(Repeats for wider subscribers)
By Malathi Nayak
SAN FRANCISCO, May 7 (Reuters) – In the midst of the bitter
national debate on gun violence, gun manufacturers and videogame
makers are delicately navigating one of the more peculiar
relationships in American business.
Violent “first-person shooter” games such as “Call of Duty”
are the bread and butter of leading video game publishers, and
authenticity all but requires that they feature brand-name
weapons.
Electronic Arts licensed weapons from companies like
McMillan Group International as part of a marketing
collaboration for “Medal of Honor: Warfighter.” Activision
Blizzard gives “special thanks” to Colt, Barrett and
Remington in the credits for its “Call of Duty” titles.
Rifles by Bushmaster, which made the gun used in the
Newtown, Connecticut school shooting last December, have
appeared in the hugely popular “Call of Duty.”
Yet, in the wake of the Newtown shooting, the biggest
advocate for gun ownership, the National Rifle Association, took
aim at videogames to explain gun violence. One week after 20
schoolchildren and six adults were killed in the shooting, NRA
chief executive Wayne LaPierre called the videogame industry “a
callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and
sows, violence against its own people.”
Now at least one game maker, the second largest by revenue
in the United States, is publicly distancing itself from the gun
industry, even as it finds ways to keep the branded guns in the
games. Electronic Arts says it is severing its licensing
ties to gun manufacturers – and simultaneously asserting that it
has the right, and the intention, to continue to feature branded
guns without a license.
For the gunmakers, having their products in games is “free
marketing, just like having Coca-Cola” in a movie, said Roxanne
Christ, a partner at Latham & Watkins LLP in Los Angeles, who
works with video game companies on licensing, but has not
personally done a gun deal.
Yet it is also a virtual double-edged sword. “It gives
publicity to the particular brand of gun being used in the video
game,” said Brad J. Bushman, a professor at Ohio State
University who has studied video game violence. “On the other
hand, it’s linking that gun with violent and aggressive
behavior.”
Gun makers, including the Freedom Group that owns
brands like Remington and Bushmaster, and the NRA, did not
respond to repeated requests for comment from Reuters.
‘ENHANCED AUTHENTICITY’
First-person shooter games let players blast their way
through battlefields while looking down the barrel of a virtual
gun, taking aim with the flick of a controller.
Some of those guns – like the Colt M1911 pistol in “Call of
Duty” – turn sideways to face the screen during reloading,
revealing the brand name. Games also offer lists of branded
weapons to choose from.
Licensed images of weapons in “Medal of Honor: Warfighter” –
a game that simulates military missions like fighting pirates in
Somalia – offer what EA spokesman Jeff Brown calls “enhanced
authenticity.”
Back in the late 90’s, video game makers initially
approached gun companies for licenses to inoculate themselves
from potential lawsuits, video game industry lawyers say. Over
the years, legal clearances were granted for little or no money
by gunmakers, these lawyers said.
Yet overt signs of cooperation between the video game and
gun industries had begun to draw criticism even before the
December school shooting in Connecticut.
In August, game fans and some video game news outlets
vehemently objected to EA putting links to weapons companies
like the McMillan Group and gun magazine maker Magpul, where
gamers could check out real versions of weapons featured in the
game, on its “Medal of Honor: Warfighter” game website.
“What kind of message is a video game publisher like EA
sending when it encourages its players to buy weapons?” asked
Laura Parker, the associate editor of gaming site GameSpot
Australia in a post in August.
EA immediately removed the links and dropped the marketing
tie-up, which it said was part of a charity project to raise
money for military veterans. The company said it received no
money from its gun company partners.
“We won’t do that again,” said Brown. “The action games we
will release this year will not include licensed images of
weapons.”
EA said politics and NRA comments critical of game makers
had nothing to do with its decision. “The response from our
audience was pretty clear: they feel the comments from the NRA
were a simple attempt to change the subject,” Brown said.
EA also says video game makers can have branded guns in
their games without getting licenses, meaning the industry could
drop the gun companies and keep their guns.
Activision, the industry leader, declined to comment on
whether it licenses gun designs from gun manufacturers or if it
would stop doing so. Branded guns have consistently been
featured in its blockbuster shooter games like the decade-old
“Call of Duty.”
“We’re telling a story and we have a point of view,” EA’s
President of Labels Frank Gibeau, who leads product development
of EA’s biggest franchises, said in an interview. “A book
doesn’t pay for saying the word ‘Colt,’ for example.”
Put another way, EA is asserting a constitutional free
speech right to use trademarks without permission in its
ever-more-realistic games.
Legal experts say there isn’t a single case so far where gun
companies have sued video game companies for using branded guns
without a license.
But EA’s legal theory is now being tested in court. Aircraft
maker Bell Helicopter, a unit of Textron Inc, has argued
that Electronic Arts’ depiction of its helicopters in
“Battlefield” was beyond fair use and amounted to a trademark
infringement. EA preemptively went to court, suing Bell
Helicopter to settle the issue.
The U.S. District Court, Northern District of California,
has set a jury trial for the case in June.
(Reporting By Malathi Nayak, Editing by Peter Henderson,
Jonathan Weber, Mary Milliken and Tim Dobbyn)
