Pro-Actively Researching Our Industry

By Cameron Hills

Source Article:  Opinion: Meeting with Biden is a mistake for the game industry by Kris Graft, January 9, 2013.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting Gamasutra Editor-In-Chief Kris Graft suggests just meeting with VP Biden creates the appearance the Video Game Industry is part of the violence problem.  Neither blanket denials nor playing ostrich head in the sand is going to solve the problem of violence or improve our perception with the public.  Only a balanced and measured response through funding new research, proper public relations (PR) and advertising work, and adult level conversations through lobbying and direct talking to political leaders will move this industry in the proper direction.

On January 16^th, President Obama announced a $10 million research program to probe the link between Violent Video Games and gun violence (Tassi, Forbes.)  While the Forbes article noted that VP Biden said “he didn’t believe an actual link between violent games and violent actions was there,” a January 16, 2013 article by Frank Cifaldi on Gamasutra used the ominous language “Obama asked Congress to fund research into determining a link between video game violence and real life violence.”  This sounds like the US Government will be using slanted research to hammer our industry’s image.  We (Graft) need to fund proper, double blind, studies from accredited and respected researchers in the psychology and sociology fields.  They must test the dual theses that games have causal links to violence and ways current and future games can act as pressure release valves on potentially homicidal individuals.  Simply throwing money at unqualified researchers or ad-hoc studies will not help.

So how can we improve our image?  In his editorial, Editor Graft starts out “If you're meeting with Joe Biden about gun control, you're stating that you are part of the problem, and therefore, you are part of the problem.”  While engaging in the popular PR past time of “Spin Doctoring” is as about as appealing as spackling makeup on a pig, we need to have a multi-faceted approach through education, facts from our research programs and advertising programs targeted to those individuals and groups who would paint our industry with the same brush as the National Rifle Association (NRA.) That education also extends to our politicians.

Like it or not, Politicians hold the keys to the legislative process and no amount of studies will sway their opinions once they get on their soap-box.  We need to engage leaders of both federal and state/provincial levels to both help inform opinion and give us warning of future misguided efforts to legislate our industry.

The video game industry is filled with creative people.  By working together with the proper professionals in these other fields we can keep a sane discussion about what video games can do to solve our problems.