Video Gaming PR Industry

When writing about the video game industry, I found that the scope of the topic was broad considering the range of age in this item.  Whether young or old, video gamers equally populate this large industry.  For example, in my work at EB Games, I find that males and females over the age of 50 years tend to sway between Massive Multiplayer Online games, such as World of Warcraft and Online Poker.  Males and females under the age of 50 years vary in their preferences and therefore no conclusion can be made.  After much research, I found a subject that is very prominent in the North America mindset, and it has a large effect on all gamers–especially young individuals; violence and gender bias.

The gaming industry since 1985 has promoted a fairly misogynistic view of society, depicting women as the damsels in distress and men as the heroic virtuous leaders.  Even though the video game industry has come a long way with human rights in the past 20 years–supporting equality in the workforce, school system, and at home for all genders, races, and religions, this commercial entity still has a firm grasp on this old gaming paradigm.  As a result of this bias, video games are very sociable to young males and less to young females.  Since I am very ingrained in this industry with experience of more than 12 years, I didn’t see this as a problem until last year, July 2005.

Violence in games is widespread due to the lack of parenting skills among many other societal faults.  I found in my research that violent video games are undeniably linked to violence if played extensively over a period of time without proper control, rules, or boundaries in place.  Young females and males, mostly males, who played violent video games tend to exhibit violent and disobedient behaviour over others who have not played these games.  As a PR student and soon to be practicioner, it is my ethical duty to make sure this trend does not corrupt the community as well as the companies producing these game titles.   Some people may argue that since the ESRB rating system is on games, children of lesser ages will be able to obtain these copies that they are restricted to rent or buy.  Unfortunately, working in a store such as EB Games, I have little faith in parenting skills of parents today and find that most kids coax these authoritative figures to buy these violent games anyways.  It’s unfortunate, but this field of PR work is loitered with land mines and needs careful reassessment from both the company and the relations expert (ME . 

I have also included some annotated bibliographies as others have in case you would like to look at this topic further:

Kirsh, S.  (Summer 1998).  Seeing the World Through Mortal Kombat-colored Glasses:

Violent Video Games and the Development of a Short-term Hostile Attribution Bias.  Childhood, 5, no. 2, 177-84.

Kirsh reigns in the empirical evidence in order to show how violence inevitably contributes to long-term bias opinions.  He also notes that prolonged usage with lack of discipline results in a disruptive child/adult.

Funk, J., Buchman, D.  (June 1996).  Playing Violent Video and Computer Games and Adolescent Self-Concept.  The Journal of Communication, 46,  19-33.            This article also follows up on the violence that the Dills wrote about, but it focuses  

            more on the female perspective.  It explains how alienated females feel when trying to

            cope with the male-dominated gaming industry.

Dill, K., Dill, J.  (1998).  Video Game Violence: A Review of the Empirical Literature.  Aggression and Violent Behaviour, 3, no. 4, 407-428.

            This article gives a great historical background on the gaming industry and how it has affected the youth playing it.  They also target mainly young males since they are the majority of study in the late 1990s.

Ernest, G.  (August 2006).  Are the Gaming Industry’s PR Wounds Self-Inflicted?  Retrieved October 14, 2006 from http://mmorpg.qj.net/Are-the-Gaming-Industry-s-PR-Wounds-Self-Inflicted-/pg/49/aid/61753.

            This small blurb is a concern expressed by the gaming community about bad PR

             presentations about video games.  Ernest explains how Thompson is blatantly

             accusing the industry without consistent, empirical data.