TV & Gaming: How Videogames Changed The World

There is very little presence of gaming on television, and what little is covered tends to focus on either the worst aspects or merely the unusual novelty. The wider and ever-growing culture of gaming is largely ignored by the mainstream media, which is odd for an industry that is about 30 years old and financially so massive.

Charlie Brooker, one of the UK's foremost voices on gaming and games culture (picture from channel4.com)

Earlier this week saw Charlie Brooker demonstrating the new Playstation 4 to a bemused Jon Snow on Channel 4 news. It was exactly the sort of cringe-worthy television I have come to expect and yet I was still disappointed. No planning had gone into the piece, Charlie Brooker seemingly having been brought in as one of the most visible gaming voices in the UK to defend the medium as a whole.

While Charlie wasn't quite successful in convincing Jon Snow, he made some reasonable points in an otherwise messy segment which lacked any real substance to inform the viewer at home. If you already knew about games and gaming, you were far too informed for the piece, if you knew nothing then you'd leave not much better off. It would be a stretch to consider it journalism, and served as nothing but to highlight the generation gap between the two men. I'd recommend reading this Martin Robbins article in the New Statesman about this particular episode.