Peter Moore responds to Obama's anti-gaming stance
EA Sports boss launches Active challenge
Delivering a Father's Day speech to America, President Obama was once again found taking a side-ways swipe at the negative impact of video games on family life.
EA Sports boss Peter Moore quickly stepped up to challenge Obama's comments about the negative impact of gaming to the American Medical Association, posing a 30 day EA Sports Active challenge (presumably in the hope garnering a few headlines in the process).
"I'd be willing to bet there are more consoles getting far more use in American homes than there is exercise equipment, so it's up to us to continue to use the platform for good," Moore commented.
Obama has apparently portrayed games in a negative light three times in various speeches over the last ten days, the president implying that games are linked to laziness, something Peter Moore obviously has a problem with. Nintendo would presumably disagree, too.
Thanks to http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/06/21/ea039s-peter-moore-challenges-obama">GamePolitics.
Comments
Considering video games are more mentally and physically engaging than television, it seems like tv would be a bigger threat to obesity and laziness than video games, but Obama fails to mention television specifically.
My guess is that Obama feels that attacking video games is easier than attacking television in general because he assumes that no one of voting age plays video games - that video games are the stuff of children, and the voting public either hate children playing video games or only tolerate them. He doesn't realize that the generation that was brought up on video games has yet to put them down, but HAS gained the right to vote.
Moore is correct to assume we have a responsibility, and we should assume that responsibility. Vilifying all games as junk is the same as vilifying all television as junk - both are incorrect. We should recognize that there are junk video games, just as there are good video games. It seems like any time someone questions whether the newest GTA has excessive violence, the gaming community gets their hackles raised in a manner that is reminiscent of pre-voting teenagers.
Obama's basing his statements on incorrect assumptions, and we should try to show him how incorrect those assumptions are.