Is the video game industry losing the PR battle?

Completely misleading, parents are responsible for teaching their children discipline and balance (sitting vs active time).

Instead of demonizing video games, they should be glorifying exercise.

If parents let there children sit in front of a console all evening and weekend then maybe it will cause a problem - really parents should be doing a better job and varying the activity that children do.
Studies have in fact found that an amount of gaming is helpful and develops some parts of the brain.

But like everything - in moderation.

I think this advert is sending the wrong message

Na. It's not going to hurt and it's not hurting. Nope, not even in the future when were in VR games sneaking up behind someone and slitting their throat or using a chainsaw to cut a zombie in half.

The blame for the obesity crisis lies squarely at the feet of today's parents. Most parents today are apathetic and self centered leaving their children to fend for themselves as far as mental stimulation is concerned. The key to this crisis lies in Mark701's comment about type II diabetes. Inactivity in today's children is the root issue. To place the blame of this inactivity on the gaming industry is fool hardy and just wrong. It would be just as easy to blame MTV or any prime time television network. heck why don't we blame Facebook, Twitter or even Current. As a child I played a great deal of video games, watched a great deal of tv but I also played a great deal of sports and other activities. Now I know someone is going to bring up how expensive sports are these days with registration fees being in the several hundreds of dollars. Add equipment on top of this and I'll be the first to admit this is an almost insurmountable obstacle. However there are many programs and organizations that will provide financial aid for this sort of thing. Even if this is not an option there are always parks and playgrounds YMCA and swimming pools. Parents this is your fault. Stop blaming others for your faults. get your kids outside! I digress. The gaming industry is not completely innocent in this with a constant drive for new games a systems they certainly provide an easy means to occupy a child's time but in my opinion properly controlled video games provide a great deal of mental stimulation and problem solving and many would argue a healthy way to express emotion.

Well let's put it this way, when I was growing up in the 60's, a fat kid in class was an anomaly.

My mother cooked all our food and we stayed outside playing from the moment we came home from school until the sun went down. During the summer and weekends we were playing outside all day. As far as I can see, kids don't do this anymore largely due to videogaming. As a result, many are fat and unhealthy. I spoke to an official from the Diabetes Foundation in my state and he said there was an alarming increase of Type II diabetes in young children because they were inactive and overweight.

Don't get me wrong, I love video games. But when it comes to kids parents have to excercise some judgement before allowing them to sit on their butts on a sunny day playing video games when they should be outside getting excercise.

Yeah that was interesting.