In this Issue: Tough times for games
Switzerland
Tough times for games in Switzerland …
IeSF meets Norwegian delegation Tt eSports 2010 Amateur League MSSA’s support for school eSports activity in Austria e -Sports referee of KeSPA What’s new? People of this month
By Dario Salice Although games became more and more popular in Switzerland, over the past years, there still are a lot of prejudices towards them. Specially Action games like CounterStrike, Quake etc. suffer from a lack of understanding. Surprisingly these prejudices aren’t that strong within the population itself, but rather on the political level. The political class in Switzerland consists of a large majority who don’t know much about new medias and especially about games. Last year, a member of the National Council filed a political motion to “prohibit killer games” by law on a national level. The group she’s been representing argued with the “fact” that videogames with violent content have a proven influence on young people as well on grown-ups. Such a motion can be filed by any member of the parliament (the parliament is elected by the public) and has to be voted on. In September 2009, the large chamber of the Swiss parliament, accepted the motion. The media, industry and the whole gaming community was really surprised by that decision. No one took this motion really serious. As a second step, the smaller part of the Parliament had to decide on this law, for it to pass to the Federal Assembly. Still being under shock from the first step, the motion made in September 2009, no one wanted to have anything undone to prevent it for proceed to the Federal Assembly. The Swiss e-sports Federation (SESF) initiated an alliance together with political parties (young socialists and the Swiss pirate party) and many organizations from the gaming- and e-sports-community to run a petition to send a message, that this motion is not the right way to go. With this petition, the alliance achieved a good echo from the medias as well as from some politicians. In addition to the alliance, other government funded organizations as well as all young-parties (from left to right) brought a clear message against this motion and for as constructive association with video games. On the 18th of March 2010 the smaller chamber of the Parliament decided to pass this motion to the Federal Assembly. In spite of all the messages from the public, the medias and political young parties, they accepted to motion to work on a law, which should prohibit “games with violent content”. Due to the Swiss system, motions accepted by the two chambers of the parliament aren’t valid instantly. The Federal Assembly first has to elaborate a proposal, which then has to pass both chambers of the parliament until it gets approved as a national law. After a law is passed from the parliament, there still is the chance to file a referendum against it, which has to be signed by 50’000 Swiss people within 100 days. If this is achieved and counted as valid, the law will be made available for a public vote, where all Swiss voters can decide on it. Since the people are considered as the highest authority in Switzerland, this would be a binding decision. Due to the following steps, which still have to get passed until such a law would be approved in Switzerland, there are some good chances, that the alliance and other organization will be declined or reduced to an acceptable level. But it also means, that a lot of work, energy and resources will be needed to get to this goal. *After reviewing this situation together with IeSF members, Oh Won Suk, secretary-general of IeSF, decided to take an action on this issue by sending official letter or arranging a meeting with the Swiss government. 1