While Mulling Video Game Crackdown, British PM Gets Smoked at Wii Tennis

While Mulling Video Game Crackdown, British PM Gets Smoked at Wii Tennis

February 10, 2008
There has been much speculation in recent days that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is preparing to launch a major political attack on video games.

But, apparently, even Brown's own home is not immune from the allure of games.

The Sunday Times reports that Brown was bested at Wii Sports by his four-year old son:
Gordon Brown does not have a reputation as much of an athlete, and now he has confessed his four-year-old son John beats him on the Nintendo Wii video game console.

Said Brown:
I have played a game of tennis, but I didn’t succeed, and my son has challenged me to a game of boxing. It didn’t leave me out of puff but that was because I was probably beaten pretty early on by my son - and he is only four.

GP: Brown has been catching a lot of heat from the U.K. game industry since word of the impending crackdown leaked last week.

Given the timing, we have to wonder whether this charming little vignette involving his son and the Wii is merely a public relations contrivance designed to portray him in a less menacing light where games are concerned.

Comments

@Mick Collins

I think it was a DS
Given the timing, we have to wonder whether this charming little vignette involving his son and the Wii is merely a public relations contrivance designed to portray him in a less menacing light where games are concerned.

Doubtful, in that video games aren't really a topic over which politicians are concerned about their image. The percentage of their constituents who are genuinely concerned about video games is statistically insignificant, especially compared with the number of people who are potentially swayed by feel-good sound bites along the lines of "We're going to crack down on those violent sex-charged videos they're selling to our children."

More likely is that Brown simply saw an opportunity in an interview to relate a family anecdote that ties in with a popular family toy that's been in the media. Journalists get a trendy hook for their pretend-politics story, the Prime Minister gets some warm and fuzzy press, everybody wins.
[...] While Mulling Video Game Crackdown, British PM Gets Smoked at Wii Tennis February 10th, 2008 There has been much speculation in recent days that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is preparing to launch a major political attack on video games. But, apparently,
What a tosser.
Ah, now it all becomes clear. He is just jealous because he is no good and wants to spoil all our fun too.
That pic screams "Wanker!" so loud they can hear it in Seattle and Tokyo.
Boxing video games aren't too violent for him?
Gordon Brownv in one word: Wanker..
Awesome pic, I can't figure out if he's trying to hit the ball or swallow it whole.
I assume you all know that Gordon Brown is blind in one eye (no depth perception) and partially sighted in the other? :P

Golly, what a shock that he lost.
@Tom

Golly, what a shock he was playing in the first place.

@Canary Wundaboy

A squirrel might also have shot up his arse at this point.
That picture rivals some pictures of GWB.
@ Tom

I assume you know that television pictures are flat and not actually 3-dimensional. ;3
@Broken Scope

Bush can never be beaten. He's that funny in those pictures.
I am blind in one eye and depth perception is not that much of a problem on television. But real tennis is a diffrent story.
Hello Gordon.
I still can't get over how much of a dick Brown looks like in those pictures..
Gordon Brown owns a Wii? Somebody send him a copy of No More Heroes -- maybe it'll shock him into a coma and give Britain a chance to elect a Prime Minister with a modicum of common sense!
@Simon Roberts

Due to Europe's arse-raped release dates, we don't get that until.. The back end of the month.
@ BlackIce

"I still can’t get over how much of a dick Brown looks like in those pictures.."

It's astonishing, isn't it? I would've thought that such persistent colossal dickery would have broken all laws of physics, but evidently not…
Brown played Wii boxing, so by his rationale he should be beating his son due to the terrible interactive influence that games have.
Hasn't the Queen gotten into the Wii too?
Let's see if this moron could actually beat his son in Golf or Bowling. Why he's against the games is because he sucks at them..
@Mick Collins

I thought we were done with those jokes.
Doesn't this Byron Report show that games don't have an effect on real-life violence?
Apparently Wii Sports is not a game as it doesn't make you go out and murder kittens and toddlers. 'Cause that's what a REAL video game would make people do, right? Rrrright?
@ Blase

It's just a game, not a murder simulator.
He was also an expert in Pong! Boop boop, boop-boop.
@ Simon Roberts
Unfortunately the European release of No More Heroes has all the messy violence cut out.
The Queen vs Brown!
3... 2... 1... *ding ding*
Isn't it wonderful when you can have a prime minister who the people elected to do what we want done with our country!

Instead of taking care of all of the chavs in our streets, closing the borders to ethnic people (no offence to them, I have lots of ethnic friends, I just think that we are getting overfilled as a country and the last thing we need is MORE immigrants) and fixing the shoddy roads in our country... He focuses on the much more immediate issue of videogames!

Of course it was the videogames that turned 75% of teenage Britons into chavs, it was the videogames who said "hey select cultural minority, come here! Triggering a huge influx of ethnic people which you will all LOVE!" and also videogames which flooded our country, causing the roads to get broken up and potholed!

He's great is our elected PM isn't he?
@ Pominator

"closing the borders to ethnic people..."

Please, engage your brain before you open your mouth. You've touched upon a highly sensitive topic and whilst I don't necessarily disagree with you entirely, I do wish you had chosen better wordage to express yourself. It's too easy for people to get the wrong impression and twist your words, so you really ought to work on your phraseology next time.
hmm how about I talk like a KKK jackhole?

nah

the thing is I always have to be VERY careful around my coloured friends, Immie can fly off the handle if I even miss say Radamanandam or whatever it is, heck Basharat is cool but I learned fast that he can interpret any mention of bombs to some form of discrimination against... well you see where I am getting at

and as for closing borders... well its like the quarians in mass effect isnt it? England is filled to breaking point with our own 100th generation brits, so somehow getting even MORE people in, coloured or monochrome, does not seem like a good idea to me!

so bring on the lynch mob, I don't care, we do try to stand for what we believe in, and I just happen to think that a person to country ratio of 5:1 is not very good, when you see people jam packed into single apartment buildings in Birmingham and Leeds and they think it is natural for our country, then you know something is going wrong don't you?

and for the record I do engage my brain before I open my mouth, a lot more so before I TYPE with my HANDS as well!

Pominator
Pomwing2000 hardware
While not being in England, so I can't make any comments on his political views, Pominator gets bonus points for likening it to Quarians. However, that only explains the reasonings of the situation, not justifies them. Basically, the Quarians would be likened to the Gypsies, even being given the same accent. To me, it seemed like the geth were an extention of the werewolves, if I extend the metaphore. Could attack you on two legs or four, and if they get you, they turn you into one of them, and it was the gypsies curse that created them.

I come from across the pond where orriginally America was founded on the idea that we will take whoever wants to come over here, as long as you pay taxes. Turns out some people have no problems coming over here, but paying taxes isn't something thy want to do. I only start having problems when the official language is getting changed. Now I can't read half the bill boards, and three of the radio stations.
As far as I am concerned Brown is a facsist pig who wants to sqeeze the biz for he can!
I think it's high time that the government should regulate the video games industry the same way they did to the movie industry. It has to be classified of which age bracket is restricted and suitable for playing.

GamePolitics ShoutBox

Posted 11/22/09 at 09:45am
ZippyDSMlee: JD:I think doc phill is still sout about the break up with his wife he dose not fill holes as much as make them bigger these day
Posted 11/22/09 at 12:06am
JDKJ: You should get Phil McCraken to help you spackle those banisters.
Posted 11/21/09 at 11:57pm
ZippyDSMlee: Oh in the pirate hunter article I need my song ieda heckled DS,JD,Beemon sic im !!!
Posted 11/21/09 at 11:56pm
ZippyDSMlee: JD:no I am tried from prepping the banisters for painting , worked on them from 12 to 4 and 6 to 8...after I got back from the store...got up early got ready...blah...been up all day..I need a nap...
Posted 11/21/09 at 11:42pm
JDKJ: No. You gonna stay up late tonight soldering?
Posted 11/21/09 at 11:41pm
ZippyDSMlee: JDKJ:Don't you mean Mctite?
Posted 11/21/09 at 11:33pm
JDKJ: @Zip: Neil, Bob, and Lik McTaint. The McTaint brothers. LOL!!!
Posted 11/21/09 at 09:44pm
Flamespeak: I still think military personell, killing other military personell, on a military complex should be handled by military courts.
Posted 11/21/09 at 09:43pm
Flamespeak: I could see this a mixture of the two charges rather than just one or the other.
Posted 11/21/09 at 09:43pm
Flamespeak: I think this was mainly a person who snapped, but evidence is showing he definitely had strong inlinations to islamic-extremism.
Posted 11/21/09 at 09:41pm
Flamespeak: People are trying to claim that Hasan's actions were not terrorism. I don't jump on the 'terror train' like others, however
Posted 11/21/09 at 09:38pm
mentor07825: Britain certainly does deserve it! And the French! God damn it, it was a hand ball!!!
Posted 11/21/09 at 09:34pm
ZippyDSMlee: mentor07825:Well Brittan dose deserve it....
Posted 11/21/09 at 09:33pm
ZippyDSMlee: Alyric:I don;t hasliburton having to pay back billoins... don;t you love it when the rich roll over the goverment without a care?
Posted 11/21/09 at 09:32pm
mentor07825: I say we nuke the whales, for the benefit of both mankind and the environment.
Posted 11/21/09 at 09:28pm
Austin_Lewis: I say we try Al Gore too. I always said he was in on the racket.
Posted 11/21/09 at 09:16pm
Alyric: The leaked information proves these organizations knowingly defrauded governments (i.e., taxpayers) out of billions of dollars. Yet there will probably never be a trial.
Posted 11/21/09 at 09:15pm
Flamespeak: working on other things makes me angry. I might have had a jet pack by now. :p
Posted 11/21/09 at 09:14pm
Flamespeak: Just thinking of all the time and manpower wasted to try and make things emit less CO2 emmision that could have been spent
Posted 11/21/09 at 09:07pm
Alyric: @Zip: FYI, the construction of solar panels puts out more pollution than any form of energy production. To say nothing of the toxic components of the panels that cannot be recycled.
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