Gamers' Voice - full post.

A quick note - this post was written for the Wall of the Gamers' Voice group on Facebook. It was too big, though. So it's presented here in its entirety.

I don't think some of the people posting here are actually doing much good, to be honest. Let's get real, for a minute.

I love games and gaming culture, I have done since I was about 4 (I'm 20 now) thanks to the SNES and a copy of Street Fighter II Turbo. But even I think that games can be harmful to certain people, just in the same way as something like A Clockwork Orange (one of my favourite films, by the way) or even The Matrix caused a few people to fly off the handle. Rock and Roll music was blamed for a good many crimes in the 50s and 60s. Gothic Horror novels of the 19th Century were seen as pornography in this country for a while. Moral panics about entertainment are nothing new - games are not alone in criticism.

For the record, I do think that age-restrictions on gaming is a good thing. I'm not going to lie and say that I never played a violent game before I was 18 - I did, and I'm sure that many many others have and will continue to do so. But there's always the chance that there's going to be some negative effects to at least one or two people. There just is.

A politician, I think it was Tessa Jowell, but I'm not 100% certain, said something along the lines of 'If you wouldn't let your kids watch the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you shouldn't let them play 18+ games.' I really don't think there's any better way of putting it than that. Don't get me wrong, all this nonsense over Modern Warfare 2 is ridiculous - if it was a film rated 18+, nobody would bat an eyelid. The problem is that games are interactive, and there's no getting around that obviously. Parents really shouldn't worry - if they are, then their kids shouldn't be playing the damn thing in the first place.

Anyhow, I feel I'm being too negative. There's a great *great* deal of positive benefits that gaming can provide. I know at least two or three people who have gotten over deep-rooted depression thanks to the escapism gaming gives us. It let them get on with their lives and become better members of society than they could have possibly been without. And off the top of my head, gaming improves hand-eye co-ordination, has some links to improving mental fitness (and I'm not just talking about Brain Training, here), it has great dramatic potential, and so so many more.

Gaming is a good thing, but you can't just blindly say stuff like 'I'm 13, and I played Modern Warfare, did nothing to me.' That's only reinforcing the views of Mr. Vaz et al. I have no doubt that he, and other anti-violence in games critics (for let's not forget, he is *not* anti-games on the whole, he simply objects to minors possibly having access to violent material in games) have good intentions. But this group should be more about *proving* how and why games can offer so much more to the people of the UK.