Wright or W.R.O.N.G?

Before I dive into this week’s tirade, just a friendly disclaimer. Aoife’s blog is just that – my own little personal snapshot into the often fun, often stressful job as a Ginx producer. For info on the channel launch, please refer to our Facebook and Twitter. All you’ll find here are my (admittedly often inane) views and opinions on gaming related issues. So there. ;)

So. Another week, another attack on videogames by people who have never played them. Ho hum. Usually, the standard practise is to assume the position of ‘ignore them and they’ll go away’, but this time it seems like we’ve just about had enough of seeing our favourite past-time’s name being dragged through the mud. We’re retaliating. We’re not going to hang back any more and allow people with next to no knowledge on games, gaming and gamers to make wild assumptions about us, about the games we cherish so dearly and about our own personal habits.

But is this a wise decision?

Don’t get me wrong. I watched the offending show, Channel 5’s The Wright Stuff, and was almost spitting with rage. To me, it’s nothing short of disgusting that the show’s producers, writers and presenters can get away with broadcasting an article such as this with such an obvious disregard for research, proven statistics and balanced debate. The real danger to me though, is using tragic incidents like the horrifically pointless murder of young Agnes Sina-Inakoju and equating them to videogames, with not a shred of evidence to support their views. It is disrespectful to the girl’s memory and harmful journalism in the extreme.

A few days ago, in response to the original panel debate and the internet backlash, the show’s host Matthew Wright hit out at gamer’s who had been up in arms about the segment, branding them ‘brain dead computer nerds’ who are trying to stop Anne Diamond ‘exercising her right to free speech.’

Now, I believe strongly that free speech is one of the most precious rights that we as human beings have and should be defended to the very end, but there’s a difference between that and spouting nonsense conjecture on something that you have only a very basic knowledge about. That would be fine if it was private conversation. As a national broadcaster though, you have a responsibility to provide solid facts and balanced debate, so that viewers can make an informed judgement themselves. This was sorely lacking from this show, which is why I think gamers have finally had enough.

The CVG website has begun a campaign, W.R.O.N.G, which challenges the unfair representation of games in mainstream media by uninformed non-gamers. A valiant effort, but is it worth it? The way I see it, any publicity is good publicity for these daytime TV shows, which have probably seen more online activity in the past few weeks than they ever have. And, as much as I love my fellow gamers, for every five of us that make our points eloquently and intelligently, there will be one who will email in with the slightly more aggressive ‘OMG STFU ABOUT MOH NOOBZZZ,’ which only goes to cement the stereotypes lumped on the rest of us.

As much as I admire CVG’s decision to stand idly by no more, I really think that the best course of action with these shows is to leave well alone. As proved time and time again by people like Alan Titchmarsh, at the end of the day, they will never understand gaming and our love of it, any more than they will understand and relate to our generation. Let them make their wild and inaccurate assumptions. We know better. That should be enough.