The Daily Mail is truly abysmal

They’re at it yet again. A story designed to strike fear into the heart of middle England that owes nothing to the truth. The old adage of never letting the facts get in the way of a good story applies in spades here. They really are just trying to sell newspapers with sensationalism because nobody with a brain can be stupid enough to believe what they have written.

So let’s just go through why they are so wrong, once again.

  • If a Wii is family friendly then presumably a DVD player is. And you can play totally execrably disgusting content on a DVD player. Like Waz for instance.
  • Game content is mild compared to film and book content. MadWorld just pales into insignificance compared to what is on these other media.
  • Games are age rated with the excellent PEGI system. Every parent can clearly see this on the front of the packaging. Books are not age rated and any child can buy the most horrifically violent and graphically sexual book with no hindrance. Why doesn’t the Mail campaign against books?
  • There is plenty of equally violent content already available for the Wii. The Mail are just exposing their total ignorance with this.
  • The book Grand Theft Childhood is the definitive work on violent video games and children. If they read this they would realise that there is nothing to worry about.
  • This is a Sega game so isn’t going to reach that many people, even after this free publicity from the Mail.

The Daily Mail’s continuing obsession with the imagined dangers of video gaming must have a root cause. My theory is that one of the editors’ parents wouldn’t let him have a Sinclair Spectrum as a child and that the resultant trauma has made him a compulsive/obsessive anti gamer ever since. No other explanation makes any sense.

11 Comments


  1. you sir, are a genius


  2. and the thing about sega games was hillarious


  3. We have the same problem in the U.S. I think the “violent video game is ruining my child” meme is a media construction that is meant to distract people. It also gives comfort to parents who haven’t been able to set proper boundaries for their children when buying video games. And so the story goes, “Those evil game publishers!” When in reality violent crime in the U.S. is down. Violent crime in schools is also declining. No one has been able to prove that video games lead kids to be more violent. And it’s almost a non-issue because we have a great rating system.

    If parents are concerned they just need to do their jobs and parent. It’s that simple.


  4. don’t forget that the Wii, as well as the other current-generation consoles, have parental controls built-in


  5. I may think that the reason why the Daily Mail posts these sorts of stories is mainly just to scare parents.

    Also I have played many Violent Videogames on my Nintendo consoles…

    Remember Mortal Kombat 2 & 3 with full blood?

    Killer Instinct

    Turock

    GoldenEye

    Perfect Dark

    Conker’s Bar Fur day

    Enternal Darkness

    Resident Evil series

    House of the Dead

    No More Heros

    Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and Two Thrones.

    Even Rockstar’s Manhunt 2 was on the Family Friendly Wii and nothing major has happened (except if you counted the BBFC’s embarresing defeat in the ratings appeal)

    Considering that, the BBFC should never have tried to ban any game and they should learn allot of lessons from the Manhunt 2 debacle.

    So give Madworld an 18 rating and go on TV and INFORM people about the ratings system and the Parental Controls that are the most effective for parents to do their job.

    As for me in Australia, I still have to deal with the OFLC’s MA15+ rating because there is no R18+ rating all because of a few certain Aussie politicians who still think that Videogames are for kids…

    But yeah, my real issue is with the OFLC in Australia, but I sure hope the BBFC still gives this one an 18 rating and not try to ban it.

    So if the OFLC refuses the classification because of the lack of an R rating in Australia, at least I can try and get this one on Amazon.com or EBay.

    TBoneTony


  6. I think I speak for all the members on the forum I linked to/help run when I say you’ve hit the nail on the head. Also when we tried to comment with criticism of their article, none of the articles were published, especially here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=563109&in_page_id=1879
    Y’know, if the Daily Mail became a gaming newspaper, half the lies it publishes would be stopped, but then again on the other side, it would probably turn out to be ‘first party hugger’ like ONM.


  7. I’m not too aware about the potential rivalry between newspaper agencies, but wouldn’t it be possible to contact one and try to get that article through, with a title like “Daily Mail’s Dark Age ignorance about video games clearly shows” (example).
    Someone like, say, a veteran, could eventually pick up a phone and try to tease the competition.

    I mean, seriously, why couldn’t properly informed articles find a place in one truly serious “casual” paper?
    There must surely be a spot somewhere to reach a wide audience. It does not need to be huge, just serious and punchy enough to get some spotlight.
    You never see people standing on the box to cut the media bullshit, and the best you get is how Obama played goddamn Pong.
    Hello?


  8. This is all sadly familiar. I grew up in the 1980s, when the Daily Fail was at the forefront of the “video nasties” controversy. In the long term, that achieved nothing – the 70ish movies that were banned because of that controversy simply became top sellers on the pirate market. They’re nearly all available on DVD now, and often look pretty tame compared to the movies that are coming out today.

    …and so it goes here. The Fail (I have to call them that, it’s so apt) will continue to bang on about this issue until some token changes are made to the ratings system. Then, they’ll forget about it and move onto some other scare story. I just hope they don’t manage to get anyone calling for a “ban” on this game to be taken seriously. I (as a 33 year old with no kids in the house) want to play it!

    By the way, it’s worth noting that the organisation that’s calling for a ban is the same organisation that Mary Whitehouse founded. Look her up online if you want to see what dumb, crazy old women with too much time on their hands can do to destroy culture if they get enough people to complain with them.


  9. The SEGA comment hurt me just a little bit. The resoluting analysis of the childhood trauma made me laugh a bit. For it is in the true sense of writing like the original article.

    NIce one for pointing out the obvious points that are somehow forgotten over and over again in this discussion that strays for rationale so easy every time.


  10. “Waz”, Bruce? That’s clearly a Δ, with the title being WΔZ. I haven’t seen the film, so can’t comment on whether the content of it is exploitative or justified by a good story and a strong message.

    Regardless, I agree with you that the Daily Mail is a sensationalist piece of shit, as I’m sure almost every gamer does. They’re stuck with the age-old idea that games are For The Kids, so any mature ideas in them should be illegal, lest they corrupt the innocent minds of Britain’s Youth.


  11. Excellent article, absolutely spot on. The Mail is just the biggest waste of good paper there is and I can’t find a reason to justify it as a newspaper because from what I’m aware of it never actually prints much news.

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