VIDEO GAMES - 1

Do Video Games Cause Kids to Drop Out?


"You might find it alarming that one of the top reasons for college dropouts in the U.S. is online gaming addiction - such as World of Warcraft - which is played by 11 million individuals," said FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate in an address at the Practicing Law Institute (reported by Game Politics).

Tate's comments lacked clear supporting materials, coming after she'd loosely referenced unspecified surveys from 2006, nor did she provide any comparison to other oft-cited reasons such as "family responsibilities," "financial reasons," and "offered a good job."

Those details are east to overlook when you're citing and misrepresenting studies from 2006 and 2007 on Internet usage and parental involvement to scare people into supporting your digital rights management and anti-net neutrality agendas. A little over a week ago, Tate spoke passionately on "how important digital rights management methods," such as watermarking and fingerprinting, "are to enabling" new methods of electronic distribution. Additionally, she voiced her support against net neutrality, saying

"It's crucial that we not only allow operators to manage their networks, but to not tie their hands with prescriptive regulations. And make no mistake, "net neutrality" as network management is sometimes referenced in Washington and among political discussants, if implemented in its strictest form, will tie the hands of network operators. Digital fingerprinting and watermarking would not be possible if net neutrality is enforced in its harshest form."

Harshest form? In an interview with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman, Lawrence Lessig, the professor of law at Stanford University, founding member of Creative Commons, and one of the world's most prominent minds on cyberlaw, eloquently described how the Internet was founded on the basis of net neutrality, and without it, the possibilities for corruption and information control are nearly endless.

Now remember, World of Warcraft was the first and only title Tate mentioned when addressing "online gaming addiction." As gamers (and hopefully supporters of a free society), this sort of rhetoric from the head of the FCC causes some concern.

Video Games Awards, and Sneak Previews

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By BRIAN STELTER
Published: December 11, 2008

LOS ANGELES

WHEN the Video Game Awards are held here on Sunday, game publishers and voice-over actors will line the red carpet. But the viewers will be watching to see something else: sneak peeks at the most anticipated games of 2009.

The program, to be broadcast on the Spike cable channel, will include the premieres of 10 video game trailers. Although not called commercials, they are exquisitely produced previews of new games, similar to the movie trailers that theatergoers are accustomed to.

For Spike, a subsidiary of Viacom’s MTV Networks division, the game trailers are meant to attract young male viewers — a sought-after demographic for advertisers — to the Video Game Awards, which are being shown live. As video games become more cinematic and technologically sophisticated, trailers are turning into valuable marketing tools.

“Exclusive video game trailers are kind of like the Angelina Jolie of this business,” said Geoff Keighley, the executive in charge of publisher relations for Spike. “That’s what gamers want to see.”

The premiere of a trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned scheduled for Sunday’s show was the result, Mr. Keighley said, of “six months of talks” with the game’s publisher, Rockstar Games.

Spike treats the first looks at trailers as editorial content, not as ads, and it chooses which ones to show during the awards program. The network already devotes half an hour to game trailers each week with “GameTrailers TV,” or “GTTV” for short. MTV Networks acquired the video Web site GameTrailers.com in 2005.

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Publishers know that the trailers are also sales pitches, and they cut 30-second versions for television commercials and online video ads accordingly.

Over the years, “the marketing has become more intense and the trailers have become more spectacular,” said Albie Hecht, the founder of Spike TV.

Peer Schneider, the senior vice president of content for the gaming network IGN Entertainment, said the relevance of trailers has changed a great deal in the last decade.

“Games are now visually sophisticated enough that gameplay footage can really stand on its own,” Mr. Schneider said. He cited the trailer for Dead Space, an action horror game released by Electronic Arts in October, that mimics a horror movie trailer.

“The outcome is that viewers are intrigued whether they own a console or not — but no longer do gamers feel that they’re being explicitly marketed to,” he said. “Many game trailers are now as much an informational tool as a promotional one.”

During Sunday’s show, Sony will unveil footage of God of War 3, EA Sports will showcase Fight Night Round 4, and Double Fine will present Brutal Legend. The actor Jack Black, who is the awards show’s host, will be a walking, joking advertisement for Brutal Legend, as he voiced the main character for the game. Two of the other trailers to be shown are video game versions of coming films, “Terminator Salvation” and “Watchmen: The End is Nigh.”

Between the trailers, Spike will honor the best games of the year. No cable channel now seems complete without an awards show, with Bravo presenting the “A-List Awards” and CNN honoring “Heroes” with a marquee event. The awards allow channels to differentiate themselves and solidify their audience. G4, another cable channel geared toward 18- to 34-year-old men, presents awards within its daily “X-Play” video game show.

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While it remains unclear whether video games are a recession-resistant business, sales of the Nintendo Wii and other game systems have remained strong in recent months. According to MTV Networks, ads sales in the video game category at Spike have risen 35 percent in 2008.

The awards also have attracted a row of gamer-friendly sponsors, including Burger King, Energizer, Verizon Wireless and the Army, according to Spike.

But the network does not allow game publishers to sponsor the program. Publishers also are not allowed to place game ads near a segment of the show where their titles are nominated. Jeff Lucas, an executive vice president for ad sales for MTV Networks, said the rules were enforced to “maintain our editorial credibility.”

These rules mirror the policies for other award shows. For decades, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did not allow commercials for forthcoming movies during the Oscars, to avoid any appearance of undue influence. Beginning with the 2009 show, each distributor will be able to buy one commercial in the show.