New forms of media have always been under scrutiny by those who aren't interested in or don't understand them. When the radio was invented there were worries that it would rot the minds of the younger generation, and the same went for TV. When jazz music first reared it's strange out-of-key-but-not-really head it was decried as being from the devil by some, just as rock music was years later. When something is new and different there will always be some form of opposition to it as the natural reaction of your average human being is to resist what it doesn't understand.
The latest recipient of this sort of treatment is the medium of gaming. Since gaming came around it has been scrutinised from all angles and that scrutiny endures to this day. Politicians, celebrities, writers, you name it, all seem to be taking turns at moaning about video games and those who play them.
As expected, the games industry has begun to fight back in it's own way; in the medium of sarcastic articles and more recently in the WRONG (Witless and Ridiculous Opinions of Non-Gamers) campaign headed up by CVG, which has been well received by the gaming public.
CVG have used their WRONG campaign to point out the latest in people who say bad things (or simply stupid things) about gaming. People such as Matthew Wright, Alan Titchmarsh and Bill O'Reilly have been on the receiving end of a good complaining about on CVG's WRONG hall of shame.
This is all fine and good but is it helping?
CVG are doing exactly what gamers have been doing for years. They've responded to claims that videogames make people aggressive by attacking those who hold that opinion, actively proving them right.
When writer Carole Lieberman was incorrectly quoted saying "The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of sexual scenes in video games" by Fox News (the most respectable of news outlets) the response of many gamers was not a reasonable one. Gamers flocked to amazon to negatively review her latest book Bad Girls leaving a mixture of ridiculous and threatening messages in place of actual reviews. Not only that, but people got a hold of her personal e-mail address and she received hundreds of threatening e-mails from irate gamers.
That comes across as pretty aggressive in my eyes.
Now this is just one example of the way that gamers have responded to criticism in recent years. This scenario showed that painting targets on the people who decry gaming as a childrens pass-time or blame it for violent acts is the opposite of what we need to do. If we want our hobby to be recognised as just another form of entertainment then we need to show that we are not what they claim we are. Focus on studies that show that violent games don't increase violence in adults who play them, talk about how your average gamer plays games at the times when someone else would watch a movie or turn on the TV.
Leave the discussion to the intelligent people who will do a good job of it, and keep the microphone away from the morons who will just prove our enemies right time and time again. The medium can also speak for itself, the further it advances the more people will accept it for what it is.
Now to address a way that we can positively support our medium!
In the US there is an organisation called the Video Game Voters Network which is a tool for gamers to communicate their opinions on video game legislation to the US government. Why not have a UK organisation that works in a much broader sense, communicating the opinions of gamers as a whole. Giving the gamer a place to unload their thoughts and opinions and see something come from that in opinion polls being communicated to the UK at large as well as to the games industry. At the moment gamers don't have much of a voice on an official level so let's give them a proper outlet.
Perhaps this organisation could feature something similar to CVG's WRONG campaign, but less accusatory. Say someone claims that video games cause violent behaviour in adults, this organisation can respond both respectfully and firmly with studied evidence to the contrary of the person's claims. This would encourage discussion from both sides which is surely much better than leaving it to those with the loudest voices, who are unfortunately usually the most abusive and unruly, to conduct the discourse.
