The Media War: Desperate New Player Enters the Arena – Declares Avid Gamers Will Look Like This

Are you a gamer? Do you spend a ton of time playing video games? Ever wanted to know what you would look like in 20 years because of your gaming lifestyle? Well it seems that the gambling industry has done the research for you. In a move that appears to be a smear campaign, the gambling industry has declared war on the video game industry by releasing a picture of what an avid gamer will look like after twenty years of gaming.

Recently, I talked about how there will be a media war. But I didn’t think it would start like this. I figured it would be subtle at first. A testing of the waters between Hollywood (TV, movies, cable) and the video game industry. There had already been the ludicrous statement that games are using up too much internet bandwidth and so I figured the war would continue along that front.

But the gambling industry firing a nuke at the video game industry?

I did not see that coming.

The picture comes courtesy of OnlineCasino.ca in which it depicts Michael, the name of the character pictured, as a future gamer. According to the organization, it conducted a study, took those findings, and created an image based on what they found from the various studies and research. What they came up with seems to be a highly unrealistic caricature meant to disparage people from playing games. From an indent in the skull from having headphones on all the time to PlayStation thumbs and Nintendo Arthritis, OnlineCasino.ca is not pulling its punches (how come XBOX didn’t get a symptom).

However, it gets rather ridiculous in its claims of these detrimental physical results of gaming. Take hairy ears for example. It is a natural occurrence for people when they get older, but is suddenly a symptom of playing games for too long. Or the indentation of the skull from using headphones for prolonged use on a regular basis. Or how about blisters on your fingers from “excessive use of controller or keyboard?” 

When you look at the research or studies for some of these claims, they tend to be about office workers. So what this company has done is taken some of these findings and put them into a video game context. Now let’s go back to hairy ears. This is a natural occurrence as people get older, mostly in men, yet they are trying to make it sound like only gamers will get this. Indentation in the skull? I don’t know a single gamer who has this affliction and I’ve been gaming for over thirty years (started when I was four years old). As for blisters, that is a load of crock….well…there were the times I would get a blister from using the palm of my hand to rapidly spin the joystick on the Nintendo 64 controller. But that was the only time and I learned better!

However, there is a legitimate concern of arthritis from excessive use of controllers and the mouse and keyboard. But it is the same concern for concert pianists, people who do woodworking for a living, and construction jobs like floor installation. Simply put, anything that involves heavy use of your hands. Yet this has been used as an attack to discourage gaming for decades, let alone this latest attack from a gambling website.

What amazes me about this article, which comes from a gambling business,. is that these are all things that can happen to office workers. Again, a number of these studies come from research on office work. The Michael caricature itself follows in the wake of Emma the office worker which was posted last year. This too, is a grossly over exaggerated, “worst-case scenario” caricature, except that it is of an office worker after 20 years on the job.  

Now I find this article funny, hilarious, and absolutely ludicrous. It tries to be serious by also bringing up the World Health Organization and “gaming disorder.” But a gaming disorder is for extreme cases and the WHO recently came out declaring that playing games can be a healthy social pastime. 

This “study” also assumes that people are still gaming like it’s the 1980s and 1990s. But over the years, gamers know that it is good to take regular breaks while playing video games. There are gaming chairs that help with your posture. Gamers know that they should exercise and stretch their fingers regularly. There are glasses being sold to reduce eye strain from staring at a monitor all day. There are other tools and tips to combat the detriments of a sedentary lifestyle that includes exercising. I have to say, this gambling organization offering these tips as if people didn’t already know these things is amusing.

It is obvious that office work, being a couch potato, a dedicated reader, or playing video games can all lead to a sedentary lifestyle. So why is the gambling industry focusing solely on video games during this pandemic? 

I think it is because they are desperate. 

The casino industry is expected to lose around $21 billion this year because of the Coronavirus. That was a projection made by the American Gaming Association back in March if casinos had to stay closed for eight weeks. The industry’s losses are going to be a lot higher should State governments and the Federal government continue to extend the lockdown for citizens and businesses. 

So we have an industry set to completely collapse since the last thing any sensible person should be doing is gambling their money. To put it bluntly, you have to be a special kind of stupid to be gambling during this lockdown (unless you are rich). Competition between the various entertainment sectors are going to be heating up. A media war, in my opinion, is going to break out between Hollywood and the video game industry. 

But obviously, the gambling industry has already cracked and made its move. I don’t know about anyone else, but I have noticed an increase of ads for online gambling when watching YouTube videos. There will probably be a further increase in ads, though that will be hard to prove since Google doesn’t post the percentages of which industry or sectors pay to play ads on YouTube (at least not that I am aware of). 

Yet why target the video game industry first? Because it would seem that the gambling industry, and myself, know that the gaming industry will benefit the most from this Coronavirus lockdown. The gaming industry is in a position to bring in a large influx of new gamers and, while the industry will experience an annual loss for the year, it will survive and bounce back even stronger because of all the new consumers. 

The same can’t be said of the gambling industry which relies heavily on casinos to bring in consumers and entice them to spend their money on gambling. It’s not just gambling though, but also on restaurants and shops. The closing of casinos means that 95% of its workforce, 530,000 workers, are out of work leading to an almost $59 billion annual total wage loss for workers.

This attack on gamers is, in my opinion, a desperate attack from a failing industry on a resilient one. An attempt to get people to spend their money gambling rather than on video games. It is also easier to attack the video game industry than for the gambling industry to try and take on Hollywood (TV, movies, cable). For decades, video games have been touted by the news media and Hollywood as a bad thing and this could be the ammunition that Hollywood needs to launch its own smear campaign against a competing industry. Sites such as Mirror.co.uk and Daily Mail have already put a spin on this story. 

So it will be interesting to see how this continues to play out as we get further along. 

But as for this gambling organization’s article? It’s pathetic, ludicrous, and reeks of desperation. As a gamer over over 30 years, I can personally tell you this is all horse hockey. The only thing I am suffering from is being overweight and that is on me, not video games. 

But what do you think? Sound off in the comments below!