GamePolitics.com - Where Politics & Video Games Collide

This is one part of a couple of posts im going to do about the Issues of Gaming and how politicians are responding.

The website, Game Politics, is a useful tool when you want to find some information on politics and gaming. On the front page theres your general game industry related news. It highlights contreversial points, the good news, news from the industry & how things are effected by various topics.

The main feature on the site though is 'Legislation Watch'. Its a world map featuring all of the legislation politicians accross the globe are trying to put through that are related to video games. The map even comes with a colour coded key so you can see whats current, in efffect, defeated etc.

If you look at the map you can see that 34 of the 36 attempts to change the law in realtion to video games have occured in the USA. The other two are in Europe (One in Poland, and the second in the United Kingdom).

As well as the useful map theres also a Game Politics Podcast. Its released irregualry but its as useful as the rest of the site. In the podcast Dennis McCauley, the founder of Game Politics, talks about current issues within the gaming industry. The second podcast included a lenghty interview with one of the leading, and most contreversial, game critics in the USA, Jack Thompson.

In my view the site is an invaluable resource. It allows everyone to find out whats happening across the globe and to see whats truely going on at the heart of these debates and its use of Google Maps (for the Legislation Watch) and podcast technology truely make it stand out.

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Related Links:

The Game Politics Website
Google Maps
The US PC Gamer podcast - Its a useful weekly podcast that deals with games, industry news and politcs related issues.