Yesterday, I wrote about mediawatch-UK, the British media watchdog, and the abuse of said organization by gamers over their comments on MadWorld. To summarize what I said in that post, the gamers who were quick to send John Beyer, the head of mediawatch-UK, a torrent of abuse and uninformed opinions and insults were wrong to do so, and should have considered their wording when writing emails and how these messages would make the overall gaming community look to an external audience, who will be more familiar with the watchdog than with gamers such as ourselves.
I also took the time (about 45 minutes, actually) to write to Beyer, and he has been admirably quick in responding to my own concerns and pleas. Not that they appeared to mean much to him, when compared to the abusive messages he received some time ago.
Hit the jump for both my full email and his response, and why I’m not too impressed with what he had to say.
So, at the end of yesterday’s newspost I said I’d email Beyer for myself, to try and put across the point of view of the more sensible gamer (without sounding too pretentious). Over the next hour or so I put together a polite, balanced, yet gently argumentative email for him, and you can read it for yourself here in full. If you’re not a fan of long-winded text documents, I essentially said:
- The entirety of the gaming community is not comprised of abusive, aggressive morons, but that doesn’t make one side better than the other
- mediawatch-UK appears to be a foundation that campaigns ([sic] ban) with old-fashioned values and not those held dear by the so-called ‘Generation X’, which views violence and profanity in a different context; talking to unfavorable newspapers such as the Daily Mail doesn’t help with this image
- m-UK needs to realize that the Wii, while dominated by casual games, is not a family-exclusive console and games such as MadWorld have as much of a right to appear on the system as family games
- The Wii isn’t the only console which features a mix of family and hardcore games
- Campaigning for a ban on something one finds unsavoury is akin to the censorship of freedom of speech in the games industry; it’s not exactly right, despite the foundation’s conservative values
All in all, I feel my points were expressed well and that I’d made a pretty convincing argument for the gaming community compared to the angry emails mediawatch-UK received back in August.
Naturally, Mr Beyer’s reply would address all of the above concerns, explaining why the foundation saw fit to campaign for the game’s censorship but at the same time justifying it from the point of view of a gamer, maybe even making it sound fair.
Uhhhh. Not exactly. His full reply awaits over the page.
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Living in the UK I know what drival the UK media can wip up at short notice, with headlines and introductory blurbs that will strike fear into any unsuspecting person (see http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1826284.ece). It is incredibly irritating the stigma associated with a ‘gamer’ in the general sense of things in the UK, and I am dissapointed that Beyers dismissed your email so suddenly.
I’m pretty annoyed that all they could come up with was THAT! Seriously I wish they’d grow a pair and back up their convictions.
Saying that, they have a really good point… They have the right to their opinion. No, they should still have to back up their opinion when queried on it.
His reply was a real waste of space on this article.
No wonder these people all gather in one place and try to attack something as a mob, that is the only way for them to win an argument, by drowning the voice of others, because if you single one of them out and talk to them point blank, you will see what you saw here.
Ignorance at it’s best….Mr Thompson.
My guess is that he just sent that as a “Reply All”, it’s pretty plain. Maybe your e-mail was lost in the sea of hatemail, Yamster. I mean, if his inbox is still being spammed, why would he look through it? Not that I’m defending him, just providing a possible explanation for his actions.
Fair play to you for having a go with writing to them. I know enough about them to know you may as well not have bothered.
It’s certainly true that the abusive e-mails to them have not helped. Look at the comments under news items on any newspaper or TV site in the UK and you’ll see one thing: for every reaction there is always an equal but opposite overreaction. We don’t help ourselves with that, but that doesn’t mean that the rational majority deserve to be told what we can and can’t do. Their brief reply suggests that isn’t their aim: the way people are mobilised to seek blood until they get their way suggests otherwise.
Indeed, the “equal but opposite overreaction” thing does apply to organisations like this too: not just the “great unwashed”. Witness the Jonathan Ross/ Russell Brand debacle (any Americans not familiar with this will find a Google search sets them straight). What they did was wrong. Organisations like Mediawatch and papers like the Daily Mail turned it into a national scandal, allowing us once again to overlook the real issues. With the Ross/Brand thing, a stupid matter that should have been dealt with internally; with gaming, generally irresponsible parenting and disturbed individuals for whom pretty much any trigger will do.
I play GTA4. I spend my life trying to be nice to people. That’s most of us on here isn’t it?
Well done yamster. I have to plead ignorance here because I don’t know much about mediawatch-UK but I would guess he is probably a very busy man. I agree the response was short but at least you got one. I’ve e-mailed companies before and gotten nothing back. I’m not defending the company at all as I disagree with their views, but I’m just saying I don’t think they were completely shuning you. Well written yamster, thanks for representing gamers with a mature, intelligent e-mail.
Mediawatch UK and Beyer, pretty much our version of the old PMRC and Tipper Gore, if Tipper Gore as the originator of the organisation was a blue rinsed slightly unstable (IMO) old dear…
As a measure of Mr Beyer, once saw him on a show on the BBC trying to argue with the then editor of Loaded (FHM/Esquire/Maxim but more down market) Magazine that in his opinion swearing/profanity on TV can never be justified.
That’s never…
So your character hits their thumb with a hammer, and all they can say is a Sylvester-esque “Suffering Sucotash!”…
Got shot? Your character better not say anything more than “drat!, drat! and double drat!”