Killer games fund Blair city schools
Geraldine Hackett, Education Correspondent
MAKERS of violent video games condemned for their influence on children have struck a deal with Tony Blairs government to help finance and run flagship city academies.
Companies behind games such as Manhunt cleared from the shelves of Dixons because of its violent content have contributed £1.5m through their charitable arm to sponsor an academy in west London. Sponsors are able to dictate key aspects of the curriculum, raising concerns that pupils could be cultivated as potential customers of future games.
In addition, the industry is to create a financing scheme to fund other academies. Companies will be offered the chance to emblazon their name across the schools.
Blair wants to create 200 academies across the country, but has had problems attracting sponsors. His deal with the video games industry was criticised by MPs last week.
Phil Willis, the Liberal Democrat education spokesman, said: This is awful. It shows the level of despair Blair has reached about being able to fund these academies. What are we going to get next, the McDonalds Academy or the Spearmint Rhino Academy? The video games industry has faced calls for more regulation because of concerns about the effects of some titles on children. Manhunt, which has an 18 certificate, was removed from many shops after it was linked to the murder of a 14-year-old boy.
Anxious to improve its profile, the industry has agreed to fund the new academy in Paddington through its charity, Entertainment Software Charity (ESC).
Companies behind the charity include the American firm Take Two Interactive, which makes Manhunt, which is promoted as a brutal blood sport. It also produces Grand Theft Auto, described by one American lawyer as a training film for mass murderers.
Another backer is Eidos, which makes Hitman, a world of crime, sin and greed. Another Eidos favourite is Gangsters, where players indulge in a range of make-believe criminal activity from extortion and intimidation to street execution. Two years ago Eidos provoked uproar in the Sikh community with a game in which players entered a temple to kill fanatical believers.
The school to be built in Paddington will specialise in the performing arts and is expected to draw on the creative expertise of games manufacturers. Interactive technology is likely to be used as a teaching tool.
At the last annual games industry dinner in London, Mark Strachan, ESCs chief executive, said the initiative would help ensure that schools would be built through games and popular culture.
He said: We, the games industry, have a special relationship with young people. They buy the games we make. (This) games industry initiative will provide us with our focus over the next five years.
ESC is also behind a plan to create an academies fund to help sponsor other schools. It has written to chief executives suggesting investors donate shares. Its brochure promises that a school can be named after a firm for a gift of £2m.
Sponsorship of an academy would, it says, also enhance a companys reputation through press coverage.
The initiative follows a drive by Downing Street to recruit sponsors for the academies. So far there are 17, with another 32 in the pipeline. They are about twice as expensive to set up as a local authority school and while sponsors put in £2m, the government has to spend an estimated £55m over a 10-year period.
Many education experts also question the powers exerted by the sponsors in return for their cash. They own the land, dictate the design of the building and effectively control the teachers, curriculum and admission policies.
The games industry hopes the initiative will improve its image. The parents of Stefan Pakeerah, 14, who was murdered by a boy with a claw hammer in Leicester, have claimed Manhunt influenced the killer.
Although police found no evidence of a link, many shops stopped selling the game. Grand Theft Auto faces legal action in America after two teenagers who killed a man said they were copying the game.
Strachan said the games industry was not looking for any return from its sponsorship. The criticism of video games, he said, was based on less than 1% of the products. The controversy is always about a tiny proportion of games. Video games should be played in moderation, he said.
