Weekly Thought: Your Trash, My Treasure

Foxes VS videogames incorporated.

It was recently announced that the government would be re-considering their decision to ban fox-hunting over the coming months, so it’s hardly surprising that the hills are once again alive with the sound of a good, old-fashioned argument. Should our well-to dos be able to gun around the countryside frivolously mowing down the troublesome brush-tails once again, or should we be trying to protect our harrowed wild-life from the over-eager barrel of their shotgun? As terribly sensitive and outrageous as this moral conundrum would happen to be, however, I’ve found that my frustrations lie largely elsewhere this week.

Sickening

Frankly, isn't it a bit hard to stomach when the government is actually considering the vote-loss of re-instating this rather cruel affair instead of ‘risking’ a lead in the polls by going through with the UK games tax-relief that they previously promised? Intended to give the local industry - responsible for such world-wide block-busters as Grand Theft Auto 4 and Batman: Arkham Asylum - a boost, the matter of it not going through after all will be a massive blow considering how this downturn the matter of it not going through after all will be a massive blow considering how this downturn could apparently draw investment away from local developers. What’s more, it could encourage young talent to go abroad in search of a better deal. Which, if they pop over to the likes of Canada, they’re probably going to find.

Now, while I’m well aware that there’s a fairly nasty recession on at the moment and that we should all be tightening our belts, the UK games industry has already fallen from third to fifth place as the largest global games developer. What’s more, if developers are being tempted overseas then we could begin to find a dearth of new, up-and-coming talent in the future, meaning a crash in man-power and providing a subsequent spanner in the works for eventual product quality, not to mention the resulting returns.

Respect

This whole mess would rather suggest that the government doesn't have quite enough respect for the game industry, and the fact that they’re willing to consider re-igniting the pastime of reducing foxes to a fine red mist over helping a positive gold-mine at all is definitely worrying. It doesn't make sense - game sales have boomed over this past generation with the likes of the Wii bringing play to far greater audiences, while yet more players are taking up a controller due to services such as Xbox LIVE and the Playstation Network. Old habits die hard I suppose, and even now there are still those who would have use believe that these titles provide a negative effect for our well-being, despite this fact being disputed and disproven at almost every turn (recent research has actually shown that gaming can improve social and visual skills with the only tangible negative effects hitting individuals harbouring personality or mental issues, for example). Regardless of how far they've come over the past decade, games are still an easy scapegoat in a battle for the affections of those who don't know any better.

With any luck newer efforts such as motion camera Kinect, the prevelance of online play and the increasingly impressive credentials of said online services (aimed at all the family, gamer or not) will begin to turn the tide. Anyway, who knows what will happen when the successor to the Wii hits or the 3DS arrives? Going by the stunning precedent already set by Nintendo, the eventual acceptance of videogames as a respected medium might not be quite as far as was once feared.