How do these misconceptions come about though, and did last night's event go some way to lift any of them? Industry legend Ian Livingstone said that the Gamers’ Voice event was extremely important: “it’s really all about industry acceptance. For so long we’ve been the sort of ‘dark side’ of the entertainment industry, but now they are socially inclusive. Largely because games have moved out of the bedroom and into the living room.
“People have woken up and accepted that games are good, social, cultural experiences of equal value to music and film. But it just takes time to break misconceptions down. They’re mostly made by people who have never played a game before. Every day these barriers are being broken down.”
Of course, when you want to show support for the games industry, one of the big topics is in financial support for UK developers. In the last couple of years the country has slipped to be the 4th most appealing home for devs in the world, behind Asian countries and Canada.
“Unfortunately, tax breaks are seen as a handout when I think they’re an investment,” Livingstone adds. “What the UK industry needs is a level playing field. Countries like Canada - Quebec in particular - are attracting publishers and developers to set up shop there because they’re subsidising to more than 30 per cent. In doing so they’ve attracted $1.5bn of inward investment from the likes of EA, Ubisoft and Eidos. It’s cash positive for them. It’s not a handout, but actually an investment for the future. Games tick all the boxes for securing talent in the UK, why not invest in it?”
The CEO of industry group TIGA, Dr Richard Wilson, agrees that games should be taken more seriously. “From TIGA’s perspective we’re trying to say two things. One is that this is a serious industry and it’s got a part to play in rebalancing the economy. The second is that this is a viable career for people - these are highly skilled jobs, reasonably well paid and extremely satisfying."
Perhaps, as MPs discover the fun that can be had in playing video games, this culture change may help the mainstream media understand the industry a bit better as well - and avoid future mishaps like the recent Panorama investigation into gaming addiction. “I think that’s absolutely right,” Wilson said.
“There are obviously many people in the general public - a minority I think, but still a lot of people - who don’t understand that games are a healthy form of entertainment. This event helps do that.” He added that focusing on how important the industry is could help both newspapers and MPs see the hobby in a fresh light.
“Games enrich us as human beings. I don’t want to get too philosophical about it, but they are enormously enjoyable for people, they become part of people’s lives and British developers are making truly great games.”
So has the event helped to convince Ed Vaizey that financial support for the games industry is something worth working on? “You get very interesting people working in the industry but I also think it has understood now that it’s an incredibly important mainstream industry and that it has got to engage with the policy makers. It’s now doing that in very imaginative ways.
“As I’ve said for many years, the public policy debate on video games has been very sterile for a long time - just talking about the alleged adverse social impact of gaming. I think a lot of Parliamentarians need to see for themselves how gaming has moved on from when they were young. Those who may not have teenage kids with the latest gear, they need to see how social and realistic these experiences are. But it’s very exciting and I think it’s a very inspiring idea to have a games day here.
“Attitudes to gaming all started to change around three or four years ago when we were starting to read stories about how technology was helping disabled people or how it was working in health and education,” he added.
Vaizey concluded the matter by enthusiastically saying that he would like to invite the industry to meet with the Treasury and Education officials in order to further entrench video games into society as a positive medium. Although there have been mishaps in the road to social understanding of gaming, it seems that events like these - casual gatherings and information-giving exercises - are just what is needed to get the powers that be to listen. It’s still early days, but perhaps this time gaming really is beginning to grow up.