Go for throttle up?

So, I’m back to working my normal hours at the station now that our new Creative Services Director has arrived, and somehow it’s like I’m coming down from an adrenaline high. I suppose that might be apt after having to fight my way through November sweeps for myself, trying to keep everyone happy and get everything out the door early enough for things like cable and radio advertising for the station’s big stories this month. But somehow, I’m feeling a little…restless. I have two opportunities sitting in front of me right now, and neither one is necessarily something I need to do instead of the other, and it seems like both of these things are pointing the way forward. (And of course, neither one is firmed up enough that I can say anything about them.)
I think the time has come to achieve escape velocity and break out of the broadcast blues. I may very well still wind up doing the odd combination of A/V and internet work that I do now…but not for a news operation, not for a TV station at all, not in a situation where the axe could fall with the next round of ratings (though I’ll be very interested to see this November’s book), and without having to move to an overbloated population center to do it. I’ve been doing variations on the same thing now for close to 17 years, half my life, and while there would be something of “more of the same” in the path I’m strongly considering, I’m getting a little bit too old to pull 18 hour shifts anymore. I had that energy when I was 25 and had something to prove. I’m not denying that I still have something to prove, but I don’t think I should have to lose sleep to prove it anymore.
On to other news: the video game industry is on track to getting a newer and quite probably stricter ratings system. Not like this is a surprise – I think we’ve seen this coming since…well…since the original ESRB ratings first appeared. I’m not saying every game company in the world has been laughing off the ratings from the word “go,” but there are some companies that have taken advantage of the self-rating system, inevitably leading to the feeling in certain governmental bodies that the fox has been guarding the henhouse all along. Stunts like the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas “Hot Coffee” unlockable have not helped.
There’s room for adult games. There’s room for ultraviolent games. But the willingness on the part of some inside the industry to treat the ratings as a joke, and on the part of many retailers to do the same and consistently ignore the ratings and sell inappropriately “mature” games to younger gamers, have just made it that much harder for game companies to consider stepping outside the lines. (That said, there are just as many parents who have sidestepped the ratings and age limits on behalf of their own kids.)
We’re already facing a drought of innovation – it seems like a majority of what’s on the market has become a sequel to a sequel to a sequel to something that started off in the SNES or N64 days (or, if not a sequel, a knockoff), and those rare, precious gems that we get when someone tries to break the mold have little chance of cutting through the clutter or even finding distribution. (I’m still completely stunned, not to mention heartened and encouraged, that Katamari Damacy made it reasonably big.) Now we’re going to be stifled not only on the innovation front, but on the content front.
Make no mistake, video games are not a mature industry. Not yet. Perhaps the gaming industry should look to the example of the comics industry, which survived the Comics Code Authority and found that it could diversify well beyond toothless tales of superhero exploits and still find mass appeal. It just takes a little bit of responsibility – from those making the games, from those marketing them, and from those buying them.
But for now, because too many of those people didn’t exhibit that responsibility…we’re going to have to deal with a whole separate raft of people who have nothing to do with innovation or entertainment: those governing and rating them.