I think the games industry IS working in the ways you describe, but there has been limited success for a number of reasons. Much of the blame lies with parents, who treat all forms of media as babysitters with scant regard to its content. I’ll wager that many of the parents who complain about the violence of videogames are perfectly happy to allow their children to watch equally violent films and TV, not batting an eyelid because those media forms are no longer, for the most part, controversial.

There are places the games industry could pick its socks up – a lot of work needs to go into making sure that games for adults aren’t being marketed to kids, in publications mostly read or watched by kids, because this still happens far too often. For the most part, however, I think this is just going to be a slow and gradual process, as you’ve outlined in your post – with games becoming accepted as gamers get older. Not good for the impatient among us, but we can take grim satisfaction at the inevitability of it all!

I just read your article titled “The Game Lobby” on GamesIndustry.biz and thought I’d try and track you down to say that I enjoyed your article and wholeheartedly agree with the points you make about the vilification of the games industry by the media and now by ill informed politicians.
This will I believe change in the long term as those who grew up playing games start to make up more of the voting public (as is beginning to happen already) and will make the industry as difficult a target as film and music.

Unfortunately I believe in the meantime a more active push by the industry itself to educate and inform is needed. Games need to be shown as more than a child’s plaything and as a valid form of entertainment for all age groups, perhaps using marketing methods that don’t pique the interests of adolescent youth but are aimed at the more mature gamer. Possibly look at the Hollywood and music industry PR models for inspiration without copying blindly.

I’d appreciate your thoughts on the matter, perhaps an article on what you feel to be the solution to the problem?