"To some they're just a bit of fun. To others they're a threat to our well-being..." So began last night's Panorama (a BBC investigative news programme) on the subject of whether games are addictive or not. Not a stellar start, but with last night also hosting the launch of the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm, the subject is at least timely.
What followed was fairly predictable.
Opening with raspy Prodigy music and the shocking revelation that game blockbusters now generate long queues at midnight for games like Starcraft, that they sell more than film and music, and that they have lost their "nerdy" image, it declared an immediate "but what of the children?" theme and then proceeded into well-worn territory: South Korean game players, addictive loops in some games, and so on and so forth.
Cue interviews with individual addicts, many shots of hand-wringing parents, eminent psychologists looking serious, and some heroes from the industry piping up that games are the new rock and roll, industry associations talking up the educational benefits of games and explaining how they are much better than so-called 'passive media'. And a sideswipe at UKIE for not having an obvious link about addiction on their website for good measure. And some images of rats obsessively pressing levers for food.
So far, so ordinary.
It was an all-too predictable tale of the TV journalist looking very serious and shooting a piece of serious journalism (tm) while failing to grasp their subject matter. What Panorama, and many people, don't understand is that games create cultures. Just as opera is a culture, modern art is a culture and dance music is a culture, games are a culture.