While the right puzzle pieces for national child protection laws are probably a long way in the future, statewide laws attempting to paint games as outside the first amendment are quickly becoming a thing of the past. It's not necessarily that government officials have had enlightening tastes of Rock Band or Fallout 3. It's that their cracks at video game legislation have their administrations and states hemorrhaging funds.

The ESA has been knocking down state laws, specifically in Illinois, Michigan, and Louisiana, put in place for regulating the sale of video games to minors. The ESA has yet to lose a case, and in a press release they reported that to date these states have had to pay out to them over 2 million USD in attorney's fees.

"Legislators are beginning to realize that they are beating their heads against the wall," says Dennis McCauley, Editor of the ECA's GamePolitics.com blog. 

But, he continues, legislating away video games will always be an appealing proposition for one lawmaker or another. We haven't seen the last of these hard-tipped bills, but nor is every legislative attempt pure pandering.

Quite a few lawmakers and states are genuinely concerned but, says McCauley, they're starting to understand that reiterations of the laws first written for Louisiana and Utah by Jack Thompson don't work. As they're written, they aren't constitutional.

What, exactly, constitutes the unconstitutionality? The tanked Louisiana bill had tried to paint certain games as "patently offensive," or against "contemporary community standards." Specifically, it attempted to make illegal the sale, rent or lease of games to minors should they meet three major criteria:

• The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the video or computer game, taken as a whole, appeals to the minor's morbid interest in violence.
• The game depicts violence in a manner patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable for minors.
• The game, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

Recently, the 9^th US Circuit Court reviewed California's violent games bill, penned by Leland Yee (D). Though it was held back by an injunction in 2005 and struck down in 2007, neither side seems ready to back down. It looks very possible, if not probable, that this particular bill will go all the way to the top.

Says Dennis McCauley, "In a way I'd kind of like to see that California case get to the Supreme Court -- then we'd have a decision once and for all."

In other parts of the world, games regulation has other influences.

"Where in the United States we've tended to take the free market, freedom of contract approach," notes Joshua Fairfield, "other countries are saying 'Mmm, not so much. There are public concerns here and we're going to do some public regulation.'"

In South Korea one branch of the government, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MICT), operates a governmental agency that both regulates and promotes the gaming sector: the Korea Game Industry Agency (KOGIA).

Though the Ministry of Health and Policy still jumps in to take a regulatory stance in some cases, the lines between policy agendas are subtle.

For instance, while KOGIA promotes Korean gaming industry at home and abroad, it also maintains a Center for Internet Addiction (Internet Addiction is a buzzword often used synonymously with gaming addiction).

As one of the world's hubs for online games, the Korean government is perhaps the most proactive in trying at the subtleties of regulating them.

The early history of gaming regulation in Korea centered on the illegal, underground arcades. Promotion of the gaming industry, which revolved around Japanese arcade games, wasn't exactly a national priority.

"It is fairly interesting," notes Jun-Sok Huhh, a Lecturer and Grad Student at Seoul National University, "in that government denied or disregarded the gaming sector. Before around 1997, no Japanese culture could be imported legally."