All that aside, what really interests me are the social, and cultural implications of these changes. There is the issue of software ratings, for instance. Will software, games in particular, become subject to the same official rating practices as films are today? Will it get worse if the present climate in the US prevails, and does that mean hard core games will bear the same stigma as hard core pornography? If you think that is far fetched you have to consider that the tide of social and cultural opinion is changing, at least in American, and that has broader implications for all markets. The entertainment software industry will have to come up against some rating scheme at some point because, it is too successful, and its key demographics is the younger audience that politicians so love to coddle. Whether a Democrat or Republican ends up winning the next presidential election, undoubtedly, he or she will stand on a platform that includes moral issues, and the impact of the entertainment industry on morality. Remember the children, will be the rallying cry. Hollywood and television have handled these attackes since the twenties. The game industry, despite the best efforts of Doug Lowenstein, and the IDSA, may find itself lacking the will, or lobbying power to escape any punitive action by a motivated political system.

Console vendors are better positioned than PC game companies, for example, to adapt to this kind of social change. After all, Super Mario isn't going to find too many detractors in Washington DC. If nothing else, an anti-game political atmosphere plays into the hands of the console vendors who can control content and sales channels much more effectively than the PC industry. Console vendors can quite simply abide by the rules the politicians lay out, whatever they may be, and they will find a way to maintain their core businesses. The PC industry has no such power or control over its channels, not as an industry, although individual companies, such as Microsoft and Electronic Arts, may fare better. However, the PC industry may also be less inclined to put up much of a fight as it struggles to define its mass market in light of pricing pressures, margin drops, and a general slowdown in overall industry growth, not too mention, competitive pressures from alternative consumer computing platforms.

It's an interesting situation. One that will play itself out over the course of the next eighteen months, and one that may end being manipulated by politicians, console makers, game publishers, and PC companies alike. Everyone is going to be thinking about the darling children. In the middle of all this, it doesn't seem anyone really gives a damn about those children as much as they do about whether they can keep their names in the press. Children are the new proletariat in a world full of Baby Boomers. Yup, it's more of a battle between an older generation unfamiliar and frightened by the vernacular of a digital generation, and a younger generation that has yet to find a cause, or agenda, to define itself.