Digital Politics – The Tom Watson Interview

Setting Up Gamers' Voice

Bit-tech: What inspired you to set up Gamers' Voice?

Tom Watson: Firstly, it was a bit of a sort of knee-jerk reaction. When I first set it up, my very good friend Keith Vaz – the MP for Leicester and the chair of the home affairs select committee, with whom I fundamentally disagree with on his policies around video games - had spent many years beating the industry with a stick over the big shooter type games. At the time, I just thought 'I don't want to do this anymore - an alternative voice needs to be heard here.'

So I set up Gamers' Voice – it was literally just a Facebook group, and I was staggered that two weeks later 16,000 people had signed up. When you're an MP, you're networked into lots of different groups, and I felt I needed to use that platform as a catalytic event. I literally just invited 16,000 people to a meeting at the House of Commons to talk about this, and I think about 35-40 turned up, who were really interesting and passionate gamers.


They asked what they had to do next, and I just said: 'Well, I don't know what you do next – you're the national committee of Gamers' Voice – go away and get on with it.' And that's what they did, and other than occasionally dropping by the site and leaving the odd comment, I've had nothing else to do with it. But I feel very, very proud that I could use my position as an MP and understanding of how social media worked to bring them together. They're taking positions and doing all sorts of stuff now.

They've helped in parliament, where they've shown new MPs some of the gaming platforms that are available. They've also certainly challenged some of the negative media stories – these fantastical moral panic stories – about how video games are meant to turn our children into bad people. They've written to papers, they've challenged it in social media, they've emailed journalists directly – they've basically put the alternative case.


BT: Are you a gamer yourself?

TW: I am when I have the time. I've got two kids now, so my six year old has got a Nintendo DS, and we've got a Wii and a PS3, but it means that I have to play different games now. We're currently on Lego Harry Potter on the PlayStation 3, whereas at one time I'd have been playing something like Modern Warfare – it's a bit hard to play those games in front of a six-year-old!

BT: We're starting to see a lot in the way of invasive DRM systems, including rootkits, limited activations and so on. What's your opinion on DRM?

TW: Generally, I think the easier publishers make it to use their content and pay for it, the greater returns they will get. The current example of an industry going slightly awry is in today's news – I don't know if this is true – about the iPhone camera being disabled at concerts. Well, if that's the case, you're just going to get a different phone next time, so I think the industry just creates a huge inertia to growth. They don't quite understand the opportunities they're missing when they don't consult their customers about what kinds of services they want and how they want them accessed.