There have been petitions from the start calling for a ban on Fortnite. From jokesters just being trolls, to schools calling for bans for the popular battle royale game, the list of people wanting to move on from Epic Games’ online title continues to grow with the latest addition being none other than Prince Harry himself.
“The game shouldn’t be allowed,” Said the Duke in a recent statement to The Daily Express. “It’s created to addict. An addiction to keep you in front of a computer for as long as possible. It’s so irresponsible.”
The Battle Royale game has come under fire for numerous reasons in the past including lawsuits regarding in-game content, accusations of addiction, and even purchaseable concerns over the amount of microtransactions within the game. Some of the spotlight concerns over the past year were a bit silly, but the microscope of “addiction” is in no way new and in no way limited to Forntite.
“It’s more dangerous because it’s normalized and there are no restrictions to it,” Prince Harry added in relation to the game’s social media presence. “Without that human connection, when you do have a problem you have nowhere to go,” he continued. “The only place you might go is online and you will probably end up getting bullied.”
What’s interesting about his timing with such a statement is that a renowned Oxford researcher recently warned about a coming wave of concern regarding video game “addiction” during this year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC) held in California. Since the World Health Organization opened the floodgates back in 2018 regarding an imposed “gaming disorder,” both parents and the media had their eyes closer than ever before on this particular market.
“It’s very easy to think of something like the World Health Organization as an organized body that really has its ducks in a row,” said Oxford’s Andrew Przybylski during his GDC talk. “But they really didn’t, they were really quick soft about this gaming disorder thing. The people who were working on the ICD letter, they’d really gone out on a limb and there was a lot of debate internally and then the ESA decided to publish a rebuttal.”
He also added that researchers were “cherry-picking” which information to include, causing many to drink the koolaid regarding the right and wrong side of this particular perceived addiction. When public figures such as Prince Harry speak out about their concerns, a lot of their own notions come from very stripped research and ideas that very much only represent half of the equation.
That being said, Prince Harry does realise that a call for a ban is a bit overly ambitious, adding “[Parents] don’t know what to do about it. It’s like waiting for the damage to be done.”
What do you think about Prince Harry’s stance on Fortnite and gaming? Hit us up with your thoughts over on Twitter @PrimaGames. If you have something you’d like to add in private, feel free to reach out to me personally @DirtyEffinHippy.
