Media Controversy and Videogames

However as more and more adults played video games, there became many more ‘adult’ videogames to satisfy the market. These are not a new thing (check out Custer’s Revenge on the Atari 2600 if you really want a shock) but over the last 10 years they have really proliferated. As have media accounts blaming them for anything and everything.

First off the obvious: one of the outrages commonly voiced is that children are playing something that is obviously influential and with an easily-led child could lead him to commit atrocities. This was the argument a few years ago where a teenager went out and shot someone after playing Grand Theft Auto 3. The most compelling answer is that they shouldn’t have been playing the game in the first place. There are ratings on games for a reason; they can be incredibly violent and an 18 game is the equivalent to an 18 movie. Then again I persuaded my mum to get my Grand Theft Auto: Vice City when I was 12 and I was not the only one. Games developers have recognised this trend and have begun exploiting it, as seen in this Dead Space 2 advert. This trend has continued in the We Dare adverts, which show adults spanking each other and stripping. But the Video Standards Council, which rated the game said “the game itself is in fact less sexual/offensive than the marketing campaign leads us to believe”. EA hired fake protestors to stir up attention before the release of the distinctly average Dante's Inferno. Controversy isn’t just avoided by developers; they embrace it.

No matter how responsible game developers are, media reporting of videogames is utterly shameful. A few years ago State of Emergency was released for the Playstation 2. It was a Grand Theft Auto rip off that wasn’t particularly special but the Daily Mail said it was specifically aimed at children – when it was an 18. People were outraged over the fact you could sleep with your crewmates in Mass Effect when the overall titillation was so perfunctory it was barely noticeable. Manhunt and its sequel were banned in several countries for being overly bloody, yet they contained nothing that would be out of place in a movie like Hostel.

And that’s the main problem with media criticism of videogames – because it is perceived as a childish form of entertainment, the media still treat it as an art form that primarily affects younger people, whereas in the last decade there have been in an increase in games that not only target adults, but can be seen as artistic entertainment found in other genres, such as film or music. The fact that these games have not been reviewed outside of a very small demographic shows that the media for the moment, with rent-a-quotes such as Keith Vaz, shows that newspapers for the moment merely see videogames as a 'scare story', like joyriding, rap and other scare stories of the past.

See the DeadSpace 2 advert that has been causing controversy below

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