Mediawatch-UK speaks out against gamer critics

Mediawatch-UK has spoken out against the criticism it received from gamers following its own condemnation of violent video games.

The watchdog organisation, headed by organisation director John Beyer, told UK tabloid the Daily Mail that it wanted the BBFC to deny a rating for forthcoming Sega title Madworld, therefore banning the title from the UK.

Gamers were vocal in their response to the move and inundated the organisations inbox with ‘hostile emails’.

But Mediawatch-UK was reluctance to be on the receiving end of criticism, as the firm highlighted in its newsletter:

Within hours of these remarks being published a rain of hostile emails from gamers poured into our office telling us to ‘shut the f*** up’, suggesting that we have ‘got our knickers in a twist’, demanding, as though we were on trial for an heinous crime, to know what right we had to impose our ‘narrow minded bigotry’ on them and stopping them playing an ‘adult’ game of their choice.

"Others, of a more sober character, asked reasonably why we should be so concerned about games when there was so much violence in films and on television! We were also accused us of being ‘cowards’ for not responding properly to belligerent strictures and one ‘emailer’ observed glibly that ‘violent acts are not a symptom of video games and films, but rather the human condition’. Another said: ‘If you don’t like violent content, don’t view or use it’…

Feature articles, grossly exaggerating the significance of our comments, were written in computer game magazines exonerating the multimillion pound games industry and headlines were achieved on Google News UK and dismissive remarks made in The Guardian newspaper…”

Thanks to GamePolitics.