Enjoy the games market while it lasts

Today marks the unofficial beginning of the official holiday season. This should be a great day, but we’ve stuck it with a gloomy name: Black Friday. Of course black refers to ink on an old-fashion balance sheet, which indicates positive cash flow. The other color ink: red, means you are losing money. So Red Friday would hardly be cause to celebrate.

But despite the color-challenged name, Black Friday is a vitally important day for the game industry. Pundits can tell a lot about how the holiday season will go based on this first mad day. To increase revenue, lots of companies and stores offer HUGE savings to people brave enough wake up and be there when the doors open at some far-too-early time in the morning.

So if you are reading this editorial when it posts today, that means you aren’t standing in line at 3AM outside of a Target, Best Buy or Gamestop. We can’t really blame you, though I may consider swinging by one of those stores before I stop playing Fallout: New Vegas tonight. It’s not as bad if you haven’t actually gone to bed yet I think.

A quick check of the major retailers like Gamestop, Best Buy, Target and Wal-Mart all seem to be having store sales. Some even have midnight openings today, and everyone is open by 5am. And the stores that don’t just sell video games do seem to be extending their early bird specials to at least a limited amount of games this year. Best Buy in particular really seems to be pushing their used game market. There are some older titles there for $4.99 that Gamestop is selling for $29.99 used. At least that’s the prices for online shoppers, which might be the way to go if you don’t like being crushed in a mini-riot when doors open and people run inside like someone is giving away a free lobster buffet.

Personally I’ve never understood why people would seem so happy to be the first one inside a store when all that gets them is the pleasure of spending your hard earned money. It’s not like things are free early in the morning. But I guess if you can save some cash, its worth missing out on sleep.

In terms of the game industry, I’m optimistic that this holiday season will be a good one. The GiNDex is riding high for the first time this year, an indication that investors think game companies will do well. And a huge number of great titles have hit the shelves very recently like Call of Duty: Black Ops, Fable III and Fallout: New Vegas. Plus we have PlayStation Move and Microsoft Kinect offering new ways to play with our favorite consoles. The future looks pretty bright.

Or does it?

I’m always a little worried about how things will go. It’s just my nature. But in a worst case scenario, this could be the last good holiday the game industry has. That case before the Supreme Court has me really worried. If California is allowed to regulate computer games, then games will join a category of entertainment with only one other product: pornographic movies. That’s right, only porn is regulated by government laws. Books aren’t. Movies aren’t. Comics aren’t. Nothing other than porn.

The court could give California the power to regulate games, any game, where a human being is killed. We are not talking about M-rated titles, which would be bad enough. The California law does not even take the ESRB ratings into account. It’s more of a check box system. If any human is killed, the game’s sale can be restricted with fines to anyone who sells the title to a minor. Even a T-rated game or an E10+ like a Star Wars title could fall afoul of the law. Those three games I mentioned before as being great for the holiday? All would fall under that state’s wacky law despite being great games with a lot of artistic merit.

My worry about this is that the big box stores like Wal-Mart won’t bother training their employees to recognize games where someone dies. They sell enough other things that they don’t have to worry about spending money on game sale training. And they won’t tolerate racking up $1,000 fines when one of their cashiers screws up. They will simply drop selling games all together. Don’t think they won’t. They already won’t sell rated AO titles that are supposed to be for adults. It’s too much of a hassle for them. If California has its way, those stores will likely drop games all together, other than perhaps very kid-friendly titles where there is no chance of breaking the law, like Babysitting Mama or something like that. Even that might be a stretch given that the store would have to pay someone to make that distinction.

California conveniently left out any plan as to how games would be named to the banned list, who would make the call and how that group of censors would be financed. Presumably it would be up to each store to figure out if a game fit under the new law and act accordingly. And big retail stores won’t do that. Their margins are too tight. Since they don’t want the fines, they will just drop all games and move along.

And that will begin the domino effect that could crash our industry as surly as it was 1984 again. Other conservative states will jump on the bandwagon once given the okay, especially now that Republicans have made so many statewide gains. They will say it’s to protect the children, because parents can’t be trusted to do their jobs at home, and people totally uninformed about the game industry will follow along. After all, computer games will be on the same level as porn according to the highest court in the land. Eventually it will get to a breaking point and all big box stores will simply drop games from their shelves.

Faced with the loss of the American market for top games, or at least huge chunks of it, we will no longer see titles like Black Ops. The only titles that will get made will be kiddie games that nobody over the age of five wants to play. In-depth emotional thrillers like Heavy Rain will die before they really had a chance. And shooters, well, unless you are popping clay pigeons, forget about them.

Of course the court could rule the other way. Games could be given constitutional protection like other artistic forms. And all these ridiculous law attempts would go away once and for all. One can only hope.

But in the meantime, let’s eat, drink and play merry. For tomorrow our beloved industry may die. Suddenly, those 4AM lines don’t sound quite so bad.