With a population of more than 214 million, and as South America’s largest economy, Brazil is an important part of the global community, and after some worrying years with far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, the country re-elected Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who became president at the beginning of this year. While Lula carried the renewed hopes of many millions, perhaps Brazil’s gamers weren’t expecting to get sniped by their leader.
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But this is what occurred as Lula this week delivered a speech that targeted video games, labelling them violent and non-educational, and associating them with “death” and stating that none talk about “love”. Lula was at a conference addressing hate speech and hostility on social media networks, with government ministers and governors in attendance, among others. Lula mentioned his son and highlighted games (thanks ResetEra).
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Lula said: “When my son is four years old and he cries, what do I do for him? I immediately give him a tablet to play with”. (We have translated this part of his speech from Brazilian Portguese into English using Google Translate.)
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Lula proceeded to say that there is no game talking about love or education, but that games are “teaching kids to kill”. Lula likened it to World War 2, as there is so much death presumably in video games and that his son and the son of his son, and other people’s grandsons, will be “spending a great deal of time playing this rubbish”.
Goodness, that’s pretty extreme, Lula. Gamers have heard these kinds of arguments before, especially in the 1990s as tabloid newspapers and politicians tried to scaremonger the public into believing that games like Grand Theft Auto were going to turn a generation of children into deviants and cause an epidemic of violence. None of this has ever transpired of course and there is scant evidence that games cause violence. On the contrary, there is some evidence that video games might increase mental wellbeing.
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Lula is also ignorant to say that there are no educational video games or none that talk about love. Might we suggest he and his son try Minecraft, Sky: Children of the Light, Peppa Pig, some of the Lego games, and maybe when his son is a bit older, Final Fantasy 10. Meanwhile, there are titles like Lingo Legend and Gibbon: Beyond the Trees that are educative, with the latter especially resonant for Brazil as it so neatly weaves themes of deforestation into its gameplay.
While there are genuine problems with hate speech being perpetuated on social media networks, video games are not the same thing. There is a growing problem with the far-right spreading hate speech in online gaming communities, but again this is a separate issue from the games themselves. Once again, gamers face a politician who doesn’t understand the medium, but players in Brazil will surely be correcting him.
The Gamer
