Games for Change rebuttals Trump with its own beautiful video game montage

Non-profit organisation Games for Change has an issue with the video montage that President Trump used to open his discussion surrounding violence in video games, calling the blame on video games a “scapegoat for the real conversation.” Countering the ultra-violent scenes, Games for Change has created its own video to highlight the beauty and splendour found within video games, as well as a thank you to everyone involved in and around the industry.

Trump’s “Violence in Video Games” has gained a lot of criticism for taking scenes out of context and displaying them to push an agenda, disregarding everything else in the process. Games for Change has since responded with its own montage, encouraging players to get their “#GameOn” in its “88 Seconds of Video Games,” focusing on titles like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Ori and the Blind Forest and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which has won multiple Game of the Year awards.

The video response is an attempt to undo the damage that Trump’s video has caused to the video game industry, as Games for Change president Susanna Pollack explains in an interview with Polygon. While video games have a lot more to offer than just the violence showcase in the video posted by The White House, the industry often gets lumped “into the black-and-white argument around whether games are ‘good or bad,’” explains Pollack.

Instead, Games for Change’s montage acts as “a love letter to the community,” particularly towards those that develop and make the video games in the first place. Unfortunately, while the video is there to “highlight that there is so much more to be expressed in the medium,” it is unlikely to garner the attention that Trump’s message will and therefore its message might suffer as a result.

Pollack equates video games towards other entertainment media such as film and television in that all have the ability to “move us, entertain us, teach us and sometimes disturb us.” Incidentally, film and television seem to be next on the agenda for Trump’s administration, as this discussion surrounding video game violence was just the beginning.

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KitGuru Says: Even if it is the same discussion that’s been had for the past 25 or so years, I can applaud a conversation being had about anything, provided that all aspects are included in the discussion. Unfortunately, ignoring context does look more like the conversation is a scapegoat rather than a full-fledged discussion. What do you think of the Games for Change video showing the beauty of video games?

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