Filed under: Culture, Business

Each week Jeff Engel and Geoff Brooks contribute Counting Rupees, a column on the business behind gaming:

Another day, another video game banning controversy. Proponents of the ban, unsurprisingly, argue that eliminating the sale of controversial games prevents them from harmful exposure. Yet one of the main arguments against banning games is that they make them even more popular, causing people to take notice of the title and thus spurring more sales than if it had been ignored in the first place. So, what exactly is the impact of game bans on sales in the first place?Ideally, we'd be able to compare the sales of games pre- and post-ban and see how the regulation impacted them ... after accounting for all the other factors that might have also influenced sales at that time. The data we have don't really let us do that, though, so this is a slightly less scientific attempt to answer the same question, using some of the most controversial games of the past few years.

Continue reading Counting Rupees: Does controversy sell?

Counting Rupees: Does controversy sell? originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:30:00 EST.

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