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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.
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.
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.
..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..
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.
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.
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.
Ying Yan! X-Change Alternative, which, ironically, is a porn game. The sex scenes and sexual elements in it are absolutely vital to the plot.
Of course a case may be made that it doesn't really count, being a choose-your-own-adventure rather than what's usually considered a game, but that's a debate for another time.
Star Control 2 / Ur-Quan Masters also has a sex scene, but the cowards censored it by making the screen black out. It isn't quite vital to the plot like X-Change's scenes are, but fits it nonetheless.
Lastly, Nethack has sex scenes with succubi. They are every bit as graphical as the rest of the game. They can have a dramatic effect on the player character, and may mean the difference between winning or losing the game.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.