How The Lamestream Media Perceives Gaming

On 17th October, the Times of India published an article under ‘Talk It Out’
A segment called ‘Gaming addiction can take a toll on your wallet and relationships’.

Talk It Out is a therapeutical sort of segment where experts assess and respond to queries related to mental health submitted by the readers.

The segment published that day had three questions in which only one was concerned with the issue of spending money while gaming; the question was: “My husband is totally addicted to gaming and is betting and losing money….What can I do to help this situation and get him to De-addict”.

In that question, there is a major error, substituting gaming for gambling would correct this mistake. The response by the expert counselor doubled down on the argument of gaming saying it was “addictive and difficult to disentangle from.” While I do think the issue of gambling is serious, miswording it does major damage to the already adverse image of gaming as in computer gaming or mobile gaming. In the article, the rest of the two questions were completely unrelated to the headline and the headline was misworded just for the sake of attention-grabbing.

On 4th October, The Hindu published a piece called ‘Gaming disorder increases during pandemic’. The article starts by mentioning a 15-year-old buying a smartphone during the pandemic and now playing games for eight hours a day and then dives into the problem of gambling and banning of gambling and fantasy apps like Poker which have financial stakes.

The article is another great example of goodwill but misjudgment. You should not write about something as serious as gambling addiction and mix it with the whole of gaming (which includes a wide array of forms). Playing a game like Age of Empires (a real-time strategy game) when you are 15 will not lead you to become a gambling addict at 21. Gaming is not just one thing or a single game. The advent of gaming as a form of pop culture in India is met with naive writing on a subject like this. There are downsides to gaming for the youth, excess of anything is harmful but misrepresenting a particular thing will lead to its disregard and indifference, which is what the conservative media wants to happen apparently.

Sources

The Time of India Article: Gaming addiction can take a toll on your wallet and relationships

The Hindu Article: Gaming disorder increases during pandemic