Game Stooge

Holy Crap, Gaming is Big?

• Scribbled on July 16th, 2008 by Derrick Schommer
• Filed in E3, Editorial Content, Industry News

The US government is slightly behind the times in terms of technology. There are probably governing bodies in the United States that just realized color TV is the “in thing.” Don’t talk about Tivo or Plasma TV’s or High Definition broadcasting and definitely not video games.

The term “video game” seems to be a curse word in many government circles. We’ve managed to let lawyers slap game publishers around for releasing “evil content” and we’ve seen state government try to enforce (legally) sales of M rated games to the under aged public. Imagine tossing a few Wal-Mart employees in jail for accidentally selling Halo to a 16 year old! It has been blamed for school shootings, road rage and gang violence!

Texas Gov. Rick Perry plans to change all that, or at least embrace what he’s seeing as a big industry. It only took record sales figures of Halo 3 and GTA IV to shed some light on the subject. He gave an E3 keynote that went something like this:

“Seemingly overnight, the video game industry has become a major player, with over $18.8 billion in U.S. sales last year. The industry in Texas has kept pace with the national trend… it is clear the computer and video game industry is on fire… To help further encourage the industry… Texas has instituted measures that offer qualifying video game developers financial incentives similar to those offered to the film industry…”

Seemingly overnight? Seriously? In terms of evolution (or creation depending on your believes) it has been an overnight affair, but for those of us that are actually gamers, this industry has been innovative, creative and has followed the lines of technology since the first moth landed in a vacuum tube. The industry has been growing for a long time and has been adapting to gamers habits and behaviors.

Lately, however, Nintendo’s Wii console has opened the eyes of the non-gamer, including a few government officials. Now, these government bodies are realizing there is great money to be made in the gaming market and, perhaps by embracing it, they can bring more money to their own patch of the world.

“Texas has instituted measures that offer qualifying video game developers financial incentives similar to those offered to the film industry…”, say the Texas governor. In other words, bring your game development jobs to Texas and prosper with us as a unified state and we shall all be rich! Perhaps I embellish…

It just may rub the gamer the wrong way to think that their hobby and pastime gets government level attention around the time its profits are measured in several billions. Maybe this is a sign telling us the hassle over gaming violence and the whining from lawyers and government officials is over and we’ll be respected like a true American heritage?