A moral panic is facing the City of Churches - a bar and lounge has opened in the CBD and its patrons are that most frightening subset of youth culture – the Gamer.
The opening of the Pimp Pad Gamers Bar and Lounge next to Eynesbury Senior College, smack-bang in the centre of down-town Adelaide, has provoked the far too oft-heard wowsers clarion call ‘won’t somebody think of the children’ to be trumpeted by long-time Adelaide City Councillor, Ann Moran.
The fun police troopers are heeding the call and assembling their forces to clamp down hard on the Gamers venue, staunchly opposing its liquor license. Fuelled by Councillor Moran’s claims that an adult entertainment venue next door to a senior high school will act as a ‘honey trap for kids’. Portrayals of violent and sex-crazed patrons in a venue of sleaze and strippers’ poles abound.
Step inside the actual Pimp Pad and out of Councillor Moran’s virtual unreality and the demonised venue appears to me to be a public place for geeks or nerds to spend their evening with some nachos and a bevy or two as they battle to the virtual death and do their darndest to put their opposable thumbs to good use before the carpal tunnel sets in.
Gamers coming out of their homes (or in many cases their parents’ homes – won’t somebody think of the parents!) and socialising can’t actually be a bad thing can it? Mental health benefits alone would justify the existence of such a venue.
My fair city of Adelaide is both fondly and not quite as fondly known as the nerdy one amongst our Aussie capital cities.
She’s oft one to shy away from the latest fads and fashions and more than happy to follow the leader - a little behind the glitz of Sydney and the grunge of Melbourne. This isn’t the first time a local pollie in little old Radelaide has been afeared of the seemingly scary gamers and their strange ways - as former Attorney-General Michael Atkinson can attest.
The campaign for an R18+ rating for games not only created a new political party in SA, it is credited with being, at least in part, the reason the member for Croydon relinquished his Ministry after the 2010 election.
It’s little wonder that these Gamers4Croydon showed they had some political clout. The candidates were educated, clever and canny. They were standing up for an industry worth some big bucks, an industry which is booming even in these times of economic gloom.
This week gamers went from zeroes to heroes in worldwide mass media with their ‘spatial reasoning skills’ beating out the scientists in cracking an HIV/AIDS enzyme model. What beats me is how can we crack the political model that casts gamers as the enemy of the good people of Adelaide?
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@AndrewCatsaras Agreed. Kills more people than AIDS. Yet tolerated. Meanwhile: Good Insiders piece again Andrew.
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