Doug Lowenstein Conveniently Grows A Pair On Last Day As ESRB Boss

After a decade of failing to stand up to (or even call by name) anti-gaming lobbyists, almost-former ESRB head Doug Lowenstein chose his final moment in the spotlight - as a speaker at the D.I.C.E Summit - to dish out all the bile he's apparently been holding back.

Striking out at game publishers who "make controversial content and then cut and run," Lowenstein "all but mouthed the words Hot Coffee, Grand Theft Auto, and Take-Two Interactive," says GameSpot editor Curt Feldman. This was the point Lowenstein chose to make at the moment of his departure...apparently ignorant of the definition of the word "hypocrisy."

”Nothing annoys me more... If you want to be controversial, don’t duck and cover when the shit hits the fan.”

Okay, that's fair enough, I guess. Except that making games, generating publicity, and selling games seems like it should be the purview of a game publisher, while standing up to industry critics sounds more like a job for - and I'm just guessing here - the guy who chairs the organization that applies and enforces ratings, ad guidelines and privacy principles for the gaming industry. Also, nothing annoys me more than a guy who'll only be brave when he's about to "cut and run."

Next up for Lowensteinian defilement: the gaming press, which he admonishes "needs to take itself more seriously" and offer the same quality of coverage that the film and music industries receive. While I could probably rant back and forth for hours about the obvious dangers of "taking itself more seriously," Lowenstein has a point - the gaming press is not as privileged, moneyed, and connected as freaking Rolling Stone. So aside from crapping out a bucket of pretension, Lowenstein's advice seems to amount to "do better research," which is certainly good advice, but also easy to say when you make a chairman's salary. And a lot harder when "rumor and sloppy reporting" are often all the gaming press has to go on.

Show me the Hunter S. Thompson of vidya game writin' and I'll have considerably more respect for that position. Until then, scrappy, fringe-relegated journalism won't upset or surprise me.

And with that, I'm off to shoot up my veins with coolant and go Gonzo on some poor defenseless ESRB dude. Did you know he eats human babies every morning, and bathes in hot coffee once a fortnight? I read that somewhere...it's totally true...

D.I.C.E. 07: Lowenstein outro ignites summit [GameSpot]
Doug Lowenstein Doesn’t Hold Back During Exit Speech [GamePolitics]