I am writing with reference to the Panorama investigation on game addiction, which was on BBC1 on Monday, 6th December. To put simply, I found the programme to be ridiculous and I was completely disgusted with the show from start to finish. The level of research that went into that programme was clearly minimal and when something is listed boldly as an “addiction”, with the intent on labelling it a disorder, then maybe talking about minorities isn’t the best thing to do.
For starters, this is a programme about addiction to gaming, showing two people repeatedly playing games to which they are addicted to. Surely this is no better than showing a heroin addict shooting up or an alcoholic getting drunk? The programme pretty much showed two “addicts” getting their fix.
For a large portion of the programme, the presenter was in South Korea, a much more technologically advanced country than ours, I’m sorry but by connecting broadband to every home doesn’t equal a mass gaming addiction, just merely a country with vast amounts of Internet. This is a hopeless scare mongering tactic. They mentioned a couple whose baby starved to death, due to neglect because they were playing a certain game. They also mentioned that both parents had very low IQ’s and the mother was “unstable” and had mental issues, I would suggest the fact that the relevant authorities did nothing to help either parent sooner was what contributed to the death of the child. I have a 2-year-old daughter myself, I play games, and my daughter enjoys watching me play age appropriate games. She is a healthy, happy child. This case is a one in a million with many other factors to consider.
The next thing in the programme to irritate me was the statistic of 12 people in South Korea dying due to gaming related incidents. Let’s step away from South Korea for a second and look at our country. In 2009 316 people died of “Dependence on drugs”, 8,282 deaths due to “Natural Causes”. Stepping to America, around 10 people a year die from peanut consumption, which puts into perspective how silly the statistic was, especially when comparing it to something more serious, like drug dependence.
To conclude, I believe gaming is a healthy form of escapism. It is better than drinking, better than drugs and it helps a lot of young people escape from their daily lives, which are sometimes difficult, in a more positive way. I have been gaming for many years, so has my partner, we live very healthy, happy lives with our daughter. We have jobs, we have social lives. I would say that the two people that were interviewed for the programme are in a tiny minority of people who probably need psychiatric help reasons beyond merely playing video games.
Panorama should be about revealing controversy, revealing problems, not attempting to cause them, which is what they did with this programme. What about all the good that video games have done recently? The Nintendo Wii is considered a great fitness exercise tool, “Brain Training” is seen as a great way to use gaming in a fun and educational way, trying to get people to use more and different parts of their brain. But twelve people died in South Korea due to gaming related incidents? I think I might do a half hour programme on the “evil” peanuts, like suggested earlier.
Finally, probably the thing that annoyed me the most, the man at the end of the programme, Joe, who is labelled an addict from the off, suggests that instead of gaming you should do something else, perhaps going out and getting “smashed”. So the BBC endorses drinking but doesn’t endorse gaming? It epitomised what was a terribly researched, poorly conducted piece of programming, designed to scaremonger and just generally put a negative spin on something that is actually much healthier than “getting smashed”.
You tell em' Claire! A great quote comes to mind..
ReplyDelete"Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pac man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music." Kristian Wilson of Nintendo, Inc. in 1989.