The DeanBeat: The powers that be show how Washington D.C. views the game business

GamesBeat 2013 gave us a good view of what the game industry looks like from some very different but important views. Mark DeLoura, the White House adviser on games, and Mike Gallagher, the game industry’s chief lobbyist in Washington, D.C. (and the head of the Entertainment Software Association), both appeared onstage with me at our event last week. After soaking in what they said for a week, I found it interesting to parse the differences between the White House and the lobbyist — where they stood together and where they stood apart on video games.

Mike Gallagher, president of the Entertainment Software Association.
Mike Gallagher, the president of the Entertainment Software Association.

I was intrigued about the unspoken politics that governed what they could and couldn’t say. There was no way that both of them could agree on video game violence, given the beliefs of their bosses or constituents. Even after years of litigation that have cleared the game industry, people still tend to blame video games every time a mass shooting occurs. The politics around that are still delicate.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.