SCEE's Ray Maguire responds to 'Change4Life' ad, addresses industry stereotypes
- Posted March 20th, 2009 at 15:19 EDT by Eric Blattberg
- 17 Comments
Now that the public no longer believes that video games are for children, people have now attached themselves to the notion that most gamers are fat, sedentary, and lazy, as evidenced by The Gate's controversial Change4Life advert. Ray Maguire, Sony Computer Entertainment U.K. managing director, has provided his take on the situation.
"I must admit that when I first saw the Change 4 Life ‘PlayStation’ ad I felt exactly the same way as everyone else," Maguire begins. "How could this happen? How could the Department of Health and the charities, the ad agency, all get this so wrong?"
"...Anyone who knows anything about games," he continues, "which is half the population these days, will have immediately dismissed the ad as irrelevant. The other half, who don’t play games, would have immediately accepted the stereotype."
For all of the change the video game industry has gone through over the last few years, Maguire believes the public's perception of the industry has remained largely static.
"The industry has changed more in the past five years than in the previous 15, but the general public’s image of this industry has hardly changed at all.
"As the BAFTA Video Game Awards recently demonstrated, this is now a grown-up industry centered on art, creativity and innovation."
How, then, can we get the public to recognize that?
"The games industry must constantly demonstrate when it has been a cause for good," advises Maguire. "We must explore what elements we have that are positive, such as our contribution to GDP and technical training at colleges and in-house. We provide hugely good value entertainment and we have growing links with education. We are a modern, growing industry that promotes art and creativity. The products that we make often aid social interaction, improving life skills and even fitness. ELSPA and the industry at large must find ways of getting a lot closer to the Government, to assist them with their tasks. We must become partners.
"Then the stereotype might just fade."
Head on over to MCV to read Maguire's full editorial.
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Comments
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the_core44
- 11:24am EDT - March 20th, 2009
- 1
First! thats just....idiotic, stereotyping anyone is idiotic.
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liquidus118
- 11:40am EDT - March 20th, 2009
- 4
Oh well, people who think we're all fat and lazy are ignorant stupid and presumptious anyway.
Think of them as annoying flys; ignore them and I'll go away.
Or slap them with a shoe, eithers good.
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O_G_H
- 12:07pm EDT - March 20th, 2009
- 5
32 yrs old. Career in gov't. 5' 8' tall, 165 Lbs. Married (wife has great legs). Homeowner. Penn State University degree in graphic design.
...Hardcore gamer since I was 8 years old. So much for public perception.
But if gaming is holding young people back, obviously they need a pardigm shift in their life.
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Shadowgate
- 12:12pm EDT - March 20th, 2009
- 6
I have a 330 Bench / 350 squat / 500 Dead lift 8-10 % body fat and 120 hrs of socome time bring it........
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1solidsnake |
solid1snake67- 2:23pm EDT - March 20th, 2009
- 8
lol , obama said i should stop playing video games and start spending time with my family, i remember that in a campaign commercial. the goverment can't tewll you want to do!!!!!
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jigglespsu
- 3:01pm EDT - March 20th, 2009
- 9
The truth is that the evil-doers in supermarkets like Tesco are ramming sugar into the mouth of every man woman and child ... it has nothing to do with games. It's all about the decline of society from eating real meals and working hard to people living easy lives and ramming their faces with crisps.
Get the women back in the kitchen and the men back in the fields. (chauvanist? damn right!)
As for the BAFTA's ... well they were a freakin joke anyway. They had absolutely no ideaa what was happening in the games market.
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sh3-rg
- 9:27am EDT - March 21st, 2009
- 13
I was oneof the many that complained to the Advertising Standards Authority... got the verdict in the post today - rejected the claims made by members of the public, game developers' trade Association, Tiga etc. basically they got away with it because of the small text. Just imagine the uproar if that kid had been reading a book... ASA = pussies
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zarajoe
- 6:01am EDT - March 22nd, 2009
- 14
That kids got a plasystation, what a legend.
Oh and i loved the image used for this link, that is one of the best South Park episodes ever made.
Finally about this article, I don't care what people think anyway, when people say that I'm lazy and a nerd for playing computer games I just tell them to get f@cked
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