By Ben Salter
Gaming gets bad press in mainstream media. Take gaming media out of the equation, and you’ll be hard pressed to find something good written or broadcast about games anywhere.
Advertising for the likes of Wii Fit helps to remove the couch potato stigma, but overall the non-gaming community is being overloaded with bad press about videogames. Think about it: If you were a parent, with a very limited knowledge about games, what would you think about them? We hear that games, TV and Facebook are to blame for our kids getting fat. Fact of the matter is it’s much easier to blame these things than to admit you’re a bad parent. Then Michael Atkinson comes along, says something about games being the devil’s work, and all of a sudden the non-gaming community truly believes videogames should be outlawed.
Last month I said I was going to try and stop complaining about Mr. Atkinson. I think over 30 days without a word is pretty good, especially seeing how he made such an ass of himself ahead of the South Australian State election. If you didn’t read about it, next month South Aussies will be voting for the new and improved State Government. Mr. Atkinson thought it would be a good idea to ban anonymity ahead of that. He believed one gentlemen posting comments on news.com.au was an alias created by his enemies and decided everyone needed to post their full name and postcode when commenting or blogging on anything to do with the election. As it turned out the man did exist, and lived just 500 meters from Atkinson’s office. The public also didn’t take too kindly to him prohibiting free speech, in a sense, as it’s our right to post on the Internet using an avatar. Long story short he was forced to retract his laws, or at least ensure us they would not be enforced, and yet seems to have as many followers as ever. He continues to tell us that an R18+ rating for games is not required; this is the man the non-gaming community actually listens to and, even worse, trusts.
Australian pirate James Burt has contributed to the bad press this week by costing Nintendo millions when he pirated New Super Mario Bros. Wii in November last year. He’s since reached an out of court settlement to the tune of $1.5 million and given Australian gaming a bad name internationally. Not only does it look bad to the non-gamers here, it makes us look bad to the gaming communities overseas. Sure, this type of thing happens all the time, but New Super Mario Bros. Wii was one of the few games Australia received before any other region (at least on the Wii). Doesn’t look like that’ll happen again.
”VIDEO games could be influencing teenagers to drive recklessly, one of the country's top police officers has said.” That’s the sub-headline parents are reading with breakfast each morning. Apparently the youth of today are unable to distinguish between the real and the reset button on their PlayStation. Seeing how that’s the case, may as well start car jacking and throwing frag grenades at old ladies. It’s all the same, right officer?
Those are three major stories in the mainstream media in the past fortnight. Every one of them paints gaming in the worst possible light. I would love to see some good news, but chances are we’ll continue to hear about one kid playing too much COD and going on a rampage in the US, and then all of a sudden all first person shooters will be frowned upon once again.
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Submitted by ICC_06
4 days ago
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