So... [Ping Pong / Tetris / Brain Training] promotes hatred, rascism, sexism, and rewards violence. Is it?

If you are a concerned parent reading this, please read the information on the following link before reading the rest of the blog post: The Byron Review [Wiki]

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So check it out, they're trying to make us look like the bad guys again.



It parades itself as a concerned look at whether video games are corrupting children, but it is quite clearly just another attack on the computer games industry. There are so many things wrong with this, I could write a book about it.

The Industry places age ratings on games. The Industry is aware of the possible effects of exposing children to violence, and the Industry has taken steps to prevent those kinds of games getting into the hands of the children. If children are playing violent video games, it's because someone old enough to know better [such as their own parents] have been buying the games for them. It's the responsibility of the parents or guardians to be aware of the content they are buying for their children.

Knowing all of this, it upsets me to hear people old enough to know better speak as ignorantly as Julie Peasgood did here. I was quite offended when she pretty much proclaimed that video games were evil [at least when I said it, I was sleep deprived. Also... I was joking].

She is writing off the entire video game industry [or did she merely forget to add the word "violent" onto the front of her statements about video games promoting hatred, rascism and sexism?], speaking as if the whole thing should just be exterminated. She is only promoting hate, when you get down to the bare essentials. And on television [oh, and on the Internet via ITV's Player], too. Nice.

What she needs to do is open her eyes and see how video games actually are, in their entirety; the good, as well as the bad. If she still doesn't like what there is to see, then what she ought to be doing is helping to change it positively, by promoting the positive aspects of video games, for example, the potential for use in education. This would attract more people to the industry who want to use games for "good", which in turn would result in fewer games about "bad" stuff.

If people carry on slandering games as evil, worst case scenario; those people who want to help the world will forget that using video games is an option, and so they won't use them. Only the people who want to make violent games are left, so only violent games are made, so people will complain that games are violent, so people will assume games can only be violent, because "that's just the way things is". It's a vicious cycle, and though it can be broken ["Making a game that's non-violent? You innovative genius, you!"], it's better not to let it get to that stage in the first place.