by the Independent Weekly, North Carolina-based developers such as Epic, Red Storm and Destineer will be getting no love from the state government:

Though tax incentives from the Canadian government helped Montreal attract numerous major game companies, efforts in N.C. have proven unsuccessful. In a recent session of the General Assembly, House Bill 2509 called for tax credits for producers of "digital interactive media" in its first draft. By the second draft, the "digital interactive media" section had been gutted... There is no mention of the video game industry.

 

The bill was introduced by state Rep. Pryor Gibson, a Democrat... He adds that he's been working closely with game companies to help develop future bills for incentives.

As GamePolitics reported in August, 2006, a similar measure, also introduced by Rep. Gibson (left), failed to clear legislative hurdles.

The Video Game Voters Network issued an alert yesterday recommending that its members contact New York Governor David Paterson (left) to urge that he not sign pending video game legislation into law:

This bill would waste NY residents hard earned tax dollars on investigating video games when the facts are already in. We have much higher priorities for our resources and dollars than this kind of crusade.

As GamePolitics reported last month, the New York State Senate overwhelmingly passed a measure sponsored by Sen. Andrew Lanza (R). An identical bill also cleared the State Assembly.

While the VGVN, which is owned and operated by game publishers trade association the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) is opposing the measure, the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA), a group which represents game retailers, apparently does not plan to take action. In a statement issued following the bill's passage, the EMA said:

The bill is unnecessary and seeks to solve a problem that does not exist. But we do not anticipate that video game software retailers will have a problem complying with its requirements.

GP: As I pointed out in my Joystiq column, the Lanza bill is largely symbolic (see: NY Video Game Bill Barks, Doesn't Bite.

A lawmaker in the Philippines has introduced a bill designed to prevent minors from puchasing violent video games.

As reported by the Asian Journal, the measure proposed by Rep. Narciso Santiago (left) could imprison retailers for up to one year for selling mature-themed games to underage buyers.

Santiago cited studies showing increased aggressiveness following violent game play. The lawmaker commented:

[The state has] compelling interests to prevent violent, aggressive, asocial behavior [and] prevent psychological harm to minors who play violent video games, and prevent physical harm to the victims of violent minors, including other minors....  It is also the responsibility of the state to eliminate any societal factors that may inhibit the psychological and neurological development of the youth and facilitate the health development of the youth  into well-meaning productive adults.

GP: Our old pal Jack Thompson wrote in a comment to another story that Santiago's bill is patterned after his 2006 legislation from Louisiana. That bill failed miserably under US constitutional law, but made for good theater, nonetheless (see: The Circus Comes to Louisiana)...

Prosecutors and elected officials in Pennsylvania are mulling a change to a 1984 pawn broker law that would require shop owners to report purchases of video games and systems.

As reported by the Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader, the Precious Metals Act was created more than two decades ago to help police track down stolen jewelry. Luzerne County District Attorney Jacqueline Musto Carroll said:

I think it would be a great help to law enforcement to have pawn shop dealers report the video equipment and video games. These systems and games are expensive; they cost an arm and a leg.

State Rep. John Yudichak (D) has introduced legislation adding games and consoles to the precious metals reporting requirements.

By enacting this law, we give police another tool to track whether a stolen item has been pawned, thereby increasing the likelihood of returning the property to its owner and prosecuting responsible parties.

It's unclear whether the regulations would apply to used game trade-ins at retailers such as GameStop.

The PlayStation 2's requirement for a rare metal in its manufacturing process helped fuel a bloody, decade-long conflict in Africa's Democratic Republic of Congo, according to an investigative report on Toward Freedom.

The site alleges that demand for coltan by Sony and other personal electronics manufacturers led Rwandan troops and Western companies to exploit the people and mineral resources of Congo, with children often forced to work in mines.

Oona King, a former member of the British Parliament, told Toward Freedom:

Kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms. 

So, what is coltan? From the report:

After it is refined, coltan becomes a bluish-gray powder called tantalum... [which] has one significant use: to satisfy the West’s insatiable appetite for personal technology. Tantalum is used to make cell phones, laptops and other electronics made, for example, by SONY, a multi-billion dollar multinational based in Japan that manufactures the iconic PlayStation...

Researcher David Barouski commented:

[The] PlayStation 2 launch... was a big part of the huge increase in demand for coltan...  SONY and other companies like it, have the benefit of plausible deniability because the coltan ore trades hands so many times from when it is mined to when SONY gets a processed product, that a company often has no idea where the original coltan ore came from, and frankly don’t care to know. But statistical analysis shows it to be nearly inconceivable that SONY made all its PlayStations without using Congolese coltan.

A Sony rep told Toward Freedom that the company now takes steps to ensure that it does not use coltan illegally obtained from Congo in its manufacturing processes.

In a rare interview, Rockstar Games co-founder Sam Houser told MCVUK that unnamed political forces have tried to bring the Grand Theft Auto publisher down:

[My biggest challenge has been] surviving in an environment in which powerful people want to put you out of business for their own political or economic capital.

Houser addresses several more topics in the interview. It's definitely worth a read.

GP: We wish Houser would have named names. Jack Thompson, of course, has boasted many times that he is out to destroy Rockstar. But we're not sure we'd classify him as "powerful".

The list of elected officials who have criticized GTA is far too numerous to mention and contains some folks with some legitimate juice such as Hillary Clinton and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. But we can't recall any of them wanting to lay waste to Rockstar...

Variety's Ben Fritz serves up some new info on Activision's recent departure from the ESA, although his interview with CEO Bobby Kotick raises as many questions as it answers.

While Kotick's comments to Fritz seem to indicate that Activision's departure from ESA is only temporary, actions always speak louder than words and the monolithic game publisher is apparently hiring its own exec to handle government relations. That would include things like lobbying and First Amendment issues. 

Here's what Kotick told Fritz:

I said don't view [pulling out of ESA] as anything but time off... With the combined companies [from the merger with Vivendi], the [ESA membership] dues went up enough that I said for it to make sense [to spend that money], we have to make a strategic plan. We don't have that because nobody owns it for us right now.

 

We have our own issues that are not the industry's issues. Our challenges are sufficiently different from other publishers' issues that we need our own point person. We'll have someone soon.

The Activision-specific issues reference by Kotick include Blizzard's enormous WoW subscriptions as well as substantial dealings in China. So, will Activision ever return to the ESA fold? Kotick said:

We'll consider it.

The Boston Globe reports that the Massachusetts legislature is considering tax breaks for video game developers - but the proposal is far from a sure thing.

With more than a thousand people employed in the game biz, Massachusetts ranks fifth in the nation (behind California, Washington, Texas and New York). Turbine and Harmonix are among the state's best-known video game companies.

The Globe describes the proposal, which also includes incentives for filmmakers:

The bill would have allowed companies to claim a tax credit for up to 20 percent of the cost of building, converting, or equipping a facility related to "video gaming," as the company invests at least $500,000.

 

It is unclear, though... whether the video game industry incentives will remain part of it. The bill, sponsored by Representative Ronald Mariano, Democrat of Quincy, was approved by the Legislature's Joint Committee on Revenue last month on a 5-to-4 vote...

 

And even if the bill is approved, the video game provision could be missing from the final version.
 

Hal Halpin, president of the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA), pens a guest column for The Escapist today.

While Hal touches on a broad range of subjects from digital distribution to online trolls to the slow death of gaming magazines, we took special notice of his comments on the politics of gaming:

"Games will be respected soon because gamers will grow up and become politicians."

 

I get this one all the time. And sure, it makes perfect sense in theory, but the reality is that politicians - young and old - make political hay out of what they can. Just because the average age of gamers is in the early 30s and there are plenty of brilliant 40-somethings that are eager to get into public life doesn't mean that they won't exploit games when the opportunity arises. To believe that they would not is nothing short of wishful thinking.

 

Again, I'm willing to concede that 20 years from now we likely won't be dealing with First Amendment arguments about interactive entertainment, but that fact has little to do with the age of politicians... In the meantime, we're stuck in the trenches fighting misperceptions, negative stereotypes and ill-conceived legislation. To my mind, you can do one of two things: Get involved (IGDA and ECA come to mind) or shut up. Both organizations are quite easy to join. To put it another way, "You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result."

FULL DISCLOSURE DEPT: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics.

The Entertainment Software Association took a victory lap this week, announcing the recovery of $65,000 in legal fees from Minnesota after the state abandoned further appeals of its failed 2006 video game law.

An editorial in yesterday's Duluth News-Tribune, however, dinged the ESA while acknowledging that Minnesota's fine-the-buyer legislation law was "flawed":

From the outset, the law skirted First Amendment rights and targeted the wrong people - minors... The logic was counter to that of more effective laws to protect minors, such as penalties to bars that allow underage drinking or fines to stores that sell cigarettes to kids.

 

...Though [Attorney General Lori] Swanson had indicated then she would continue to defend it, this week she cut her losses. Hence, the $65,000 of legal fees.

 

"Minnesota's citizens should be outraged at paying the bill for this flawed plan," Michael D. Gallagher, CEO of the video game trade association, said in a statement.

 

He's right, but what about his group's members who make and market games depicting sexual exploitation and violence as fun?

 

A little outrage is due there, too, for creating the problem in the first place.

Via: West Central Tribune (the Duluth News-Tribune link isn't working as I write this)

It was widely reported this week that Minnesota would reimburse the video game industry $65,000 for legal fees incurred fighting the state's 2006 "fine the buyer" video game law in federal court.

Oddly enough, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R), who signed the bill into law after it was approved by the Minnesota legislature, is apparently a bit of a gamer himself. That news comes from a passing mention buried within a lengthy 2007 profile of Pawlenty in the Weekly Standard. We just happened upon it this morning. Here's the gaming bit:

Growing up, Pawlenty played hockey. He is still a rabid NHL fan. The first website he visits each morning is hockeyfights.com, which shows combat highlights from the previous night's games. He plays the ESPN hockey video game in his spare time, often taking on one of his two daughters.

Okay, so Pawlenty doesn't necessarily keep up with the latest releases. The last ESPN-branded hockey game was ESPN NHL 2K5, released in August, 2004, nearly three years before the Weekly Standard article appeared. Still, it's always nice to see a politician who games, even a little. And always troubling to see one who legislates games. With Pawlenty, you apparently get both.

The Minnesota Guv, by the way, is rumored to be on John McCain's short list of VP candidates.

The House of Commons yesterday debated the merits of requiring game developers to ensure that their software won't cause players to experience epileptic seizures, reports Spong.

The issue was raised by Conservative John Penrose after a constituent's son experienced what is known as photosensitive epilepsy (PSE) while playing Ubisoft's Rayman Raving Rabbids. Penrose argued:

A couple of games-makers, notably Ubisoft, with which I have been in contact, have decided voluntarily and admirably to apply the sort of screening that I am suggesting to their games... and I hope that many other games manufacturers will follow their example. 

The point is that some games manufacturers may decide to do that, but there is a huge number of games-makers and manufacturers throughout the world. Some are large and responsible, such as Ubisoft, but as in any industry, there is a large number of manufacturers who are relatively tiny, and although some may be responsible, we cannot be sure.

Minister for Culture, Media and Sport Margaret Hodge, however, seemed to favor pursuing a voluntary compliance approach rather than a statutory one:

If I am unsuccessful in extending voluntary agreement for a voluntary code of conduct or if we find that it is insufficient, we can always return to the matter at a later stage.

I would like to take the issue away from today's debate and meet with ELSPA ... to see what progress can be made on a voluntary code of conduct.

A pair of New York State officials have raised the red flag over video game violence in a jointly-signed letter to Newsday.

Mindy A. Bockstein (left), head of the New York State Consumer Protection Board and Denise O'Donnell, commissioner of the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, were prompted to take pen in hand following last week's Nassau County incident in which police linked Grand Theft Auto IV to a crime spree committed by a half-dozen teens.

In addition to expressing their concerns, Bockstein and O'Donnell took the opportunity to tout some parental resources available for game buyers in New York:

[The arrest] raises serious questions about whether violent video games desensitize our youth to violence, or glamorize violent behavior. It is essential that parents are aware of the content in the games their children play or want to play, so that they can make an informed decision on whether a particular game is appropriate...

 

With more than 5,000 game titles available, some of which contain graphic violence, sexual themes and adult content, parents must be proactive, cautious and vigilant in deciding which games their children should play.
 

GP: As GamePolitics revealed in December, it was O'Donnell's department that cobbled together a PowerPoint presentation which cited a notorious video game hoax site as a parental resource.

Currently, Cyprus is one of only four European Union member states that doesn't regulate the sale of violent video games to children.

Government officials are planning to rectify that situation, however.

According to a report in today's Cyprus Mail, the island nation's House Education Committee is considering how to go about it:

According to DISY deputy Tasos Mitsopoulos... it has been ‘scientifically proven’ that ‘bad and excessive use of these games can have a negative effect on children and teenagers’ brains’, pointing out that Holland had opened the first rehabilitation centre for youths addicted to computer games.

 

Deputies linked violent games to a number of teenage rampages, such as last year’s mass murder of 32 people at Virginia Tech in the US by student Seung-Hui Cho.

 

“The thing with computer games is that the child is actively implicated in killing people, as opposed to a movie where he is a passive observer,” the DISY deputy explained.

Government official Athena Kyriakidou added:

With the Internet, it is not easy to protect our children, but at least an effective law will enable the authorities to have some control over the [video game] market.

The other three EU countries without video game laws are Slovenia, Romania and Luxemburg.

GP: Cyprus needs to do what it feels it must. However, they're obviously getting at least some misinformation here concerning a supposed video game connection to the Virginia Tech rampage. Note that a blue ribbon panel which investigated the mass shooting found zero linkage to games. Only Jack Thompson and Lyndon Larouche continue to insist that games were involved. And the killer was a 23-year-old man, not a teenager.

The $65,000 that Minnesota had to pay back to the game biz for legal costs incurred in fighting the state's unconstitutional 2006 video game law has been widely covered since the ESA released the news yesterday.

Over at the Technology Liberation Front, Adam Thierer (left) considers the cost from the perspective of what better uses the time and energy expended on the Minnesota law could have been channeled into instead:

...these cases make it clear that there is a significant opportunity cost associated with censorship efforts. That $2 million in recovered legal fees [by the game industry from nine different states] 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... 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.

 

Just think, what if government officials had spent that money on some PSAs during a major sporting event? Or perhaps more brochures and in-store displays to make the public better aware of the ratings and parental control tools at their disposal. Or even a direct mail campaign to homes with children making parents aware of these ratings and tools?

GP: Adam's definitely on the right track here, but we'd even move the discussion beyond the video game space. What social challenges could the Minnesota legislature have been working on instead of video games? Are there no crime, poverty, healthcare, transportation or other key issues to ponder in the Gopher State?

Remember, too, that the $65,000 reimbursement represents only the cost of the video game industry's legal expenses. How many deputy attorney generals, paralegals and secretaries employed by Minnesota - and paid by the state's taxpayers - put their professional time and energy into the case?

As GamePolitics reported yesterday, the ESA announced that Minnesota would reimburse $65,000 in legal fees to the video game industry over the state's failed 2006 "fine the buyer" video game law.

In our coverage, we mentioned that the move apparently signalled that Minnesota would not be taking the case before the U.S. Supreme Court, its only remaining legal recourse. We've got a call into the office of Attorney General Lori Swanson (left) on the Supreme Court issue, but Finance & Commerce now seems to have nailed that part of the story down:

Attorney General Lori Swanson’s decision not to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was “practical,” according to spokesman Benjamin Wogsland, who pointed out that the nation’s highest court takes “less than 1 percent of discretionary cases every year.”

But Paul Smith, an attorney representing the [video game industry] plaintiffs, said Monday that the state decided not to pursue the case further because of a deal that would require the attorney general’s office to pay a reduced amount in fees owed to plaintiff’s lawyers. Smith could not say what the reduced amount was, though a court filing from May 19 shows that the plaintiffs’ lawyers were owed nearly $84,000. Woglsand did not return calls Monday.
 

GP: If Paul Smith is correct, Minnesota essentially bargained away - for $19,000 plus future legal fees -  its opportunity to take its argument before the U.S. Supreme Court. Given all that the state had already invested in the case, that would seem a rather curious decision.

It would have been fascinating - and, yes, risky - for the Supreme Court to consider a video game law, especially given Justice Antonin Scalia's comments to Law of Play blogger Anthony Prestia that game legislation might be constitutional.

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), which represents the interests of video game publishers in the United States, has issued a press release announcing that the state of Minnesota will reimburse the industry to the tune of $65,000.

The figure represents legal fees incurred by the video game industry in its court challenge to Minnesota's unusual 2006 "fine-the-buyer" law.

As passed by the Minnesota legislature and signed into law by Governor (and potential Republican VP candidate) Tim Pawlenty (left) in 2006, the law would have turned traditional video game legislation on its head by fining underage buyers of M-rated games $25. Virtually all other video game content bills have sought penalties against retailers.

There were some other noteworthy aspects to the Minnesota situation:

U.S. District Court Judge James Rosenbaum, who ruled the law unconstitutional, borrowed his law clerk's Xbox to check out some violent games while considering his ruling.

Former Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch (D), who defended against the industry's constitutional challenge in its early days, described violent video games in a court filing as "worthless, disgusting speech" and "speech of very low societal value."

Minnesota appealed Judge Rosenbaum's decision's to the 8th Circuit Court, but lost. A request for a review by the entire 8th Circuit was also turned down.

The state's only remaining recourse was the U.S. Supreme Court. Judging from the settlement with the game biz, Minnesota A.G. Lori Swanson has apparently decided not to pursue a Supreme Court decision, but we've got a call into Swanson's office to confirm that.

The ESA originally sought $73,332 in fees in a motion filed in August, 2006. The $65,000 figure indicates that a little bit of negotiating went on.

ESA CEO Michael Gallagher weighed in on the $65,000 payment:

Minnesota’s citizens should be outraged at paying the bill for this flawed plan. Minnesota’s public officials ignored legal precedent and instead pursued a political agenda that ultimately cost taxpayers money. Courts across the United States have ruled consistently that video games are entitled to the same First Amendment protections as other forms of art, such as music and literature...

 

Politicians need to realize that the key to protecting our children from inappropriate media content is not haphazard legislation, but rather parental education. Video games have a first class ratings system supported by retailers, opinion leaders and parents.  It would be a far better use of public funds to help support this system, rather than continue to pursue unconstitutional legislation that works against it.    

GP: In a way, it would have been fascinating to see the Supreme Court make a ruling on this issue.

...the one in which GP explains why the video game bill passed in New York last week is all bark and no bite.

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