ESA CELEBRATES 20th ANNIVERSARY
This year, ESA marks 20 years of advocacy on behalf of the U.S. video game industry. Since its establishment, ESA has led the rapidly evolving video game industry, working to educate policymakers, parents, and the public about the industry, its technologies, and video games’ meaningful impact on our society.
Among the association’s key accomplishments are a host of partnerships with business leaders, academics, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies to further their use of games and game technologies to improve how we live, learn, and work. This includes ESA’s collaboration with Electronic Arts, Institute of Play, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to co-found the Games, Learning and Assessment Lab, an unprecedented research and development effort working to transform learning and assessment practices through digital games. Other notable partnerships include sponsoring the National STEM Video Game Challenge, part of the White House-led Educate to Innovate
campaign, and working with the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition to launch the Active Play Presidential Active Lifestyle Award Challenge.
ESA also engaged policymakers on a range of important issues impacting the video game industry, including intellectual property and copyright laws, content protection, tax, and trade. The association spearheaded the industry’s defense before the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2011 case Brown v. EMA/ESA, which resulted in a historic ruling cementing video games as expressive works of art entitled to the same First Amendment protections as movies, books, and music. ESA also built a robust global content protection program, working to reduce the global entertainment software theft that costs the entertainment industry millions of dollars every year.
Over the past 20 years, ESA’s membership base has increased fivefold; it now features 35 members and spans companies that publish games for every video game platform available. ESA has also operated the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the world's premier trade show for computer and video games and related products, since 1995, and the show continues to evolve with the video game industry. This year’s show hosted more than 48,000 industry professionals, featured approximately 200 exhibitors, and was the most globally engaging E3 in history, generating more than 50 billion media impressions worldwide.
ESA has also continually demonstrated the industry’s commitment to empowering consumers to make informed entertainment choices through the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), which also celebrates its 20th anniversary this fall. Since rating its first games, which included Activision’s Pitfall and Nintendo’s Donkey Kong Country, the ESRB has become a world-class content rating system for video games and apps that is among the most comprehensive and trusted rating systems in use today.
Additionally, ESA formalized and expanded the video game industry’s philanthropic efforts by establishing the ESA Foundation (ESAF). ESAF provides scholarships to the next generation of industry innovators and supports teachers and organizations that employ video games and technology to create educational opportunities for America’s youth. The association also sponsored development of the Video Game Voters Network, a grassroots organizations with a growing membership of more than 500,000 voting-age game enthusiasts.
As ESA looks ahead, the association is energized to build on the many successes – long-term industry growth, broadening consumer base, continued innovation, and expanding social benefits of games – that demonstrate video games’ positive impact on society. |