The Californian law that would make selling violent videogames to children illegal is facing a hefty amount of opposition. The law was never put into effect because of challenges by the videogame industry and was deemed unconstitutional by a Californian appeals court. It is now, by the state’s request, being looked at by the US Supreme Court who will decide if it should be imposed and would set a stark precedent. For some time lobbying groups such as the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) have said that they will oppose the ban because it restricts the First Amendment: freedom of speech and expression. In a statement, the ESA said: “Courts throughout the country have ruled consistently that content-based regulation of computer and video games is unconstitutional.”

But what exactly is the opposition? I’ve been trying to figure out why videogame lobbyists seemingly don’t want to restrict children playing violent videogames. The media is often crusading against games like Modern Warfare 2 as the root of all evil, so surely just as a public relations move, preventing minors seeing violence seems like the right thing to do?

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As Pyroph’s excellent interview with Prof. Doug Gentile is not only very interesting, but also rather long, I thought it a good idea to create a shorter, digest version of the interview. Basically a collection of the more interesting quotes. If you find any of this even remotely interesting, I can not recommend enough having a read of the full interview.

The topics Dr. Gentile covers, in my opinion, are among the most important issues modern gaming faces, and yet, probably the most overlooked by gamers themselves. What with them being energy drink-riddled husks of minuscule attention spans. BEES! Good, thought I had lost you there.

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[Dr. Douglas Gentile is a developmental psychologist, and is an assistant professor of Psychology at Iowa State University and the Director of Research for the National Institute on Media and the Family. His experience includes over 20 years conducting research with children and adults. He has published research on violent video games, on prosocial video games, on how video games may improve laparoscopic surgical skills, and most recently on video game "addiction." You can visit his site at www.drdouglas.org ]

Recently Doug Gentile published his most recent study, stating that 8.5% of American youth showed signs of addiction. It was picked up by a lot of major gaming sites, bringing along with it controversy among commenters.

You can read about the study here.

Dismissal of studies and research is common among gamers; fear of anything bad surrounding their hobby creates a defensive barrier denouncing all claims. This interview’s purpose is to better inform gamers about research, the “addiction” debate, and how researchers are not the evil antagonists that everyone makes them out to be.

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All those speculations about entry requirements to next year’s E3 have been put to rest. It will be for “all qualified computer and video game industry audiences”. So probably not you.

In a press release issued a couple of days ago, the ESA (who run E3) gave no mention of the public having access. Talking to GamePolitics, the ESA’s PR guy Dan Hewitt clarified things further.

There will be opportunities to view the E3 Expo and learn about what’s going on at the show, but it won’t be open to the general public.

Even with the estimated 40,000 attendees, they are still making a mistake having this event invite only. One of the largest boosts these shows get is from the energy the crowd gives it. PAX this year was simply incredible, and it was incredible because there were simply so many gamers.

As has been noted in the past, and as is clear at nearly every event I have been too; “press” simply care less about the games for the most part. Often through no fault of their own. It’s just hard to get excited about a specific game to the point of wetting yourself over every new trailer, when your job is to report on, and concentrate on, everything.

I worry that the smaller, newer, more cult/cliquey games will not get the reaction they need from crowds to flourish (or indeed get coverage). So with that in mind, I extend an open initiation for anybody reading this to go to E3 ’09 on behalf of Negative Gamer. We count as “qualified computer and video game industry audiences” right?

If you want to go (and can’t find any other ways to get in), send me an email, or leave a comment bellow, explaining why you want to go, what you will/wont do (I expect at least 1 funny photo or anecdote) and we can probably work something out.

It’s awesome to see the ESA realising there was a huge problem with shrinking something as important as E3 down to 5,000, invite-only people. It’s just a real shame they arn’t going far enough, in my opinion, to fix things.