Two leading newspapers in the UK have today published editorials that are damning to video games. The Times and The Telegraph have published editorials by Giles Whitell and Jenny McCartney respectively.

The Times article is entitled ‘Video games: I’ll never buy one’ and The Telegraph runs with the lead ‘ There is a majority against vile video games, and it is moral.’ Both of these article are signs of a growing trend in the British media to portray video games as bad, evil and sociopath creating tools.

I will not quote the two papers, that has been done by plenty of other sites already and you can easily read the articles at the links above. Rather I just want to take a moment to wonder, wonder when and why these leading British paper became so conservative and so willing to jump on the bandwagon of anti-gaming writing.

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That is the heading of a job listing on Star Now a British job listing site which deals with newspapers, actors and more.

The job listing at hand contains the following information;

A national newspaper wants your story and will pay hundreds of pounds to the right person.

Write a few lines about how computer games turned you to crime and if it’s something we like, we’ll call you straight back.

While there is no mention of paper running this advert it is very convenient that the job listing appeared on the 27th of March. That was the day that the Byron Review was published.

This is highly disconcerting that a newspaper, regardless of quality, is willing to advertise so blatantly for people to send in stories which will most likely be false, of how computer games turned them to crime. This is easily something which can be used to create an alarmist, over the top headline that will target and damage the reputation of the gaming industry.

Disgusting to see this kind of thing occurring even though we all know it happens. If anyone sees a headline about ‘Games turned me to the Mob’ or such like in any British papers then it should be considered with the utmost caution.

via Kotaku.

There is a fine line between success and failure in games where getting a big score or appearing on a leader board are the driving features of the game. Games like Peggle have done fantastically well with this format, The Club however failed to perform as well as it could have.

Fortunately we have a new game to add to the list of successes, that is Red Lynx’s Trials 2 Second Edition. Trials 2 SE is based on the earlier Trials games and probably some even older imitators which I have never heard of or played. Trials 2 SE is the latest edition to the franchise, it is a heavily revised version of Trials 2 offering loads of new features and better chances for gaming fun.

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I am currently in my second year of University, and I have had to start thinking about dissertation topics as by the beginning of May I have to have written a Dissertation Proposal. Which is going to be all kinds of fun…I may actually be serious there.

I have an idea of a dissertation title: “The Digital Age: The Internet and Video Games as Political Tools and Victims of Politics.” Well it is going to be something like that anyway. Why I hear you ask? Well for my the internet and video games take up a massive part of my life (wow…that sounds a bit sad) and they are of great interest to me.

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BAM! That is the first proper trailer for Battlefield: Heroes. Wow! While Rock, Paper, Shotgun may have some detailed impressions based on what they saw at the GDC…I shall give a quick rundown of my thoughts based on that video.

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