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Sony and Reef Check celebrated the DVD release of Surf’s Up at Malibu Bluffs Park in Malibu, Calif., on Oct. 6.
Fox celebrated the DVD release of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer on Oct. 2 with a “Surfing in New York” event in New York.
CBS and Paramount hosted a release party for the first season DVD of Jericho with cast and crew members at Crimson in Hollywood.
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By Marcy Magiera -- Video Business, 4/7/2006
APRIL 7 | The Federal Trade Commission late last month gave videogame retailers and publishers a potentially potent defense against the restrictive videogame legislation that is currently pending in numerous states and at the federal level in the form of the Family Entertainment Protection Act.
The FTC found that retail enforcement of the voluntary ESRB videogame ratings has improved dramatically since 2000.
The agency discovered in its fourth “undercover shop” of electronic and videogame stores that teenagers were able to buy Mature-rated videogames just half as often—42% of the time, compared to 85% in the first such sting operation back in 2000. At the same time, almost four times as many stores provided information about videogame ratings or ratings enforcement (44% in 2005 vs. 12% in 2000), and more than three times as many clerks asked the child’s age when a minor attempted to purchase an M-rated game (50% vs. 15%).
Zealous legislators around the country, of course, will pounce on the fact that this means half of the 13- to16-year-old secret shoppers still weren’t asked about their age and that more than half of stores still don’t provide ratings information.
I would—and the industry can reasonably—argue, however, that the strides that have been made in the past five years show that the industry is serious about effectively policing itself. (Listen up Sens. Lieberman, Clinton and Bayh.)
Clearly, there is more than ample room for more improvement, and retailers should take this responsibility very seriously.
In particular, the FTC survey showed that local and regional retailers still have not gotten with ratings enforcement the way that national chains have.
At the chains, only 35% of the time were kids able to buy an M-rated game. At the local and regional shops, the kids walked out with the M-rated goods 63% of the time.
Just over half of national chain stores posted information about ratings, while only 23% of the local and regional retailers did. When it came to checking ages, 55% of national stores did it, while only 35% of the local and regional businesses did.
Trade organizations including VSDA, the Entertainment Software Assn. and the Interactive Entertainment Merchants Assn. have been hard at work opposing FEPA—which proposes a penalty of $1,000 or 100 hours of community service for the first time a store manager rents or sells a Mature- or Adults Only-rated game to a youngster—and bills in numerous states including California, Illinois and Michigan.
But every retailer who sells or rents videogames needs to help, both by engaging their local legislators and by vigilantly enforcing and promoting the industry’s voluntary ratings at the store level. Watch for VSDA to soon reach out to indie game retailers who aren’t already participating in one of the trade organizations.
Sims creator Will Wright writes eloquently on ESA’s VideogameVoters.org Web site that “videogames have the same wide range of content that can be found in other entertainment choices such as movies, books and music. As far as I am concerned, there is no reason to target videogames for harsher treatment than any other media. I hope you agree and will join me to do something about it.”
Retailers can do something about it.
The FTC will be sending its undercover shoppers out again later this year.
