Video games have never been more popular and more diverse than they are currently. Even today, video games are seen as a great source of entertainment and remain popular among the young and the old, alike. However, as with any popular item on the market today there has been an abundance of controversy over video games. The issue is of some of these games contain violence, antisocial behavior, and gore. Grand Theft Auto has always been in the forefront of the video game fight. From buying hookers and then beating them up for money to being able to run people over. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas caused a ton of controversy in 2005 with the famous hot coffee hack. We all know about Jack Thompson and his wonderful fight on getting violent video games banned. Though the last time I checked he has never won a fight. The one thing I do know is the video game industry is slow to fight back. A few big publishers and developers have spoken out but no where close enough to begin to win the fight.

Regardless what the industry does I think the biggest fighters are the video gamers themselves. We have the Penny Arcade guys starting Child's Play a charity that benefits children who are living in a hospital. We have the formation of Entertainment Consumers Association, founded to give gamers a collective voice with which to communicate their concerns, address their issues and focus their advocacy efforts. There is a group of gamers in Australia using politics to get their issues heard. Gamers 4 Croydon was formed to help Australia to form a Mature ratings for video games and it appears to be working!

Sadly our fight is far from over we have a few more years coming where people will continue to blame video games for all of the world's faults. What we need to do is stand up and fight for our hobby. Get out and inform people of all the good video games and gamers do in the world. Help fight the stereotype of gamers being children and anti-social freaks that never come out in daylight. Volunteer in your local community and show the world that we are not what they think we are. Also let the industry know that they need to help us in this fight, while its our hobby its their livelihood. The best part of all of this is the first generation of video gamers is grown up and some have started entering politics.