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UK Culture Minister Says “Video Games Are As Important To British Culture As Cinema”

The UK Culture Minister, Ed Vaizey, has told attendees at the Develop conference in Brighton that video games are just as important to British culture as cinema. He pointed out video game development is taking its rightful place alongside the film industry as one of the UK’s most important assets. Vaizey pointed out that there are 33.5 million gamers in the UK with ages ranging from 8 and 74.

“It’s also clustered – it’s not one of those industries that’s based in London, it’s everywhere from Brighton to Dundee. So it was easy for me to become a champion of the games industry, and push for games to take their rightful place alongside some of the more vocal creative industries like film.”

A key emphasis though, was on the cultural role of games. “The British film industry – and this has been a passion of mine – has expanded its remit to support the games industry,” he said. “Games are taking their rightful place alongside the film industry as one of our most important assets.”

21 thoughts on “UK Culture Minister Says “Video Games Are As Important To British Culture As Cinema””

  1. currection

    minister says BRODUDE FIFA- COD just as important as watching eastenders and corro

    fucking CHAVS

    1. Ugh. Eastenders man. It gets really tiring hearing about it, everyday. I’d take Wrestling anyday. And I’m British. I feel that anybody related to politics in the U.K talks shit. Especially our poor excuse for a PM…

  2. In my opinion: Video Games > Movies or TV.
    (They both have their appeal. Sometimes I feel like sitting down for a two hour long session of Terraria, or when I’m just trying to relax, I might watch a nostalgic episode of SpongeBob or something I haven’t seen before on Netflix.)

    1. Is that the reason why the games/consoles in Brazil very expensive? Or is there any other reasons? Just curious.

      1. Not really, it’s just that when the first arcades appeared here, they were put in the same category as “bad luck games”, where taxes are very high. And that never changed.

  3. Coming from the UK and being a life-long Nintendo addict, I’d say that this is true for me. I real games for real gamers. However the majority of “gamers” in the UK clamour every year to buy Fifa and COD, these people who swallow up the casual bullshit year after year do not represent what it means to be a gamer. The UK used to be a place for real gamers but no more.

    I was on a bus the other day, and a group of young teenagers were sitting behind me and I genuinely overheard this conversation about games: “The Legend of Zelda is for pussies, only babies play Nintendo games, real men play call of duty”.

    This is unfortunately what has become the UK gaming scene, it is a toxic wasteland of casual games made for people who dislike any challenge, who want endless tutorials, who want a very easy mode and expect auto healing to be a standard thing. As someone who grew up playing games like Castlevania, Mega Man, Devil May Cry, Metroid etc, this breaks my heart.

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