14 DAY TRIAL // One of the overlooked moments at this year's E3 conference has been the keynote given by Michael Gallagher, the president of the Entertainment Software Association, an organization that is supposed to look out for the interests of the videogaming industry. Amongst the topics that he touched on were piracy, the way Digital Rights Management impacted the sales of videogames and the way the Obama administration would interact with the industry.
Gallagher said that “piracy is a scourge” for the gaming industry, noting that losses related to intellectual theft mounted to a few billion dollars in one year. He underlined that “We as an industry are required to protect their content” but admitted that DRM was a controversial measure that could hurt legitimate players.
There is a need to balance copy protection with user experience but the decision is always made by the developers and publishers of the game and never by the ESA. Recently, a trend has been witnessed amongst publishers, even with Electronic Arts, that of abandoning DRM in favor of an approach based on serial numbers and downloadable content for legitimate copies.
Gallagher also talked to the gaming press before the official beginning of the E3 trade show, noting that one of the big boons for the gaming industry at the moment was the bigger acceptance of videogames as important to the economy while also being important from a cultural point of view.
He stated that “It's the first time we have a video game console in the White House - we understand that the president has a Wii. Having a degree of exposure to the technology is very, very positive.”
The videogame industry is seen as increasingly important to the government of the United States, even as the economic depression makes traditional jobs are being lost. Videogames are still doing well in sales and investment in the industry is still relevant enough so that states are interested in attracting companies to do business on their territory.