The nerve of people to purposefully architect facts via skewed unscientific data to prove a completely non-credible and ridiculous belief simply astounds me… on a regular basis no less! Once again, the target is our beloved gaming industry by wackos that continue to think, as they always will, that games are essentially brainwashing our kids to become murders and violent criminals, despite a lack of evidence to support their claims.

Even worse, these so-called “studies” continue to make it to the mass news-media, where more people will be influenced to take it as fact, trusting that the media source would have done it’s due dilligence to report accurately and without bias.

This time Newsweek is the source of propagation for these claims, which are all based on a study funded by this foolish organization! (WARNING: You will be apalled and disgusted if you click the previous link).

Sorry for spoiling the ending, but I still highly recommend that you read the entire story as reported over at Dubious Quality. Direct links below..

• Dubious Quality: “The Stupid Train: All Aboard!”
• Dubious Quality: “A Little More” (follow-up to the above post)
• PlayNoEvil’s commentary on the commentary (Essentially where I discovered this article in the first place)

Inspired by the recent brief post on Nerfbat regarding the political impact of the recent election on the gamers of the world. Feel free to check out the post and the post on “Wired” it refers to. For now though… my 2 copper:

The whole politicizing of video games has always been a frustrating thorn in my side, as I’m sure it has been for many of us. Of course, there are alot of attempts at “moral” legislation that have failed, and there will be many more to come. The defining and teaching of morals begins at home. The government does not have control over morals. Society as a cohesive unit, though dysfunctional one, has that power and the results one would expect to ebb and flow for a variety of reasons.

On the one hand, I find some odd, sick consolation in the fact that politicians talk alot of action, but rarely really DO anything that they say they’re going to do. It’s generally alot of outrage and calls to action, but then issues are forgotten and tossed aside, only to suffer renewed outage and calls to action later down the road.

Then there are those rare occurrences when action is actually taken when most politicians have not done their due diligence to actually UNDERSTAND that which they are attempting to legislate, thus creating a bunch of complication and “action”, but never really accomplishing anything. That, my friends, is what really scares the hell out of me.

The only advice that I can offer.. keep up on what YOUR politicians are doing with issues that matter most to YOU, video games included! If there’s a bill coming up to further regulate the video game industry, make your voice heard! Write to your representatives from your state and tell them how you feel. You can’t change anything by doing nothing, so do your part! =)

Here’s a couple of related links that I recommend for people to keep up with politics as it relates to the game development industry:
GamePolitics.com
VideoGameVoters.org