In France too there was lots of bad mouthing about role playing games in the mid to late 80s, when it was really popular (while it was nowhere as popular as in the US), and fearmongering in newspapers and media. A couple of years later, (early 90s, basically), video games were targeted, and they made it sound like people who were playing video games were retarded.
There was a documentary about Eric Chahi as he was finishing his work on Another World on Amiga (one of the milestones in Gaming!) in 1991-1992, and the reporters described him almost as being autistic. The media suddenly changed their stance on video games after Sony's success with the PS1 turned most young people into gamers and gained mass approval.
> ...the PS1 turned most young people into gamers and gained mass approval.
Mass approval is a means of consensual intellectual deference. Mass media is perfectly made to broadcast these messages.
The story's always the same: $NEW_MEDIA is harmful, and the domain of ill-adjusted individuals. Until, of course, a vague future when it isn't, even though nothing has changed. No mention is made of the errors in perception made in the past: "we've always been accepting of gaming."
Pop culture can only exist in the present. It cannot bring itself to look back in time, for in doing so it'd have to confront it's mistakes and ephemeralness.
UK newspapers are sensationalist, so we had a bit of it over here, although it did tend to concentrate on music or satanic abuse.
On a slight tangent I remember a Scottish religious group in the 1980s who did not let children use calculators because "Satan talks through screens" - they extended a ban on TVs to include calculators. This is the kind of thing that I find very hard to get results from a search engine with. So, any advice from DDG or Googlers about best way to get that info would be lovely!
There was a documentary about Eric Chahi as he was finishing his work on Another World on Amiga (one of the milestones in Gaming!) in 1991-1992, and the reporters described him almost as being autistic. The media suddenly changed their stance on video games after Sony's success with the PS1 turned most young people into gamers and gained mass approval.