MP Tom Watson Calls Panorama Game Addiction Show “Anachronistic and Inaccurate”

After the airing of Panorama’s “Addicted to Games?” last week, Labour MP and supporter of videogames Tom Watson has spoken out against the programme, calling it “anachronistic and inaccurate.”

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Watson said it was a “heavily editorialised piece” and said he was disappointed that it only showed cases where videogames had been a detrimental influence on people’s lives.

“They could have talked to some of the people who are doing very positive things with games,” Watson, said, “they could have talked to Graham Brown-Martin, he could have put them in touch with some of the greatest teachers in the country who are capturing the imagination of young people every day using off-the-shelf game packages.” (Graham Brown-Martin runs Learning Without Frontiers, a research organisation focussed on new teaching and learning practices).

He also said that it was a “pity” that the show had “rehearsed a quite hackneyed mantra really about games doing bad things for children.” He noted that “anything done to excess can have a downside. No-one seriously disagrees with that.”

He made reference to the show’s suggestion that “hidden” psychological methods were used to addict players. He said that “to try and project the games industry as trying to deliberately deprive people of sleep, money, time, work and social contact is basically anachronistic and inaccurate.”

The BBC One show, available to watch online, highlighted the cases of gamers who had become “addicted” to games; all men whose education and social life had become stilted because of their hobby. The show also visited South Korea where gaming addiction is more a problem, highlighting cases of videogame-related (but necessarily not caused) issues.

You can read my full impressions on the show here and can watch the programme on YouTube in part one and part two.