The Philippines has banned a video game. The reason? A high school shooter was said to have played it. The subtext? A government desperate to be seen doing something. Anything.
The game in question is the one the perpetrators of the latest thwarted school shooting were allegedly obsessed with. We all know the type. A first-person shooter, violent, immersive. The usual scapegoat for politicians who don't want to talk about gun control, mental health, or the real question: why are our children planning massacres?
Here’s the inside baseball. The ban is a classic piece of Philippine political theatre. The President wants a win. He needs a distraction from the economy, the pandemic, the endless list of problems that cannot be solved by decrees. A video game ban is cheap. It costs nothing. It pleases the conservative voting bloc. It makes for a good soundbite on the evening news.
But let’s be clear. This is a policy born of panic, not evidence. The games industry is already pushing back. They say it’s censorship. They say it infringes on freedom. They’re not wrong, but this is Manila, not London. The rules are different here.
The real story is what goes unsaid. The backroom deals. The lobbyists for the entertainment industry scrambling. The quiet panic of the Department of Education, who knows that removing a game from the shelves does not remove the anger or the alienation from a teenager’s soul.
There’s a split in the cabinet. The hardliners want more bans. The moderates worry about the optics. One minister told me: “We are fighting a ghost with a broom.”
The polls show public support. Of course they do. The voters are scared. They want their children safe. They don’t care about nuances. They want action. And action is what they got.
But the question remains: what next? When the next tragedy is linked to a book, a movie, a song, will they ban that too? This is a slippery slope, and the politicians are sliding down it hand in hand with the voters’ fears.
The ban is in place. The game is gone. The danger remains. The only thing changed is the illusion of control. And in the game of politics, illusion is often the most valuable currency.
