The games industry needs to tell its story better to head off public concern | Opinion

gamesindustry.biz:

Why are so many people scared of video games? It’s a question that the industry has wrangled with for pretty much as long as it has existed.

Whether it’s fear that violent games are polluting the minds of young players all the way through to left-field stories about the possibility of games giving players deep vein thrombosis, there has often been a jarring disconnect between the medium and industry we see and what the world perceives of us.

This distinction reared its head again last week when a story landed in the media from the UK’s NHS-funded gaming disorder clinic that perfectly pressed the video game moral panic buttons.

The industry needs to step out from behind the palisades and explain much more about how games work to address concerns head on

The story opened with a fevered panic about cases soaring year-on-year. It featured some grisly and upsetting case studies of young people seemingly driven to despair by overplaying. And in light of this, it proposed strong punchy proposals – from banning under 18s from all in-game spending to putting NHS labels on game boxes – to resolve the concerns raised.

The problem with the piece was that the evidence included within it supported a different conclusion; namely, that concerns around gaming disorder should probably be reduced, rather than increased based upon the clinic’s reporting.

This is especially true of the treatment figures cited within the piece. On the face of it, the clinic’s claim that it has treated 745 people over four years for gaming disorder sounds like a shocking total.

But if we zoom out, we see something else. Taking that 745 figure at face value (which is tough to do because it includes patients and family members in the count) and setting it