Violent Video Games Are A Cause Of Crime, Says Cameron

To those of you living in the States this isn’t likely to be news, you have various senators and presidential hopefuls jumping on the anti-game bandwagon almost continually. Over here in the UK though our politicians have had a history of doing things a little differently. With a history of relatively liberal (in the classical sense) politics, the arts and entertainment industries have been relatively free to do what they like. We do have censorship, but politics in the UK has generally been free of the insipid, and downright dangerous, pandering to the media sensationalism which tends to surround video games. Not so any more it seems, the leader of the Conservative Party (our opposition party, roughly equivalent in policy terms to the US Republicans, but in political standing to the Democrats) has opened his reactionary gob and let the effluent flow freely.

In a series of measures, which he called a mini-manifesto, revealed yesterday, Cameron said:

“We are never going to deal with crime unless we look at the broader context and say, ‘Yes, tough laws, strong action on the police, but also action to strengthen our society’, and that includes, I think, video games and things like that where we do need to think of the context in which people are growing up.”

I plan to email him and point out to him the error of his ways, politely of course. There is so much that is wrong with his ideas, which include film and other media aswell, that I don’t really know where to begin. Built on the prevailing fallacy that video games are toys for children, and supporting the argument that parents have no control over their kids and are not the biggest influence on their upbringing and behaviour, his policy doesn’t look like anything new, when in fact it is new and very dangerous. If he sees restrictions of adult freedoms as a way to stop children becoming criminals then he’s barking up the wrong tree completely. I could go on and on and on about this forever but this isn’t a political blog its a blog about videogames. I will simply make this request of my British readers, if you love videogames and want to see the artists who make them work without fear of the censor or big government interfering, then don’t vote for this man or any of the members of his party.
(From The Guardian via Kotaku.)

Tags: Age Rating, community, Culture, Kotaku, opinion, Politics, Violence

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