A US teenager has won a record-breaking $3m (£2.4m) to become world champion of the computer game Fortnite. Fortnite is the largest prize pool in the history of e-sports, with $30m shared amongst the winners.
This story has allowed the media to run a few hours of debate and phone ins on some of their favourite subjects.
Concerned parenting.
Children being less active than their parents
The horror that is video gaming
and
Being Judgemental.
There is nothing very new here. Something is always blamed for moody teenagers and aggressive pre-teen boys.
In my day it was Heavy Metal. The satanic music of AC/DC was turning children into killers.
Before that it was long hair that was to blame. Or jeans.
Way back at the dawn of teenagers, born from the discovery of independent wealth that was paying more than a paper round, Rock Around The Clock was a terribly bad influence on the morals and attitudes of the nation.
Fortnite, for those that don't game, and never have, is a multiplayer battle royale, in high cartoon form. Not terribly dissimilar to a Star Wars shooting game, of which there are legion, that go completely unremarked.
One player, and their digital persona, arrive on an island and must hunt down all the other players and eliminate them. So they emerge victorious.Weapons are found lying around. Forts can be constructed. and so on.
The game is entirely free. Which was the genius of it. It had a few million player base on its launch as it costs nothing, and never costs anything to play. No player need spend a penny if they don't wish.
The creators make money from players buying new suits, or 'skins' for their character. Dance moves. Special gun flashes. And from being a 'brand' with its own merchandise, so is a licensing success. Much like Angry Birds was.
The difference with Fortnite to Angry Birds or Subway surf endless runner games, is that once a player begins the game, as it is real time, against real opponents, if a player has to leave the console/tablet/phone for a minute, they will be eliminated. I'm sure this is where the angry calls of parents for supper and to go to bed right this minute, break out.
Listening and watching the panels a few things are quite obvious. Women, in the main, have no concept of something like Fortnite. Like they didn't with the whole, GTA similar backlash a while ago. As they didn't with FIFA or Racing games.
They don't play them particularly, as they don't appeal in the same way.
GTA is deliberately, a very masculine product. And shooters and horror products appeal much more to the men and boys.
The Sims is probably the bestselling, more female focused video game worldwide. It is really just a far, far, far more advanced version of Dolls House. As Fortnite is just a more advanced version of Action Man. Parents and presenters really need to grasp this, to understand the digital phenomenon.
One of the common complaints is that children have phones at the diner table. Have games and are on social media and this interrupts family life. And that they aren't out with their friends.
Though they are with their friends. That's why kids like these games. They are social.
In my day, as an avid gamer before the Internet, we'd play games at each others houses. Board games too. But more and more video games.
With the Play Station and Xbox, so this continued for another generation.
Now, they can play in the same room , or not. But still the same group.
Parents should be aware that they are suspicious of this technology, only because it is new.
They need to recall that they have little fear of television or video. While their own parents were very suspicious. TV appeared in their lives in the 1970s. While they were still being brought up in their own parents world of no TV. So all the diner table rules applied.
No TV at the diner table, because there had been no TV BEFORE.
The schedulers, knowing the set time for supper and lunch and such, made sure their shows fitted to these times. As Television became more a part of life, people's lives fitted around the television. 9pm Friday was always new show launch. Saturday night was family TV night, and people adapted to TV rather than the other way around.
TV no longer has much hold on the public. None at all on the youth. Who are used to on demand everything. So they have a different approach to their parents, who, although they have adapted, are still, in upbringing, from the pre-digital era.
The provable cases of a video game causing, or encouraging, psychotic rage leading to murder, is two.That's two, World wide. Since the rise of the Home Computer in the early 1980s.
That's two cases from the billions each day of kids playing these games. Every study shows no link. As children are aware as adults are of fantasy and reality. Captain Scarlet is indestructible. YOU are not. I knew that. I knew that at five. I knew at five that he was a puppet.
Kids that watched Twilight teen-horror would grow up and fall in love with an Emo-Vampire.
Kids, like me,who played Third Reich, the WW2 strategy game for 2-6 players, would end up invading Poland.
It's all obvious nonsense. The same as it was for rock music. The same as it was for watching Kung-Fu films in the 1970s. Or reading Gothic horror novels in the 1870s.
Parents lamenting the lack of model building and Lego making {which is actually selling in ecord numbers} should see what their offspring are creating on Minecraft.
So don't worry about the kids. They are just fine. They won't turn out anti-social losers, if they weren't already going to be.
And it was probably far more dangerous in our day writing in to Jim'll Fix It.
