The wider impact of controvertial video games (a rant)

I have decided to say fully what I think about this, now. A few paragraphs long, anyway.

>The difference is nowadays kids are being given the opportunity to do
>things virtually that we don't want them to do in real life, and I don't
>mean snowboarding or fighting demons in hell or playing galitorial games
>like UT, I mean where we've got to the state where school drivebys,
>prostitutes, mass vehicular manslaughter, and even freaky sick stuff like
>you'd get in a freaky sick film.

That is an oft missed difference. Fighting demons in hell might get some church groups het up, and fair enough. But personally there's little actual risk of demon fighting in hell spilling out onto the streets in the same sense that a drive by or violent crime could. One is easily accessible to anybody with arms, legs and a less than perfect moral sense.

Also, think about it. The people who commit most crimes are NOT hardened criminal psychopaths, they're ordinary folk pushed to the edge usually by a combination of factors. Why add more factors? Why send these MIXED messages to kids? Grow up, have kids, don't do drugs, don't kill people .... but yes you can get drunk, yes you can have sex with whoever you want so long as you 'are safe', yes you have more rights than adults [A Policeman in uniform, on duty recently confirmed this at a town meeting in Keynsham] and yes, you can play a game where you get to rape, steal, kill and destroy.

I don't blame the kids for getting mixed messages in their minds when they are having those angry moments in life. Has anyone reading this ever seen someone getting beaten up, or a family member mugged? Have you ever experienced that temporary burst of adrenalin, that burst of righteous indignation, pure fury - where really anything COULD happen?

It is at points like those during which whatever IS on the inside WILL come out, because you lose control in the normal every day sense. There are many crimes of passion, in fact that is why 'crime of passion' is a legal term - it's is regularly used.

>As far as I'm aware most people would be just as happy playing
>non civ slaying children butchering girl raping games as they would the
>controvercial ones.

In 'Hooligans - Storm over Europe', you get to consensually 'use a whore' to up your strength.

That was bad enough, and it is portrayed as the sort of behaviour the 'game hero/good guys' are doing. Then again, you got a major character shooting someone for no reason at all in cold blood, in Crime Life: Gang Wars [a game which I did QA on], after the guy gave him information that was crucial to him and his homies. Nice one, 'leading hero'. Real wholesome message, there.

Seriously - it all goes in. How the hell else do you think we learn? Observation. It is not an excuse, but it's all part of the reason. All of it.

Games are NOT exempt, and all the bleeding-hearted liberals in the world together in one place crying out for their colourful GTAs won't convince me, because I've lived a real life and struggled with the sort of rages and seen the sort of incidents that simply don't help. I talk to kids every week who these mixed messages are messing up. It just re-colours their culture in for them; we got guys refusing to wear rubbers and girls letting it happen; it's messed up. We got kids as young as ten going into dens to have sex, and fighting breaking out in the streets. We got old people crying behind their bedrooms doors at night, and young mothers afraid to open their daughter's bedroom windows in sweltering heatwaves because of what they will hear in language coming off the streets outside. We got husbands and men pushed to their limits and some plotting potential vigilante action, while angry wives applaud it, at the end of their emotional cord and ability to cope.

This is Keynsham - not Bristol. This is where I live, Park Road and the Three Castles. It's not even the High Street.

We want to help these kids, but I tell you. Their entire culture is sending them messages that we then turn around and contradict with 'Oh; actually don't do that'. Games are just another part of that puzzle, and saying otherwise is nieve at best and at worst, dangerously and deliberately ignoring the problem with the future fathers and mothers, leaders and workforce of tomorrow.

Is it censorship? Yes.
Is it better than the alternative? Oh, I think so. I really do.

Would you REALLY want to live in a world where everything was permissable so that everyone's 'rights' were respected?

No.

-=Kim Kaze=-
Street Pastor