They scoffed at the growing body of research showing benefits of violent video games, including helping people reduce and release their anger and stress. They accused the video-game industry of being just like the gun lobby, even though we have not lobbied to stifle research into our industry, we have not lobbied for liability protection, and we are not proposing that violent games be bought by every school as a solution to school shootings. And I got a substantial amount of hate mail.

But despite all that, the results of my media tour were overwhelmingly positive. I heard from many game developers and game players who said they were grateful to have games defended and to see the facts survive the media buzzsaw.

Game-industry response

Which leads to the question, why don't more people in the games industry step up to defend our work? So many stories that ran on TV and in the press were one-sided because they lacked any kind of industry response. But rather than calling for a full-throated defense, many in the industry surprisingly called for further disengagement.

When Vice President Biden invited video game publishers and lobbyists to the White House as part of the task force on violence, many gaming websites, influential developers, and game journalists called for a boycott of the meeting.

My IGDA letter to the vice president prior to the task force meeting was criticized in The Atlantic by the well-regarded game researcher Dr. Ian Bogost in a piece headlined, "How the Video-Game Industry Already Lost Out in the Gun-Control Debate."

Bogost called the meeting "a trap," and insisted that, "the only possible response to it is to expose it as such." Except it wasn't a trap.

Instead, Vice President Biden's task force on gun violence rejected the political clamor to scapegoat video games. "You have not been singled out," Biden told the representatives of the game industry, his hand on the shoulder of the president of Electronic Arts.

In my letter to the vice president, I wrote that I welcomed research but asked that the government study the totality of the effects of violent games, including the benefits. Bogost said responses like mine were "bound to appear as prurient and selfish distractions, as thoughtless calls to support a wealthy entertainment industry that maintains near-total social disengagement except when its profits are threatened..."

But despite Bogost's certainty, the White House was not "bound" to see us that way at all. The task force recommended no video-game bans, taxes, or regulations. Just more studies. The vice president's measured comments actually seem to be helping defuse the media backlash against the video-game industry and could even provide an opening to help the public see us in a new light, based on facts rather than misguided fear.