Filipino senate aspirant claims to ban games like Dota after getting elected

Bethsaida Lopez, a 58-year-old Filipino senate aspirant recently made claims that she would ban ‘violent’ games like Dota 2 and Clash of Clans if she gets elected. She believes that these games are causing many young students to perform poorly in their studies, failing to graduate later on.

#Eleksyon2019 Bethsaida Lopez, isa umanong street educator nais ipatanggal ang COC at DOTA dahil sa pagkasira ng pag-aaral at buhay ng mga kabataan @dzbb pic.twitter.com/67qbLsh6O7

— manny vargas (@VargasMannysen) October 17, 2018

The rough translation from the tweet is as follows: “I plan to replace these games with educational games, like games based on Social Studies for example. I urge the game programmers of our country to help me with this so that when the gamers go to the internet cafés, they learn a lesson as well instead of just playing games the whole night.”

As we all know, Gaming is not just a hobby anymore but an incredibly huge, thriving industry. Gaming and Esports opened up many new jobs and opportunities and it is also a new form of entertainment for our generation. But apparently, pure ignorance of certain individuals may actually cause a lot of harm to our community for no real reason. It is baffling how some people instantly connect gaming to poor grades without a second thought. Specially today, when Esports is becoming recognized as a real sport in countries like Germany and China, it is almost surreal that some people rally against it as if it is some sort of modern evil.

There are many incidents recently where people rallied against Gaming. On September 24^th 2018, a group of individuals made a protest against Esports during a Football match between Young Boys and Basel in the Swiss Super League. They delayed the game by throwing tennis balls and console controllers onto the field. Some of the controllers appeared to have “fuck esports” written on them. There was also a banner with the words “SCHEISS E-SPORTS!”

Jimmy Kimmel, the host of the famous talk show ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ mocked YouTube Gaming. “watching another person play video games is like going to a restaurant and having someone eat your food for you” says Kimmel. He was ridiculing gamers for watching other gamers play on platforms like YouTube Gaming and Twitch.

After a huge backlash on twitter, one week later, the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show had a segment named “Gamers Educate Jimmy Kimmel” where Markiplier and MissesMae, two well-known YouTubers explained Kimmel as to why people watch other people play.  Of course, this seems really obvious but apparently there are many people who are completely unaware.

Although there is a very low chance of games like Dota getting banned in the SEA region even if Lopez gets elected, it is just bizarre that there are so many individuals who are completely ignorant and do not even try to put an effort to understand Esports and Gaming in general.

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