British PM Ponders Game Crackdown Between Wii Tennis Matches
by Kev Lochun on February 12, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Wii Tennis didn’t leave Brown out of puff.
When not planning an offensive on the UK games industry (allegedly), British Prime Minister Gordon Brown likes to engage in a bit of Wii Sports action in his living room with his four-year-old son.
Turns out Brown is just as bad as Wii Tennis as he is at real tennis. Speaking in The Sunday Times, Brown said, “I have played a game of tennis, but I didn’t succeed, and my son has challenged me to a game of boxing.”
“It didn’t leave me out of puff but that was because I was probably beaten pretty early on by my son - and he is only four.”
What really struck me about the story is how much of a non-story it is. Read it for yourself and you’ll see what I mean. It just reeks of a PR stunt that has been put forward to soothe the tensions in the UK games industry.
Brown has famously announced he wanted to ban all depictions of knives in games to curb surging numbers of stabbings in Britain and is suspected to be planning action against the industry based on Tanya Byron’s report, yet he happily has a console in his house that has the potential to provide the most physically realistic experience of stabbing someone.
To my mind, it goes to emphasise the perceived divide that has sprung up between ‘core’ gamers, who are frequently subjected to the vitriol of folks like Kay Hymowitz, and the new demographics that have bought a Wii for its fitness keeping prowess, surgeon training potential, and general motion sensing japery.
I guess no one’s told him that there are several Wii knife add-ons then.
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on February 15, 2008 9:58 am
It really beggars belief, when the world economy is coming off the rails and we are involved in two wars, that the Government is putting time and energy into suppressing video games. When there isn’t any problem.