Representatives of the British game industry reacted with outrage on Monday when the latest video in the government’s Change 4 Life healthy living campaign featured a young boy on the sofa playing with a games controller, below the caption “Risk an early death, just do nothing.”

“This sort of campaign just reinforces the worst stereotype of the games industry,” a spokesman for Sony told The Times. “It feels like, once again, the video games industry is being made to carry the can for society’s ills.”

Richard Wilson, a spokesman for Tiga, the games developers’ trade association, added: “There are a lot of game developers here who are already pretty irritated and frustrated with this government. We have been campaigning all year for tax breaks for the industry to match those available abroad, then on top of that, there comes a major campaign that puts our industry in a very bad light. There are over 30,000 very creative and intelligent people working in the industry in this country. Not one of them is making games that do harm to people. We want to entertain.”

The timing of the row could hardly be worse. On Tuesday evening, Dara O'Briain will host the prestigious video game Baftas, a glittering awards ceremony that recognises the importance of an industry that is a net exporter from the UK of £4 billion per year in intellectual property and game content.

The games industry has long been frustrated by the government’s refusal to grant it entertainment status on an equal footing with TV and Film production, which can attract tax breaks and Lottery funding.

Furthermore, as one industry insider pointed out, the current generation of games consoles is making games-playing a more active experience than ever before. One of the biggest sellers of the year (and nominated for a Bafta) is Nintendo’s Wii Fit, a balancing board designed for exercise when used in conjunction with a Wii console. The Wii also features tennis and bowling games that require players to make the real movements of the sport. “I can’t see why we’re being picked on,” said the Sony spokesman, “when we are now using our TVs more actively than at any time since television was invented.”

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