Last week, an ad from the Change4Life Campaign was placed all over the U.K. depicting a young boy holding a video game controller with large text over his head reading: "Risk an early death. Just do nothing." Nowhere in that ad did it explicitly say video games could cause children to die early, but the message was there, and a handful of video game developers took offense.
Codemasters' CEO Rod Cousens said, "Governments have a unique ability to get it wrong." Sega Europe President and COO Mike Hayes said in an interview that he and the rest of the employees at his company were "very disappointed" with the ad. He went on to say that "it remains a deep frustration that video gaming is selected to present a negative image of the U.K.'s children, youth, consumer at large and the industry."
Atari issued a statement saying "at best, the campaign is misleading and at worst, damaging to the industry, its reputation and its potential." It followed that up by registering a formal complaint with the U.K.'s Advertising Standards Authority.
Unfair advertising? You decide.
For its part, the U.K. Department of Health said in a statement that the ads are "not saying that children shouldn't play computer games or eat treats, but parents and children need to be aware of the benefits of a balanced diet and an active lifestyle."
This wasn't the government's first attack on the video game industry. The U.K. government, through this Change4Life campaign, earlier this year released a commercial showing a child playing a video game and then used the camera to zoom in to his body to show fat building up. He's later shown as an effigy of himself in the video game, with the phrase "Game Over" displayed on-screen.
Once again, the U.K. Department of Health said in a statement that it wasn't attacking video games, but it wanted to remind parents that an "unhealthy lifestyle, including poor diet or being inactive, can lead to health problems in later life."
Where's the outcry? Where are the major developers, like EA and Activision, speaking out against this? Why isn't the video game industry doing more to battle this Change4Life campaign? Sega and Atari, with their cryptic messages, won't do anything to change how video games are treated. More needs to be done.
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Sorry, Nico, you won't be going to 13-year-olds in Utah.
(Credit: Rockstar Games)Jack Thompson, the former lawyer who made a name for himself by speaking out against video game violence, is at it again.
Thompson co-authored a bill in the Utah legislature with Rep. Mike Morley that would fine video game retailers a whopping $2,000 each time they sold an M-rated game to a minor. The bill hasn't passed just yet, but the state's Business and Labor Committee voted 10-3 to keep it alive and it's quickly making its rounds in the Legislature.
To clarify some of the finer points in Thompson's bill, Joystiq recently sat down with him for an interview and, as expected, Thompson was unapologetic at what some gamers are calling an outlandish plan.
"The concept is this," Thompson told the video game blog. "If you, the retailer, say that you don't sell mature rated games to someone under 17 then you're in effect engaging in communications with the public and assurances to the public which is definitely advertising, then you have to adhere to that policy.
"The issue becomes the truthfulness of the corporate representations. We're addressing the fraud of deceptive trade practices issue rather than the nature of the product itself. It's an across the board attempt to hold to their word the retailers of music, movies and video games [in any format]."
As much as I can't believe I'm saying this, given my history discussing Jack Thompson, for once, I can't help but agree with him.
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For years, people like Jack Thompson have been spewing invective in an attempt to bring the video game industry to its knees. And while he and the rest of his cronies have done all they can to paint the picture that the entire video game industry is rife with sex, drugs and violence, Nintendo has led the way in showing the world that that's not even close to true.
Last week, AJ Pierzynski of the Chicago White Sox was asked why he spent hours during spring training playing with his Nintendo DS. Instead of telling the reporters that he tried to kill 15 men in 10 seconds, he explained that he was playing a vision-training game on the device to improve his ability to see the baseball.
Of course, Pierzynski's use of the DS isn't the only "non-violent" use of video games today and many people have found the DS and Wii to be bastions of fitness, health and fun. And although others are trying to carry the torch with Nintendo, no company in the video game industry has done what the hardware and software manufacturer has been able to do: show the world that there's more to video games than violence and sex.
Just don't tell Jack Thompson that.
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