Outgoing ESA President Douglas Lowenstein gives one of his final industry speeches after twelve years of service.
Live coverage of the major points of the speech, after the jump.
Final comment: If you take nothing away from this: sign up for the video game voters network, get involved.
Doug gets a standing O. Phil up next.
10:00 -- Doug talks about his Pet Peeves.
One of them are the publishers and developers who make controversial content and then cut-and-run when it comes time to defend their decisions. Nothing annoys me more. If you want to push the envelope, dammit, get up there and be responsible. Don't pass the buck. Don't look for people to fight those fights for you.
Don't duck and cover when the shit hits the fan. Stand up and fight for what you made.
Another thing that I get frustrated about are people in this industry: the boss-level chattering class. The Greek Chorus, who always think there's a better way to do something. It's very easy to hit the keyboard and talk about what the ESA should be doing. But then, where are these people? Are they in the fight?
I'm sick and tired of people in this industry sitting on their hands and having other people fight for them. How many of the people in this room signed up for the Video Game Voters Network? (A few people). That's PATHETIC. You cannot expect this industry to grow and prosper if ... we can't win the war without an army. People in this room who have the most at stake are too lazy to join that army. If I told you we had a political action committee, would you sign up to give $500 or $1000? You ought to start asking yourselves what are you willing to do to stand up and fight? In the end, we won't have enough soldiers to succeed.
I also have a pet peeve about the game media. I have great respect for my friends in the game media but I also think there's a lot of maturity that needs to happen in the game press. It's not just the cozy relationship between the press and the industry, which I find a little uncomfortable. I think the games media needs a higher level of maturity and seriousness.
The game industry press has the ability to push this industry to greater heights of creative success. I just hope that platform is used in a way that's more empowering and more ambitious. I don't think the game press has asked enough of itself. Just in the last 6 months I can't tell you how many times I've read ridiculous rumors and sloppy reporting. I've heard people say that I'm leaving ESA because I'm unhappy with the E3 decision. This stuff is stupid. It's wrong. It's lazy reporting. I think the games industry press is much better.
You know who gives Jack Thompson more attention that anyone else in the country? The games press! The games press legitimizes JT. I get calls all the time to do interviews between myself and JT. And then they get upset because he has so much visibility. I just think it's nuts.
One thing that we talk a lot about as an industry is out aspiration to be seen coequally with movies and music industry. I'm very proud that the ESA board in the last 6 months has decided to step up in a significant way the financial contribution that they make to ESA. My successor needs an organization that's well funded. You gotta put your money where your mouth is. Play the game the way people expect you to play it.
I also hope the industry, writ large, will take the games as education movement more seriously. Very serious people in govt, politics, academia see serious potential in games. It's a huge opp for this industry -- talk about finding a way to broaden [games' image]. We have a medium that people are beginning to understand can be a powerful asset. I don't have an answer, I just have a hope. The hope is simply that over the next 5 years, companies will dedicate time and resources to stimulate this opportunity. Think about that. Think about how the perception of this industry changing when Mom and Dad see that their kids are learning science or math better, and are more energized about it because it's a video game. If you don't think that people will look at you different when you go to dinner parties, they will.
And the press ought to be looking at this.
Finally, I hope again, this is more my own dreams, when you think about movies, when you think about what people get real excited about, it's not just it was an entertaining movie... people get excited about movies with messages that matter. It seems to me there has to be a way to take some important social/political issues and create really successful games around those themes. If you can figure that out... it's just part of what can be done to legitimize and broaden people's understanding and acceptance of what we all do.
9:55 -- In the last year alone, ESA's anti piracy division has taken down over 30,000 websites offering pirated video games. It's an incredibly important mission and we have people who do it with great passion and commitment.
We have one guy who travels three weeks of every month all over the world just to train people how to identify pirated games. He's not going, believe me, to Maui. He's going to some of the least interesting places in this country and North America.
The piracy rates in Singapore and Hong Kong have come down dramatically.
9:50 -- It's not so important that we protected and fought for some of the products out there today. Because I hope that this industry has much greater things ahead of it.
Praises the ESRB. If you're in the creative world, you owe a great deal of praise to these people, unsung, unnoticed, and unknown, every night you go to bed. They believe in striking the right balance between getting parents good, reliable information and being fair to this industry. I'm very proud of how that part of the ESA family has grown. It is the shield. If we didn't have that shield, we'd be taking on bullets and would not be fighting back very successfully. For us from an advocacy standpoint, we start by talking about ratings, the importance of giving parents tools.
Next time you think about criticizing the ESRB, remember: that part of what we do is essential to your ability to continue to create the products you want to create.
9:45 -- Talking about E3. "It put this industry on the map in a way nothing else could have done. It was a huge success. I wish I could have told you when we began it that it was going to turn out the way it did. What I knew about trade shows in 1994 you could fit on the head of a pin."
"When we were trying to get something set up, we went to CES... and said we'd like to partner with you guys on this. CES came back and said we'll throw a party for you at CES, put signs up that says it's an IDSA party, and we'll give you $100,000 of the profits that we get from your partners showing at CES. And we said no, let's go it on our own."
9:47 -- Defense of the first amendment. "We've won federal court cases in 9 fed. court circuits upholding the protected status of video games. We are doing press conferences with Sen Clinton and Sen Lieberman who are not attacking the VG industry but talking about how responsible it is, praising the ESRB rating system and parental controls in hardware.
Even when Hot Coffee was raging on Capitol Hill, the people most critical of the mod took great pains to say, we're critical of the company but the ESRB did a good job at handling this.
This first amendment stuff is where the rubber hits the road. It matters. There is nothing we've done in this industry that's more important than that. There has been nothing more transcendentally important that the ESA has done in its 12 years of existence than to put its money and people out there to defend your artistic freedom.
9:30 -- Opening line: "It's very special to be here for a lot of reasons. It's my 26th wedding anniversary today, and a year ago I spent it with my wife and two of my dearest friends in the Serengeti game park in Tanzania. It's a little different at DICE, but in the games industry there's the same kind of survival of the fittest mentality."
Opening anecdote (slight paraphrse): Many of you probably don't know about the hearing in the United States Senate that gave rise to a game industry trade association. I worked on the hill for many years, and your dream is to create a hearing where there are fireworks. What happened at this particular hearing is Howard Lincoln, rep. Nintendo, and Bill White rep. Sega were testifying about violent video games like Mortal Kombat. Howard was talkng about how Nintendo was the socially responsible company, and in their version of MK there was no blood. They were walking the high road.
And as he's going through his remarks about how responsible Nintendo is, Bill White holds up for everyone to see, a big red gun peripheral. And he says, "This is what you can use on a Nintendo system! You can use real guns!" And you have this explosion of multimedia effects. The senators are delighted, but the industry was mortified. This was not the way the industry wanted to represent itself.
It was an inauspicious start, but we came together to try to create something that would represent this industry in a meaningful way.
