Viewing Thread:
"Should he?"

Quote from PCZone:

"Prince Charles has dismissed computer games as the playthings of simple minded cretins with no more right to walk God's earth than a weasel. The opinionated royal expressed his sentiments at some book thing at the British Museum, bleating: 'One of the great battles we face today is to persuade our children away from the computers towards what can only be described as worthwhile books.' Slamming gaming as nothing more than a shallow pastime persued by a generation of slack-jawed third-wits, the heir to the throne blasted: 'None of us can underestimate the importance of books in an age dominated by the computer screen and constant wish for imediate gratification'."



Now, I know what you're all thinking "Oh poo, this is going to turn into another Are Games Bad For You post." But it's not. What I want to know is:

Do you think someone in the position that Prince Charles is in, should make a comment about something he blatantly knows nothing about? Or is that really how he feels?

Ok, I don't know what some of your opinions are towards him, or the Royal Family in general, but like it or not, he will be our next King. Should someone as influential as he is, make comments that could affect the gaming industry, which it is obvious he knows nothing about? Especially when gaming brings a lot of money into the UK as a number of the top developers and publishers are located here.

My personal feeling is that you should never comment on something you know nothing about. But he *is* prince, does that exclude him from basic common sense such as that? Or is that his genuine opinion gleaned from looking into the subject deeply?

Of course, his comments could be dismissed as representative of that generation. A generation that didn't grow up with computers and probably feels quite alienated from them. But he is a public figure, and he shouldn't really make comments that could hurt the an industry that in the last 20 years has emerged as one of the fastest growing and most creative in the UK.

At a time when the UK has more external investment (other countries investing in us) than internal (us investing in us), is it really a good move to make a comment that could affext this? Especially when the industry concenred happens to be the second largest global market, worth bilions of pounds each year?

What if he turns round next week and says something like: "Cars are smelly and dirty, we should all walk."? Soon we could have no industry left at all!

Of course, I could be completely wrong.

What do you think?

I like games. I think they've helped me through bad times, and I think they are more than pointless button bashing exercises.

Charlie doesn't. Never mind.

Gronti_v wrote:
> Perhaps, but how much money stays in our economy and how much is
> filtered into foreign ones like Japanese and American?

Good point. A number of the companies are owned by forum companies Sony, Sega etc etc. But it's good to know that they chose the UK to invest in, give jobs to etc.



Anyway, It's
> good to know that PC Zone weren't being 100% serious then. It's a
> very bad reaction to have if it was real. I think the humour of PC
> Gamer may be more to my tastes anyway.

Fair point. It's all down to taste at the end of the day, which is why there are a number of successful PC Games mags out every month.

Perhaps, but how much money stays in our economy and how much is filtered into foreign ones like Japanese and American? Anyway, It's good to know that PC Zone weren't being 100% serious then. It's a very bad reaction to have if it was real. I think the humour of PC Gamer may be more to my tastes anyway. I still remember one letter in the in short section of the letters page (where they just take a short letter or a small part of a letter and make a quip comment on it). The letter went "...Anyway, great mage" and the PC Gamer comment was "Thank you we like him too". If you don't get it, know that it was a typo for mag as in magazine. I'm not sure those were the exact words, and I'm not digging out the magazine, but if anyone remembers it too, they can correct me if I'm wrong.

Actually, the quote was from a column that takes things like this and go a bit OTT over it. It's highly amusing, IMHO.

Anyway, yes, Charlie didn't say anything amazingly bad about the games industry, but he didn't back it, did he?

The games industry is the second largest in the world and the UK has had a lot of money been invested into this industry, surely we want to keep that money invest in our country?

Hmm, that's not a direct quote from Prince Charles now is it. This is the PC Zone interpretation with their own opinions in isn't it? Well, I'm pretty sure he never said anything about slack jawed yokels, infact there are two direct quotes from ol' charlie boy. They follow outside of the opinion of PC Zone.
'One of the great battles we face today is to persuade our children away from the computers towards what can only be described as worthwhile books.'
'None of us can underestimate the importance of books in an age dominated by the computer screen and constant wish for imediate gratification'.

Now, that's not so bad is it, all he's saying is that books are a good thing that children should be introduced to, can you disagree with that? Now the first quote is a little different, but that's just because he is missinformed about research done on computer games. In PC Gamer there is a bit about this which takes a much less furious and more objective approach to looking at the statements. In PC Gamer it mentions research that has shown that games help people to concentrate better and achieve the levels of concentration that athletes and astronauts need to succeed in their work. So Perhaps Charles is a little confused and while books are a good thing, games aren't a bad one.

Now, you may think that I support the Royal Family but I happen to believe that they should no longer exist (as royals, I wouldn't kill them... unless I had to) as they take public money and waste it on things that are totally unnecessary. We can still keep the palace as a tourist attraction but we must stop funding them since they do nothing to earn all the money they recieve. Another group we can get rid of is the House of Lords but that's a different matter. Actually if you think I support the royals then there are certain posts of mine that you obviously missed, but still I suppose it's good to repeat myself in order to get to more people.

Anyway, I was just saying about PC Zone and how they seemed to offensive and stand-offish for me at the time Quake and Quake 2 came about. Seems to me I was right to stop buying the magazine if they get this upset about something without considering it first. They seem to have taken Charles's statements as a personal dig at them, it's best that we all remain calm and sensible about it, hear him out and then tell him that he's wrong and why in a calm and reasonable manner. It is jumping to conclusions and being unreasonable that causes most problems in the world after all.

Wehey! That'll teach him to blow you up with powder kegs!

Dringo wrote:
> Aha a Notable wait darn he has gone, well you can run but you can't hide!


*Wookiee pops up behind Dringo and slaps him around both sides of the face simultaneously, then ducks back into hiding...*

David Icke believes the Royal Family - especially The Queen, Queen Mother, Prince Charles and the Duke of Edinburgh are "lower 4th dimensional Reptilian shape-shifters" who feed on human blood.

I don't believe this by the way, but I do think the Royal Family should be assassinated, I mean - disbanded!

the royal family in genral dont mean anything any more , i know that loads of old biddies still praise the queen and that , but todays modern society dont really care , if prince charles (cough cough tos cough er)says that gameing is for simple minded twits or whatever , then that isn't going to affect the gaming industry , william and the other kid both probably play games it's just a natuaral thing for kids to do these days. So all i am saying is that whatever he says about games and gamers wont affect us or the industry as we dont care , you may not think it but when was the last time you actually turned on the telly at christmas to watch that stupid queens message ? i do it every year , to see how stupid it's gonna be, "i wish you all a very good year , one has been involved " etc etc etc , who cares , if the queen dissed gameing then who would care , no-one . Eventually there will be no royal family , like in America they have presidents etc , England are one of the only countries left with a royal family , they are pointless , we waste money on them paying taxes , when they critise everything that they dont do or have never ecperienced. End of disscussion.

errrr...hang on, I love reading books, and do so a lot of the time, and I want to be an author when I'm older!

But I like to play games as well, and if he's got a problem with that, he can stuff it up his royal @ss.

{:) "ONCE YOU POP, YOU CAN'T STOP!!" CLASSIQUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!