Dara O’Briain: Mainstream media ruins gaming for the rest of us
Lewis Denby February 24, 2011 - 1:30 pm
Comedian Dara O’Briain has criticised mainstream media coverage of games, saying that its largely anti-gaming agenda spoils the hobby for everyone else.
“The depressing thing about the constant media debate that the games industry is in – whether that’s violence, addiction or demotivation from games – is that [gaming opponents] take people from the very extreme of the bell-curve who are just going to react badly to anything that’s put in front of them – box-sets, dope, whatever,” he said. “And then they spoil the fun for the rest of us.”
O’Briain said, in an interview with CVG, the mainstream media tends to equate minority cases with the majority of the gaming scene. ”At some point, you’ve got to call a halt to it, like. There’s a philosophical element to it: Yeah, I’m sorry, just because one guy made an idiotic decision doesn’t mean the rest of us will.”
He continued: “Kids just occasionally will fall out of trees and hurt themselves really badly. It doesn’t mean you stop your child climbing trees.
“Some poor parent has to bear the brunt of a terrible thing happening like a bicycle accident, but you still take your kid out on a bike. You don’t go to the edge, find the worst hard luck story and then say: ‘Now the rest of you can’t have your fun’.
“Fuck that, you know? We’re enjoying it quite responsibly. It’s sad, isn’t it? It’s just sad. But the tone [in the media] should be: ‘It’s awful when that happens in a pastime we all enormously enjoy and can handle just fine’.”
Dara O’Briain will be hosting this year’s BAFTA Video Game Awards on March 16th, as he did last year, and the year before that.
Comments (4)
It’s interesting to see the gradual creep of gaming into the mainstream. Latest episode of Top Gear had Jeremy Clarkon talking about some BMW saying “buying anything other than [this BMW] if you want a small saloon is like wanting a war game for your Playstation and buying something other than Call of Duty”. While I got the metaphor he was trying to go for, but to me it sounded like he was saying the BMW was overpriced, over-rated and useless to drive alone.
Dara O’Briain seems to actually have some idea of what he’s talking about. Charlie Brooker even more so (he used to be a games journo, didn’t he?).
I agree with most of things he said.
Hes right about everything, stuff like the bulletstorm debacle are hurting gaming
It was painful watching Dara on BBC Breakfast recently, trying to dispel the crap that the presenters kept coming up with.