The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the ever global gaming industry have teamed up to tackle the COVID-19 crisis. They’ve launched a new campaign, named #PlayApartTogether with 18 game industry leaders which encourages their vast network of users to follow the WHO’s health guidelines. This includes physical distancing, hand hygiene, respiratory etiquette and other preventive actions people can take to fight COVID-19. Considering that people are staying in to game now, more than ever, it’s a welcome, and obvious move.
This will also mean special events, exclusives, activities, rewards to some of the most popular games in the world. Here are the 18 that have signed on so far, and I’m sure others will be getting on the campaign as well:
- Activision Blizzard
- Kabam
- Snap Games
- Amazon Appstore
- Maysalward
- Twitch
- Big Fish Games
- Playtika
- Unity
- Dirtybit
- Pocket Gems
- Wooga
- Glu Mobile
- Riot Games
- YouTube Gaming
- Jam City
- SciPlay
- Zynga
CEO of Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotick had this to say about the new campaign:
“It’s never been more critical to ensure people stay safely connected to one another. Games are the perfect platform because they connect people through the lens of joy, purpose and meaning. We are proud to participate in such a worthwhile and necessary initiative.”
Understandably, gaming is one of the most sought out avenues for entertainment as the world faces a lockdown. People are staying in, and self isolating, which makes for a pretty boring time if you’ve got nothing else to do. Though, it’s hard to forget that the WHO is promoting gaming, as they pushed for the recognition of video game addiction as a mental health problem.
They even published in their health journal last year, that indicates gaming disorder is defined in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) is diagnosed when “a person who, over a period of at least 12 months, lacks control over their gaming habits, prioritizes gaming over other interests and activities, and continues gaming despite its negative consequences.”
Problem is, there isn’t enough evidence to indicate that “gaming disorder” is true, or ever so prevalent in daily life. Sure, even I know people who’ve gone off the rails when it came to gaming, whereby it fully consumed their lives.
But that’s a small percentage of gamers who have their lives negatively impacted by video games. Maybe with this, they’ll realise the absurdity of grouping gamers into a category and giving them a bad image to realise that there is good that comes from playing video games.
And considering we’re facing a pandemic right now, they’ve probably got more important things to be worry about instead of “gaming disorders”.
