This post
was going to be a "how-to write a generic games are bad article for newspapers". You know the kind of article that is blindly ignorant of Jenkins'
8 Myths about videogames. I say this post
was going to because dirty love rat laughing stock Mario Party "politician" Boris Johnson already did it for us
here. We read it in the more cost-less content EDGE this month. We were thinking of making him the
That Guy's maniac of the month but then the Telegraph might pick it up and put it on the front page. The Telegraph is allegedly one of only two UK newspapers that employs a person to google the name of the paper every two hours. Any results are then cut and pasted into the letters section to make it look like they have readers. We do that too. All the anonymous comments are secretely us except "I love the way all the comments are between themselves". That's one of Amber's flunkies. Anyway, the thing:
Here's a list of phrases and terms that BJ (Hah!) uses to describe the dirty habit of sneezing coke and fucking not-your-wife, sorry, I mean playing videogames.
"strobing colours"- I think he has games confused with raves from the 80s and early 90s, still, forgivable I guess....
"cross the room and just say no to Nintendo"- No one in the UK has a Nintendo console nor have they since the Gamecube died early 2005.
"It is time to garrotte the Game Boy and paralyse the PlayStation"- Maybe Boris, we should try to live in the 2000's. I know that since racism isn't allowed much anymore and the royals are a bit of a joke, that it is uncomfortable for you to live in this decade or even century. However, your ignorance and age is showing here. Perhaps you should suggest
worrying about the wireless or trashing the talkies? How about we all go nigger baiting whilst drinking fizzy pop? That would be a jolly adventure!
"..that we admitted the catastrophic effect these blasted gizmos are having on the literacy and the prospects of young males"- Truly we are fortunate that a politician is thinking outside the box and not just blaming our shitty education system or the lack of jobs for graduates in anywhere but London. What about their health issues? Shouldn't we be giving the NHS a break?
"We demand that teachers provide our children with reading skills; we expect the schools to fill them with a love of books." Books like your autobiography: BJ How to waddle around like a twat and be successful? Fuck off BJ! Face it. Children of England are just fucking stupid, destined for jobs as guest presenters on TV shows or something in the periphery of politics. I doubt they could even put on a fucking condom some of them. They should be aborted! Oh, sorry Boris a bit
insensitive.
"...are bleeping and zapping in speechless rapture"- There should be a variant of Godwin's Law for when lazy game-hate journalists write zapping or bleeping. Zapping! For fuck's sake, are we in a 1950's homo-erotic spaceman comic? Where's our rocket pack or our laser BJ?
"They become like blinking lizards, motionless, absorbed, only the twitching of their hands showing they are still conscious"- That's an accurate description of every office worker in the UK, except they are expected to do 50 hours of it a week. Surely this is good training?Next.
"I have just watched an 11-year-old play a game that looked fairly historical, on the packet. Your average guilt-ridden parent might assume that it taught the child something about the Vikings and medieval siege warfare. Phooey! The red soldiers robotically slaughtered the white soldiers"- Firstly, good sample set. It's nice to get a supporting anecdote in. Thank god the white soldiers didn't wipe out the brown or off-white soliders. That might be educational and topical. Did you engage with the boy whilst he was playing BJ or were you more preoccupied? What were you doing to this poor 11-year-old's mother Boris? Was Daddy around when you were "watching" this child. Why is the parent guilt ridden? No you'd never do
that to a nice family unit would you?
"The more addictive these games are to the male mind, the more difficult it is to persuade boys to read books"- This is so true can you think of other leisure time activities that distract boys from reading? Here's some to start you off movies, television, sports.... There should be a study on why girls are immune. What about men and women or are we not including the largest group of people that play videogames? No they would distract from the point you are trying to make.
"Even at university, there are now terrifying numbers of students who cannot express themselves in the kind of clear, logical English required for an essay, and in many important respects if you can't write, you can't think" This work kind of relates to my real life work. BJ hits on a good point. University students of all age, gender and cultural groups can't express themselves clearly or logically. That includes the non-gamers too. Most of my gamer friends are fucking dumb as wll. Lets see, there is a government economist, a librarian, a museum curator, a concert violinist, store managers, artists, game testers, mechanics, a teacher and a university lecturer. Oh shit three of them are Doctors too. Oh man, we as a generation who grew up with games, are fucked.
"The Royal Literary Fund has, in the past few years, done a wonderful job of establishing Writing Fellows at our universities, offering therapy for those who can't put their thoughts on paper; and yet the fund admits that the scale of the problem is quite beyond its abilities"- You're right again BJ. University is the only route to success. We can fix all of societies problems with a good solid watered down entry requirement, overinclusive and expensive university education. God knows we need more arts graduates to work on the tube or work in PR. I heard a rumour the other day that once upon a time people didn't have to go to University. That's right! These people were £12000 richer than all of us straight off the bat!
"It's the software that's the problem. They have not been properly programmed, because they have not read enough." Clever word play BJ clever word play. Software. Programmed. You have clearly read a lot of books. But you know what they say about a man's library, the bigger the bookworm.....
Well that's it really. It's a nonsense article written by a nonsense man about a nonsense subject. The argument that computer games are responsible for poor literacy isn't water-tight. However, if BJ is right about the number of gamers and consoles in the UK isn't it time the government starts to treat gaming seriously? The DCMS, (that's the government department for culture, media and sport, which when it isn't haemorrhaging money into the Olympics that nobody wants, governs "media" and "culture". Both of which, are massively under funded, the Lottery, temporarily keeping some of these projects, inititatives and institutions afloat) website
here, has contributed little to nothing towards videogames. A few studies into violence and videogames in which no link was found on a number of occassions and a few exploratory investigations. Until then as gamers we have to suffer from lazy articles blaming, lamenting and generally misunderstanding games and gamers.
Cunzy"I can't read books and play games"1 1 out.
Labels: Boris Johnson, Journalism, Laughable, Telegraph
