Oh, gods, him again. He talks a big game, but so does Peter Molyneux. Well, let's see what he has to say.
(Clicks.)
No audio. Well, that's helpful.
(Cranks up sound.) No audio.
(Different browser.) No audio.
(Different unrelated video.) LOUD audio!
Okay, I can't debate his exact words because I can't
hear them. But his premise is still inherently flawed.
Portnow wants to start lobbying in DC to stop proposed anti-game legislation,
Assumes people like Leland Yee can be stopped by one man or a small group of people telling him he's wrong. They can't. People have already tried - a moral guardian will not be swerved by an agent of the Satan he fights, and a politician will not be swerved from pandering to a demographic if it doesn't lose him anything. Seriously, what are all the left-leaning 20- and 30-something gamers going to do to him? Vote for the
Republican?
start a 'games for good' jam to ensure that more such games are produced,
Oh, goody, another game jam.
and start lobbying to change the way grants for educational and science games work to make sure that games you'd actually want to play get funded.
I'd like to see how that'd be doable. Change a grant system and make a playable educational game? Both are bloody difficult, trying to do two at once is impossible.
"Every year I see tens of millions of dollars wasted," says Portnow, "on games that don't engage; flash cards with 3D avatars and training simulators that are less engaging than reading the manual."
Wait, training simulators? Like flight sims for pilots? I'd want a pilot to have some hours flying a fake plane before he was put in a real one, even if what he really wants to do is fly through the air like a bird. A kid with a learners permit gets similar simulation training by tooling around back roads and in empty parking lots where they can get a feel for the controls without much risk of hitting things. Simulation is important even when it isn't very fun!
But communication is at the heart of Portnow's plan; by creating a dialogue, putting up an alternative to the 'murder simulator' trope that the mainstream media still turns to, Portnow hopes to create a better world for gamers.
Yeah, like how the Comics Code Authority, 'devil music' rock and roll panics, and D&D Satanism hysteria were defeated by constant lobbying by DC/EMI/TSR and not by gradual societal change or market forces. And slow dancing? The slow-dancing lobby sunk MILLIONS into letting fully-dressed boys and girls hold each other and move around a bit!
Let me explain something: Society is always declining. Our children are always being seduced by some evil or made lazy by some innovation. It has been at least since writing destroyed oral storytelling and probably since cave painting destroyed the time-honored tradition of sitting around the fire scratching one's ass and waiting to fall asleep.
And yet, we're still here. New demons rise every day, and old ones are subsumed into the mainstream.
"I don't want my nieces and nephews to grow up and have to fight this fight," Portnow concludes.
They won't. Because by the time they're grown up, gamers will hold high office.
"I don't want them to have to be embarrassed about their hobby
Are there still gamers embarrassed about their hobby? Really? Do we shame the people who play Angry Birds on their phones?
or live in a world that misses out on all the good games can do because we never really tried to change the conversation."
"Change the conversation" implies, to me anyway, cultural change. The main thrust of this initiative is political. Not the same thing.
