If you’re anything like me, you’ll spend a few hours of each day rounding children with epilepsy up and sitting them in front of a strobe light until they start to resemble screaming, crying vibrators. The British government, however, doesn’t seem to find epileptic fits quite so amusing and has put pressure on game developers to screen their games for images and effects that could cause them.
Conservative MP John Penrose submitted the motion in Parliament and has been backed by dozens of his fellow slimeballs … um … politicians. The motion followed the case a 10-year-old boy who suffered from seizures thanks to playing Rayman: Raving Rabbids. It wasn’t just the Rabbids who were raving that day.
Penrose wants “to take action, now, to change the law so no more young lives are affected by seizures triggered by electronic video games.” Thing is, while that’s noble and all, these products have very clear warning labels on them. Once again, who is the person who was meant to be looking after this kid and didn’t bother paying heed to such warnings? Of course, it’s never anything to do with the parents, apparently.
Ubisoft has agreed to screen all its games in the future, but I honestly feel that games are being singled out yet again. It’s not that game companies shouldn’t be avoiding these kinds of problematic images if they can, but trying to put political pressure on them is ridiculous, and it should be a developer’s right to put in gigantic strobe lighting effects if it so wishes, provided there are suitable warnings. A GamePolitics commenter pointed out that that single biggest cause of epileptic seizures isn’t even videogames — but television. Now, let’s see the government try and ban that in the name of savin’ the chilluns.
