MP leaps to Modern Warfare 2’s defense

By Adam Englebright | November 9, 2009

Tom Watson MP, the Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East (even I think that’s a bit silly) perhaps best known for being the first MP to start a blog, has come to the defence of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in Parliament today. He was responding to questions raised in the House by (oh, what a surprise) Keith bloody Vaz (notorious in gaming circles for publicly attacking videogames to gain publicity and further his own agenda). Hit the jump for more juicy politics!

Vaz was using Modern Warfare 2’s popularity to rake up (yet again) the age rating system for games, and what steps the government was taking to prevent their sale to minors. Despite the recent legal wranglings with regards to ratings law, I don’t think that games retailers are going to start selling MW2 to under-18’s any time soon. But anyway. Vaz’s question to the Culture, Media and Sport Minister, Sion Simon, went like this:

The Minister will be aware that at midnight a new and violent video game, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare”, is to be released. It contains scenes of such brutality that even the manufacturers have put warnings in the game telling people how they can skip particular scenes. Given the recommendations of the Byron review, specifically paragraphs 32 and 33, what steps do the Government propose to take to ensure that such violent games do not fall into the hands of children and young people? This is not about censorship—it is about protecting our children.

The Minister responded thusly

The clearest recommendation of the Byron review is that content suitable for adults should be labelled and sold as such, and that it should be an offence to sell such content to children. That is the case under current law and it will be the case when the law changes under the digital economy Bill. The game to which my right hon. Friend refers is certificate 18 and should not be sold to children. The Government’s job is to ensure that what adults should be able to get is clearly labelled, and that children are not in danger of being subjected to adult content.

and Tom Watson chimed in with this

I have seen the content of the video game. It is unpleasant, although no worse than in many films and books. The game carries a content warning. It is an 18-plus game, and carries the British Board of Film Classification 18-plus rating as well. Does the Minister agree that it would be better for Members of the House to support the many thousands of game designers and coders, and the many millions of game users, rather than collaborating with the Daily Mail to create moral panic over the use of video games?

It’s fantastic to see games getting the support they deserve from Parliament, and for Mr Watson to namecheck the Daily Fail specifically with regards to this story, and I’m grateful that someone’s taking ‘our’ side – well, the industry’s side – in this debate. To cap it off, he set up a pro-videogames pressure group on Facebook called Gamer’s Voice which (at the time of writing) has over 4,200 members, and I would strongly encourage you to join. In conclusion, go Tom Watson, my new favourite MP!

Via Gamesindustry.biz, and I also reference a lot of Jim Sterling’s articles. Quotes from the Hansard.