I wrote a brief story yesterday about how the PM's knife crime advisor has called for a special tax for violent video games (psst: check it out here).
I also wrote about a complaint The Independent Games Developers Association has lodged with the Advertising Standards Authority over the government's Change4Life campaign, which has the support of Cancer Research, the British Heart Foundation, and Diabetes UK. One of the advertisements in the campaign features a child holding a PlayStation controller and the words "Risk an early death. Just do nothing."
CNET.com's Don Reisinger raised an interesting point in a recent post Is the video game industry losing the PR battle? on his The Digital Home blog. He says that publishers need to work harder to defend our industry and break some of the myths surrounding games (ie. that most gamers are children sitting around getting fat by playing games).
Reisinger declares there's "no shortage of people who want to see video games killed. But I don't hear much from the video game industry when issues like this crop up. Sure, there are a few statements released by concerned developers. The occasional CEO claims to draw a line in the sand, but when will the video game industry start fighting back in a meaningful way?"
Do you think industry players are doing enough to promote the positive aspects associated with playing games?
Comments
In the public domain, Nintendo is the industry leader; a company which represents familys, new gamers and (most importantly) the jaded 'childish' history of what games where. Its in the best interests of every facet of the industry (media, developers, publishers and game players) to retaliate productivly in the face of opinion and legislation which belittle games. It's the only way we can grow out of the old mindset that the public has of video-games use in society, and build a more accurate dipiction of how entertaining, educational and wonderous they can be.
Once that's done people will think long before taking irrational pot-shots at the industry.
H_U_R_D
people arent forced to play games, yet people think that gaming can lead to physical problems, as well as psychological.
if people are so lazy to just play games all day, then its their fault...dont blame the entire industry and with the young kids...the parents need to get better at parenting...thats the bottom line with that