This article first appeared as the lead in the UK's Times Educational Supplement's Computer Update in 1993. The T.E.S. is a weekly newspaper dedicated to educational matters. To get a record into the top twenty, which most of us remember as the 'hit parade', currently requires as few as 20,000 record sales. When Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog II was released last year it took over one and a half million pre-orders around Europe before it had even been seen. Many games for the home market have developed the same short fashion lives that pop music once had and indeed children share the same fascination for top ten charts of weekly games sales that their teachers had for the 'Fab Four' on Parlophone.
Computer games are of cultural importance to the 'information generation'.
Perhaps because of this a whole catalogue of social disorders are laid at the door of the games industry. The games make them violent. Children only see gender stereotypes as virtual heroines queue up for actual rescue. Children become hopelessly addicted, social misfits trapped in an electronic never-never land. Children have fits, are exposed to pornography and truant from school.