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GameStop's View of the Gaming World
Gamasutra has up a massive interview with some of the executives at Gamestop, the largest games-specific retailer here in the US. Speaking with folks like senior merchandising VP Bob McKenzie and marketing VP Tom DeNapoli, the site explores the retailer's unique position within the gaming world, their views on the three consoles, and even the possibility that they might someday stock AO titles. "Gamasutra: There was a point where Manhunt 2 was considered an AO game. Is an AO game something that you would consider selling if it came out? Is it something that you would consider carrying in your stores? Bob McKenzie: I think that it is an opportunity that we would have to look at on a case-by-case. In this situation, I'm glad that they went back, reworked it, and it will be M rated. I can't say that we would have supported it at AO, and I can't say that we won't. In the past, when there was an AO game such as Leisure Suit Larry from a couple of years ago, GameStop wouldn't support that game in our retail stores. However, that was before the merger with Electronics Boutique, and EB did take the title into their retail stores. So, again, it is a situation that we have to take on a case-by-case. But I have to say that we prefer that the AO games are not anything that we are out there in the market looking for."
Nobody buys new games from GameStop, anyway.
VOTE!
> The refusal of all the major retailers to sell AO games amounts to nothing more than censorship.
Do you understand what censorship is? Here are three examples:
Only one of those is illegal. Do you know which one it is?
Frankly, I'm not sure what you'd propose as an alternative. Do you want the government to require that retailers who sell any video games must sell all video games out there, regardless of their rating, sexual content, violence level, or even based on whether it's any fun or not? And you think that's an improvement over the free market where a company decides on its own which products to sell? While you're at it, maybe you should get the government to force all video retailers to carry all NC-17 videos. And maybe they should also require all booksellers to sell all X-rated books and magazines that exist.
> We should get rid of the "sex is bad" crowd
Right! We need to censor those guys! Er... hang on...
It's not the "sex is bad" crowd that's causing this. It's driven primarily by the Jack Thompson "video games make people murderers" crowd. Hot Coffee was just the final straw on top of all the violence complaints about GTA.
And yeah, video games aren't different than movies. Movies went through this junk too. Unfortunately, this stuff doesn't get resolved until the people who grew up with the thing in question are old enough to have a significant influence in politics.
The refusal of all the major retailers to sell AO games amounts to nothing more than censorship.
Sigh. Private business should be and are allowed to make their own rules. How is that censorship? Whether the decision is moral, financial (smaller market for those AO games you see) or ass-watching (don't want an employee to accidentally sell one to a kid, or get accused of it, etc), it doesn't matter. My store, my rules. That's like saying you stop by a gas station convenience store, and get pissed off because they don't have (say) bread. Sure 99% of gas stations stock bread, but for some reason this one chose not to. More power to them. Are they now censoring the carbohydrate industry? Your argument is absurd.
If stores are refusing to sell games that aren't ESRB-rated, then the ESRB has a monopoly and should be taken care of by the antitrust laws.
Game studios can sell direct. 18 and a credit card. More power to them.
jeez I wish I could mod you up. I just have to add that a reviewing body (like the ESRB) can not have a monopoly since it isn't a fricking company. GP is a reactionary moron.
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
Yes, only one of the types of censorship you wrote about is illegal. However, just because it's not illegal doesn't mean it's right.
> Frankly, I'm not sure what you'd propose as an alternative. Do you want the government to require that retailers who sell any video games must sell all video games out there, regardless of their rating, sexual content, violence level, or even based on whether it's any fun or not? And you think that's an improvement over the free market where a company decides on its own which products to sell? While you're at it, maybe you should get the government to force all video retailers to carry all NC-17 videos. And maybe they should also require all booksellers to sell all X-rated books and magazines that exist.
You're completely missing the point. It's not about the government forcing retailers to carry products; it's about the retailers carrying all products to let the consumer make the decision. Yes, you can go on about how Gamestop is a private company and they can take their ball and go home if they want to: no one's disputing this. We just want to see companies like Gamestop actively make the decision to let the customer choose what they want to buy, rather than Gamestop. If a game is rated AO, only those older than 17 can buy it: why the hell wouldn't you stock it? What's to be afraid of? That people might buy it?
> We should get rid of the "sex is bad" crowd
Right! We need to censor those guys! Er... hang on...
I realize that this comment was meant to be funny, but your word usage is incorrect. He's not talking about censoring the "sex is bad" crowd: if they don't want to buy Leisure Suit Larry, they don't have to buy it. They can picket the company's headquarters all they want. But their squeamishness over sexuality shouldn't prevent me from being able to walk in and buy it should I want to play a shitty game with titties... That doesn't involve volleyball or wrestling, of course.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
Censorship is removing content from something in order to deny people access to it. Not stocking a book isn't censorship, removing parts of the book is censorship.
Please learn what the word means, because claiming everything is censorship when it isn't is doing us more harm than good.
I like muppets.
You are using RIAA logic there. Book shops have no agreement to stock everything, if they do not feel the book suits their store they can refuse to stock it, the same way a library won't stock porn. It's not censoring anything, it's just not stocking it.
I like muppets.
..ass-watching (don't want an employee to accidentally sell one to a parent who gives it to their 4 year old kid for their birthday, or get accused of it, etc) Fixed that for you.End of line..
They bought up all the FuncoLands and stopped selling practically all previous generation used games... which is all it was good for. THeir used games go for a mere pittance under what the new retail would cost... making it practically pointless.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
AO games don't sell well. That's a pretty solid fact. Retailers don't like to carry games that don't sell well, and especially don't like to carry games that don't sell well AND give them bad PR, which AO games do (even M rated is started to acquire bad publicity now, back when I was a kid an AO game was treated much as M rated is now, it's something that you sell knowing that people will complain that you do sell it).
Now the interesting point here is that AO games sell bad because few retailers will carry them. That sets up a catch-22/loop, lack of retailers -> lack of sales -> lack of retailers ad infinitum.
No stores in the US "actively make the decision to let the customer choose what they want to buy" (with the extremely minor possible exception of collectible game stores that let you order stuff through them, though that doesn't count). Stores carry what they want to carry, usually based on how well they think the item will sell. If you want proof of this just pick an item, a book for instance, one of those complete flops that no one wants to buy. What do you think the odds are that your local bookstore will carry it? Not particularly good, unless you're very lucky. How about organic foods? For a long time grocery stores didn't carry those because they didn't sell well except among a certain crowd who didn't even shop at grocery stores. Was that an issue of censorship? No, it's good market decisions.
Gamestop has a limited space in which to carry games. If you've ever been to one of their stores they can have something like 300 games on display at any time (at their bigger ones, including the tiny game cassettes at the register). They don't carry AO games for the simple reason that those games would take up space and would not sell well, according to studies and something like 10 years of market research. If you believe they would sell well then you're in the vast minority and fighting an uphill battle.
So to recap, Gamestop not carrying AO games is 80% a marketing decision, and 20% a PR decision. Get all upset with the PR roll not having AO games gives them, but don't imagine that they're 'caving' in. They're simply making the intelligent decision to not fight for a game genre that has been shown to not sell well, you're asking them to carry a bunch of games that would sit on their shelves, selling once in a blue moon, and get thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of people angry at them. That is not a smart decision at all.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
"Private business should be and are allowed to make their own rules."
Individually, yes, but what happens when they collude? There's a difference between individual retailers refusing to carry a product and all retailers refusing to carry a product.
The example used is Leisure Suit Larry. It made Sierra money, therefore there was quite the market for it. But in today's market, despite potential customer demand for such a game, the retailers as a whole would refuse to sell it, denying Sierra access to customers and vice versa.
"Censorship" likely isn't the right word, but it's certainly "anti-competitive practices."
"That's like saying you stop by a gas station convenience store, and get pissed off because they don't have (say) bread."
No, it's like every gas station refusing to sell a particular brand of bed. Because they all got together and decided they didn't like the bread you were selling and that it was best for "the children" that you not be able to sell it.
Sure the local bookstore won't carry a flop but usually they are willing to order one for me from the publisher. All I need to do is ask. It might take awhile but I'll still be able to get a copy.
I can't do this with video games from a place like Gamestop. If Gamestop won't stock it they aren't willing to contact the publisher and order a single copy. This leaves someone with the only option of trying to buy from the publisher directly. In some cases you might be able to buy something from their website, but not always.
What irritates me most about Gamestop is that their selection can be limited at times, and games get dumped real fast from online and stores. Sometimes this works out for the consumer, because if you're lucky you can pick good stuff out of the clearance bins. Contrast this with a bookstore where even unpopular books may be available, but they'll only stock a few at a time.
This makes Gamestops more like Airport bookstores that only stock the latest NYT best sellers than a real bookstore.
If private businesses were allowed to make their own rules: http://www.solarnavigator.net/geography/geography_images/New_york_old_timer_structural_steel_worker_empire_state_building.jpg Private Businesses that were forced by the government to adopt safety standards: http://www.parallaxfilm.com/sky_hkworkers.jpg Which would you rather be?
Precisely... Amazingly, you're the only one who has it right. Further, censorship is denying access to something to which there is no alternative to get it. (i.e. the Government pressuring the censoring comics in the 1950's.)
A retailer is free to stock or not to stock games that the retailer feels is not their priority to stock. It's their store. If you want to stock it, start your own store...
It's a shame you haven't been modded insightful yet, because of all the censorship related chatter... you're the only one who gets it.
Every time the word censorship is misused, it loses its potency and effectiveness to shine the light on the REAL censorship in the world.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
You are misunderstanding the issue of censorship.
It's not that some business, government entity, or individual is withholding certain information, it's that a controlling entity is withholding said information. Censorship matters directly in proportion with how much of the population receives their information from said group. Considering that most major retailers refuse to carry AO titles, and that most consumers purchase their games from major retails, there is a direct correlation between their policy and what types of games are made. Video game history has another great example of this, namely with Nintendo and Mortal Kombat. Nintendo's strict censorship policy led to the Genesis version of the game to heavily outsell the SNES port. By the time MKII came about, Nintendo had changed it's tune, and the age of mature gaming was born. The key here was competition; if not for Sega, Nintendo might never have changed its' ways. With no major retail player deviating from this policy, this breakthrough isn't possible right now for AO games. You can also watch "This Film Has Not Yet Been Rated" through Google Video to gain more insight into how this works with film.
That is indeed collusion, however, that analogy may not apply. If there was a food scare and each retailer decided not to stock bread due to low demand and potential exposure to lawsuit it's not collusion. Retailers are hesitant to stock AO titles because the market is much smaller, fear of community backlash and bad PR, and risk of lawsuits.
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The thing that bugs me about the handling of Manhunt 2 is really the fact that they decided to submit it for a rating in the first place. They could have made the game contain whatever they wanted and left it unrated, if it worked anything like movies some stores would then actually carry it because it had bypassed the AO stigma to some extent. Otherwise they could just sell it online. Does Steam have a policy about AO or unrated games? It makes me suspect that as far as Rockstar/Take Two are concerned, all of this is just a very effective advertising campaign.
If you look at movies, there is a lot of variety when it comes to subject matter. You have your movies that go from the movies for the kids(G rated), to movies with some nudity, to violence of different levels of gore, and then to the seriously adult oriented movies with a LOT of sex. Note that there are very few movies rated X for violence when it comes to movies.
In almost all movies, there is an ARTISTIC element to the material though. With the exception of your typical porn film, nudity and even violence are done in many movies with an artistic approach to telling a story.
So, looking at the game market, what game titles have been out there that have any level of nudity that can be considered an artistic addition to the story, rather than as a very poor way to try to sell more copies to the young male audience? Is it about just trying to put sex in to draw those ONLY looking for more porn? This is why the game market doesn't get the same treatment as movies when it comes to material, a lack of art when it comes to nudity in games. This is not the same as saying the anime/hentai inspired games don't require artistic talent, but the overall story-telling in games tends to not include the addition of nudity in a way to enhance the telling of a well rounded story.
Games tend to focus on violence, but you never see heroes with a semi-realistic love life in games. Honestly, if a game is rated M due to violent content, then adding a bit of nudity that isn't a part of some sex game within the main game should be considered natural. The fact that so few games are out there with this sort of thing just shows why adult-only is never seen in retail outlets.
If people would get the idea that sex and violence were done in games with the same attention to story and artistic expression, they might accept AO titles. The problem is that there really hasn't been a lot of attention to artistic nudity in games, and as a result, AO titles get treated like rated X movies which tend to have their own room in video stores. If this situation ever gets addressed, attitudes may change.
"There's a difference between all retailers individually making the decision not to carry a product, and all retailers working together to decide to not carry a product."
Pure coincidence? Going back to the example of Leisure Suit Larry, what do you think would happen if only particular retailers carried the game? Those retailers could advertise "You can only get it here!" and the retailers that refused to carry the game would lose business.
A retailer's decision to not carry something that would otherwise be in demand must necessarily depend on what his competitors are doing. If nobody else is carrying Game X, it makes it far more comfortable for the retailer to decline to carry it personally (as there's no risk of a competitor luring sales away). And, of course, once you reach a "critical mass" of sorts, the behavior also makes it that much more uncomfortable for a retailer to break ranks and offer Game X in spite of industry norms.
I would rather be with the business that were allowed to make their own rules. That is a little thing called "freedom". Any time the government forces regulations on people it nicks away at their freedom. Regarding safety, if a person does not feel safe working at a business, they can always quit. There are plenty of people willing to risk their lives for money and if there are not the business will fail and more safety regulated (internally) businesses will rise.
An AO game could find its way onto shelves, but it would have to be a high quality critically acclaimed piece of art. Most likely such a game would cause a review of the ratings system in the first place (ala Midnight Cowboy for the movie business)
Not necessarily, the retailer's decision is based on the market envrionment. There are many high selling games that aren't brought over from Japan and same applies to high selling US games not sold overseas.
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What exactly is freedom? Where do we get it from? How is it deprived? What defines government versus business? There are plenty of limits on freedoms that aren't written into law, some with harsher consequences than laws. Is it truly a freedom if all places honor the same "rule"? If one is under 17 and enters a movie theater in the US, is it really freedom to see a movie if all movie theaters prevent that 17 year old from seeing a certain movie? There is no law written by the government that prevents that 17 year old from seeing the movie. I'm interested to see what definitions you provide? Because the reality is that there are rules in place that are not laws that put far stricter restraints on freedoms than any law can ever do in the United States. Why? Because private enterprises are not bound by the constitution.
Freedom is an ideal, like love. It cannot be explain, only felt. To try to explain it would not do it justice. As to where we get it, just look in a text book. We have fought for it, for ourselves and for all, at least we used to. As to the movie theaters, it is a voluntary action by the National Association of Theater Owners to prevent 17 year olds from seeing a certain movie. This is the freedom of the business to select who it allows to purchase what. These rules were voluntarily added. I do not see how these rules violate the constitution.
The rules do not violate the constitution in the sense that the constitution defines any sort of rules over private enterprise within the United States. For this, I am well understanding. However, where we run into a problem is the evolution of power of the private enterprise since the Industrial Revolution, well over a century after the Constitution was written.
Essentially, what I am saying is that The Constitution as it is written does not apply to modern times. "The System", that is the bureaucracy that maintains and runs the United States, which goes beyond just government, has grown so large and so complex that government truly plays a fairly limited role in the day to day operations of the United States. That is, the government has essentially become more obselete than it used to be.
The reality of the situation for us is very dire indeed.
Government cannot prevent freedom of speech.
Government cannot prevent public displays.
Government cannot search you without reason.
You have a right to an attorney (a representative of law) and to a trial to determine guilt.
These are all basic things that we have as a result of the Constitution. All of these rights granted to us through the government are not granted to us through private enterprise.
If you enter a business to protest their dealings you may be arrested.
If a business has the suspicion that you are a thief they may hold you without cause and make accusations and decide whether or not you may return to be a patron.
You do not have a right to a trial nor to an attorney by a private enterprise with regards to their laws.
Essentially what has happened is that "private enterprises" have grown so large, so vast, and so expansive, so all powerful (See the RIAA, the MPAA, and other cartels) that essentially they have become above the law and in more control. When people see the RIAA and MPAA on slashdot, they see the groups as one giant entity. They do not recognize the groups independently as BMG, Elektra, UMG, and so forth.
What is happening is that we are seeing a limited number of companies become more powerful than the government.
### It's not the "sex is bad" crowd that's causing this.
AO was for years a 'sex' rating, games with violence didn't get it, games with nudity and sex got it. Manhunt2 is I think the first violent game that got it. This really has nothing to do with Jack Thompson and friends, since violent games continue to sell and allowed to be made, its only the AO ones that aren't even allowed to make it onto the consoles, since Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo won't allow it.
The basic problem here is that retailers base their decision on what to carry and what not on the ESRB rating, which however has *nothing* to do with how good or bad a game sells. Just for the record, GTA:SA is among the top ten best selling games in video game history and quite a few of those copies have a AO rating, due to the AO rating being given out a while after the game was already on the market. So "AO ratings don't sell" is quite simply bullshit, because the rating has nothing to do with how popular a game gets. You think that the Fahrenheit(AO) would have sold less then its censored US-release twin Indigo Prophecy(M)? I kind of doubt that it would have made much of a difference. But since AO won't even be on the shelves, the developers have to censor it to get M, not because AO "doesn't sell well", but because AO isn't sold at all.
The crux is of course that its a feedback loop, since not stocking AO causes all potential AO games to be censored to get a M, which in turn only leaves a few crappy sex games with an AO rating, which then of course don't sell well.
I have no idea how government regulation should help with this, but on the other side I strongly disagree with just saying "its private business, they can do what they want, everything is fine", because something is hugely screwed up here. One thing that might help is simply having a mandatory and government controlled game rating system, since unlike with a a private business controlled one, one could start a lawsuit against it to fix the issue.
. . . and there's usually a big drop in box office receipts between a PG-13 movie and an R movie. Why? Audience. If you have to ID people to get them in the door, then you're gonna have fewer people coming through the door. Cutting out anyone 18 is a huge part of the market to slice off. The same is true for games.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
"Power usually makes its own rules." -- Space Commander Travis
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?