Disney CEO vows to review violent games

Disney’s chairman and CEO Bob Iger has pledged to review its media content for violence in a response to the recent outcry by some politicians around its effect on children’s behaviour.

Following recent moves by both President Obama and Vice President Biden to look into the potential harm of violent videogames, Mr Iger said he would “take stock” of the company’s output and keep an eye on things that go “over the line”.

According to a report by Deadline, the CEO commented: “At Disney there’s very little [violent content], but I still want to make sure we’re asking ourselves the right questions in terms of that standard.”

He added: “We’re willing to be a part of a dialogue in today’s world that I think is pretty necessary in terms of what our role is and what our role should be”.

While engaging in this dialogue, Disney may want to consider the advice of Dr Cheryl Olsen, a Harvard psychologist who recently told Here Is The City that research into gaming should be open to discovering positives as well as negatives.

“Researchers need to be open to the possibility of both harm and benefit,” she explained, adding later: “I’d love to see more research on this.”

Disney has produced titles such as Epic Mickey and will soon be releasing Disney Universe and Monsters Inc. Run.

James Lee

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James Lee is a freelance writer and analyst with extensive experience in the technology, media and games sectors. For the past few years he has provided content for internationally published industry reports, SEO companies and a variety of news-focused websites. Prior to this, James was responsible for covering news and producing in-depth features for GamesIndustry.biz while occasionally contributing to its sister-site. Eurogamer.net. In addition to this he has contributed to other notable sites such as CVG.co.uk, Edge-Online and DigitalSpy.