Won't somebody please think about the children?
I've been playing video games for about a quarter century now. I've seen the evil that lies in games. I've tried to steal girls from barrel-throwing Monkeys. I've shot down countless enemy spaceships and hid behind my bunker while they defended themselves in the open. Did you ever notice that in Galaga, the ships are all flying away from you? They are running away in formation, and you're shooting them down as they retreat.

I've destroyed alien civilizations, set bombs underneath sentient beings that have no way to escape (thinking of Mother Brain from Metroid here). I've walked into peoples houses, rummaged through their rooms, taken anything I wanted, and killed them if they resisted (Ultima). I've played city-builder games where I built residential areas close to the industrial centers so I could have low-rent housing (Sim City). I've ferreted out the enemy, and destroyed his base of operations (XCOM). I've traded weapons between foreign nations (Masters of Orion). I've massed armies and routed enemies by surrounding them and annihilating them with superior numbers and firepower (Age of Empires, C&C, Starcraft, etc.) I've sent soldiers on suicide missions into the enemies lair just so that I could get a look at the base. Hell, I sent soldiers on suicide missions because I didn't like the color suit they were wearing.

In all the time I was playing these games, no one in the real world ever called me a villain. I was never labeled a killer, thief, bandit. The greatest insult they would pay me was 'geek'.

Doom changed all that. The game didn't change. I was still running around, shooting bad guys, saving the day. The only difference was that the game was played from inside a person, rather than a top-down view. It made the game more personal, made it more enjoyable, but didn't change the underlying nature of the game. I still knew I was looking at a flickering tube, listening to a series of beeps, and above all, I knew it wasn't real.

The people standing over my shoulder, watching the game, didn't have my savvy. They were not used to games. Most of them never played games. When I looked at the screen, I saw critical gameplay targets being reached. When they looked at the screen, they saw people dying. For the first time, I was called a killer.

Notice, the game hadn't changed (Doom is basically the same as Robotron or SmashTV except with a different camera view), I hadn't changed. The only thing that changed was the impression other people had about me.

I remember when people got into such a furor about Dungeons & Dragons. PTA's all over the country said that it would demoralize society and destroy our children. Well, here we are, thirty years later. There's still children roaming the streets, school violence is at an all-time low, and D&D is considered anything from quaint to geeky.

I've played the worst games out there. I've played Doom 3, GTA, BMX XXX, Postal. Some were great games, some were crap. Just like any other group of games. And through it all, I was never swayed to the dark side. Heck, I tried to play Fable as an evil-doer, and I just didn't enjoy it as much.

The only reason these games stood out is that the non-players decided that these games were dangerous, so they sold better when the outrage started. Nobody would remember Postal if people didn't violently rail against it. However, now we have Postal 2 with Gary Coleman.

Games bring out a person's natural tendencies. Nice people will play nice characters, and will avoid needlessly violent games. Mean people will tend to play mean games, and they will tend to play them in a mean fashion. You could argue that these games bring out the inner devil in us all, thus making us a more evil society. But you know what else has been blamed for bringing out the inner devil? Television, Movies, Books (mostly porn), Radio. Frankly, any time one person talks to another, somebody is going to start showing his true colors.

People point to Columbine and say that the kids did it because they played Doom. Well, there's more than a million people playing Doom, and these two kids were the only ones I know of who went nuts. You could make as strong an argument by pointing at the fact that these two kids didn't eat breakfast. Or, if you actually wanted to look for warning signs, how about noticing that these two kids had guardians who would buy them shotguns? I'm a big fan of the Second Amendment, but I draw the line at giving unstable children weapons. And I think parents who are willing to do that, are probably warping their children more than the video games they play.

Now there's an attorney arguing that a teen built up his murderous strategy by playing GTA. His argument is that there were missions in the game where the player is expected to kill a target, and to kill all first response units (paramedics, police, firemen). Well, I just finished GTA:Vice City, and I never found myself in a situation where the game encouraged me to shoot at first-response personnel. I should point out that this was the same lawyer who was arguing that the game Manhunt trained a person to kill, despite the fact that it was not the killer who played the game, but rather the victim.

In short, as the Who said, "The kids are alright." You may think the games today are more pointless than they ever were, but your parents thought your games were pretty stupid too. Just file this under the same category where you keep your children's clothing preference, favorite music, hairstyle, and slang. Video games will not make them monsters. Only parents can do that.


- posted by BrandG @ 12:40 AM