MPs don’t get a fair shake of the stick when it comes to videogames. They’re all beyond the age of the typical gamer, the 33 year old male, and when they think of games, they tend to think about Pong, Tetris and Space Invaders. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule: Keith Vaz, long due for a re-education on the industry as a whole, still blames Manhunt as a murder blueprint (despite the police saying otherwise), and calls for a three year-old game to be banned despite it already contravening a law that the current government pushed through. Then there’s Nick Gibb, thinking that school children should be searched for violent videogames.
However, we have beacons of light, Ed Vaizey, who believes a Videogames Council should be formed. He also suggests that we should push through tax breaks for the industry that has been lagging behind the film industry for this very reason, despite how it is now a more lucrative business than the silver screen. Now it looks like another has stepped up to help: John Whittingdale.
He appears to have actually done research when it came to chatting with Edge Online over the medium, and spoke of the educational component to the industry: teaching skills, as well as making the game itself, serve a purpose other than blowing things up and killing people. The best part of all, is that he acknowledges MPs’ ignorance on the matter, saying:
My guess would be that very few ministers in the government spend a great deal of time playing computer games, whereas they do go to the cinema, they do watch television, and they do listen to the radio… there may be ministers who rush home to play GTA all night, but it’s unlikely…
Given the age of most MPs, they’re probably thinking back to Space Invaders and Atari consoles. The other thing is that there’s a lot of negativity around, a lot of concern that young people who spend their hours gaming are missing out on educational activities. The case that gaming can bring benefits is something we need to promote, and then there’s always been the fear that somehow certain games may be damaging because of the violent content, and there’s a lot of mythology around that…
He has done his homework, and despite how few people will read the interview in it’s entirety (I highly recommend you do, by the way), he steps back onto old ground: protection of the youth from purchasing/playing these. Fortunately for us, he actually has a level head when he speaks about it.
A game like Manhunt 2… we need to impose controls to ensure that children cannot purchase them. But then there’s the hysteria over something like the suicide bomber web game Kaboom, which everyone got very worked up about. When I went online and tried it out, the idea that this was going to turn the nation into suicide bombers was clearly absurd…
Why can’t more MPs actually have their heads screwed on like this man?
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