Last night, Panaroma organized a programme in its attempt to explore the murky area related to addiction to video games. It had been strategically timed to coincide with the release of the World of Warcraft expansion pack, called Cataclysm.

The games industry expected its coming and devoted much of yesterday having its shields up. The gamers on the various forums and social media turned up, expecting an uninformed scaremongering from the BBC.

In fact, the UK trade body TIGA also gave a press release criticizing the programme even before they had laid their eyes on it. The reaction was a curiously insecure and sensationalist one, to the seemingly sensationalist documentary.

This is not very surprising. The failure of the mainstream television to assuredly grab video games and its culture has rendered the industry uneasy. The uneasy relationship reached a point of nadir when video games were featured last time on a current affairs programme. Previously during this year, the currently infamous Alan Titchmarsh program on video game violence had the well-informed and well-spoken CVG editor Tim Ingham who is present as slight over a verbal piñata, harangued by the host of the show, the panel and the audience of the studio.