Comments on: The most stupid thing this Labour government did?

By: Bruce

Bruce — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 16:40:19 +0000

Old Gamer, it is nice to see that some experienced industry people are reading this.

By: OldGamer

OldGamer — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 12:12:08 +0000

I have been involved with computers for many years, and computer games in education have been there for years. Cliffski you seem to be attacking this from a point of ignorance as you are totally wrong as far as education and computer use is concerned.

My daughter used games to learn, she is now at university reading computer game design, so just this fact shows that you are just a little inaccurate to say the least.

My wife worked on the first million selling computer game, as did I for a time. We have watched the gaming market grow and if you look at history you will find that the old adage “War is the mother of invention” very telling. We are seeing the use of computer games in training. The flight simulators are just extensions of computer games, so is this just “stark, staring, gibbering mental”?

The computer games industry has been earning millions for this country, yet the idiots who are in power have no idea when it comes to encouraging a multi million pound industry.

Vaz and his ilk want to see this country back in the Dark Ages.

Tanya Byron did a good job and came down on the side of the games companies, she was an outsider, but she produced a balanced report. The problem is that, if it runs true to form, this government will take not a blind bit of notice of it, and go their own stupid way.

Having visited quite a few universities over the last few years, who say they do degrees in computer game design, I have to say, their idea of computer game design is very very strange. To date there’s only one university that provides the sort of thing this country needs, and they are doing it very well. The others? Well they need to wake up to the fact that they really don’t come close.

Like it or not we need the games industry, and we need their skills, it’s not just about kids playing games for fun, it’s about how they can be used in a wide variety ways, not least in education.

By: Simon Undercarriage

Simon Undercarriage — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:49:03 +0000

Bruce, have you had time to read the Byron report?

By: cliffski

cliffski — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:39:14 +0000

Bruce, old dear, I think you’ve finally gone totally and utterly bananas. There isn’t one word of the above post that isn’t stark, staring, gibbering mental.

By: Mr Foo

Mr Foo — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:06:30 +0000

Wow. I mean, just wow. Even your anti-piracy rants are a little tiny bit based in reality, Bruce, but that was quite possibly the biggest load of cobblers I’ve ever read.

By: HH

HH — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:24:56 +0000

“But history may well judge their misunderstanding of the games industry to be their biggest blunder.”

I’m willing to put a tenner on this not actually turning out to be the case.

By: Peter St. John

Peter St. John — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:31:16 +0000

Also don’t forget the WWW was made in Switzerland

By: Peter St. John

Peter St. John — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:28:37 +0000

A couple of things:

Doesn’t the Byron Report actually back up the games industry’s views to a fairly large extent? I know you’re not a fan of having the BBFC in charge of rating games, but the report seems to be a decent thing to throw back at idiots like Vaz who claim that computer games are destroying our youth, as it found no evidence of such.

Secondly, erm, you do realise that unions in Germany are more powerful than they’ve been in the UK for decades (even before Thatcher)? I’d actually like to see a decent computer games union, to be honest…