Video Games > Movies in England
Well, we’ve done it. Gamers everywhere should take out their favorite bottle of cheap liquor and toast themselves for overtaking movies as the biggest entertainment cash cow around. At least in England they should, so I guess replace ‘bottle of cheap liquor’ with ‘nice cup of tea.’
As reported by the Telegraph, in the calendar year before September 2009 the humble video game outpaced film in terms of consumer dollars spent. It wasn’t even that close. The Brits paid £1.73 billion to video game companies, while movies raked in slightly under £1.2 billion of hard earned cash. For the math challenged, that is more than a £500 million difference.
That is a whole lot of weird looking Ls, especially considering movies are still considered a respected art form while video games constantly get written off and ignored as an art form by people who don’t know what they are talking about.
Does this mean the stereotypes will be defeated and the long overdue respect for gaming is peeking at us from around the corner? Probably not, knowing how out of touch the vast majority of the population is. At least Tom Watson, an actual real life politician and somebody who does know what he is talking about, thinks it is about time people in charge catch up:
“Like anything digital, Parliament has a very narrow view of video games. Too many politicians think video games are played by teenage boys staying up all night shooting things in their bedroom. And yes there are plenty of those, but there also a huge range of people of many different ages who love playing games. The industry has matured over the last decade, and so too have gamers.”
I think a lot of companies have been getting the message that games are a huge way to make money, and having some cold facts like this might push the rest over the fence. Money more than anything else talks, and the idea of having a super powerful gamers lobby in Washington makes my heart go all a flutter. Still, there is a long way to go. The absolutely nonsensical Modern Warfare 2 controversy, which you may have heard about once or twice, is a good example of the double standard that video games are still held to and an even better example of the hurdles that are still in front of the medium being taken seriously by the majority. You don’t see many real movie reviewers jumping around yelling about too much violence in a war movie, but hypocritical video game journalists who talk about how games should be an artform and deserve more respect rail against No Russian like it kicked their dog. Soccer moms and opportunistic politicians beat their drums much more often over Grand Theft Auto than they do when Rambo rips someone’s throat out. Before somebody points out that Rambo doesn’t kill innocents, which makes me wonder about their definition of innocent, remember that this is a world where Eli Roth can crap out torture porn onto celluloid and make $100 million easy.
There is still some way to go before games are considered on the same level as movies, but with the all mighty dollar and L shaped thing in gaming’s corner, it is at least a start.
[Source: Telegraph]
