Sunday, March 15, 2009

UK Trying to Connect Everything Bad in This World With Video Games




The UK is nuts. I mean, of course we already knew that already—Ireland and Great Britain are pretty much tied for most WTF eccentricities in Europe (And let’s not even get STARTED with Wales). But now they’ve taken it too far with their Change4Life Campaign, which is trying to link video games with alcoholism, drug abuse, and even an early death. Um, sorry to tell you this, UK, but I think Ireland has a better chance of suffering another potato famine than Tiny Tommy taking drugs just because he played Haze just the other day.

The only problem is, this campaign is run by some pretty respectable committies, such as the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research and Diabetes UK. So in other words, this isn’t just Truth.com showing some cowboy singing with a tube in his throat because of lung cancer, these are some pretty heavy hitters. And they’re connecting video games to a pretty relevant issue that really can’t be refuted—sitting around and doing nothing but playing video games all day can cause childhood obesitiy, which really IS a problem in this world today.

That’s not to say that the gaming community isn’t up arms against these ads. Sega, Atari, and other companies are pretty irate about it, which shows a healthy looking boy just sitting around in a chair, doing “nothing.” And Sony might even take legal action against the ad agency as the boy in the picture looks like he’s holding a PLAYSTATION controller. I guess a Wii-Mote wouldn’t have been as effective, eh? What with all that controller swinging, tennis action going on at Grandma’s.

But what do you think? If you’re angry about the ad and want to complain, go here: http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/how_to_complain/. If you want to talk about it, the comment box is below.

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