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It’s the Parents Not the Video Game
(15 votes, average: 4.6 out of 5)
Loading ...Screenshots all captured by me.
In ancient Rome the peoples’ idea of entertainment was watching two real live men fight to the death. And then sometimes they sicced a lion on the survivor. And yet we regard the Romans as one of the most sophisticated and civilized of the ancient cultures. My point is human civilization has emerged from very violent and bloodthirsty roots, and there was a time not that long ago when people were much more apathetic toward killing and death. Today there are no barbarian raids. There are no Crusades. There are no armed conflicts between small clans and tribes. There’s not even any hangings (well not in this country.) Most of us wouldn’t want such high-flying action in our lives, but we’ll gladly indulge the fantasy.
And yet here we are in the 2000’s blaming fictional depictions of violence for everything that happens. Specifically: video games.
I was watching the news the other night and in the wake of the deadly mass shooting at Virginia Tech. two stupid talking heads who came on after Keith Olbermann took the opprotunity to discuss violent video games and violent films, as if this had any correlation to the incident. And it pissed me off. You can’t blame violent media for everything and anything, especially when you have no goddamn evidence or justification whatsoever to support even bringing it up in association to a murderous crime.
I’d like to ask those two bozos what video games Charles Whitman played.
I’ve been playing video games since I was 7 years old. It was the 80’s and my spoiled ass got a little something known as the Nintendo Entertainment System. It came with a cartridge boasting three games: Duck Hunt. Track Meet. And some charmingly bizarre title known as "Super Mario Bros." which would become a favorite franchise of mine from then on.
Dynasty Warriors 4, a fantasy war game that
would definitely be pretty boring without violence.
As I grew up, video games began to become more complex, and more mature. The Sega Gensis came to be, and my brother and I spent our days after school playing the likes of Toejam and Earl, Mortal Kombat and Zombies Ate My Neighbors. Around 1997 I, like many people, finally made my way fully into the Final Fantasy franchise with a famous piece of gaming history known as Final Fantasy 7, which of course depicts the violent (yet bloodless) death of a main character and impending world destruction. The Nintendo 64 was also a fantastic system, continuing my affection for Mario, getting me into Zelda, and I also had a great game for multiplayer malarky based on the latest James Bond flick Goldeneye. Four player verses mode, running around shooting at each other was certainly alot of fun. Toward the end of High School the monolithic Playstation 2 was released, and I was introduced to two of my now favorite game series: Dynasty Warriors and Grand Theft Auto, the latter of which I’m sure many people are aware of the controversy.
So there you have it: I’ve played video games most of my life. I’ve played games with blood spilling in them. I’ve played games where you use guns and I’ve also played games where you fight dinosaurs, aliens and hobgoblins. I’ve played cute games, I’ve played realistic games, and I’ve certainly played very violent games. I , however, have never beaten anyone up. I’ve never shot anyone. Nor do I have any intention or desire to express my anger in a physically violent manner at any time. And hell, I was even practicing Tae Kwon Do in High School.
And where my mother may roll her eyes and criticize me for entertaining myself in GTA by getting on top of a parking garage and sniping the random NPCs (Non-Player Controlled/Characters) until police heliocopters arrive to gun me down and kill me (and they say video games don’t show the consequences) it’s because of her that the dumbfuck idea of "acting out a video game" never crossed my mind. And where people like to point fingers at the games, I prefer to point the finger where it belongs: at the parents.
Short of killing or molesting their children, parents are forgiven for everything these days. They’re never blamed for raising their children badly, or for simply being an incompetant parent It’s always someone, or something, else’s fault. Look, a 7 year old can’t go out and buy a Playstation. They definitely can’t go out and buy a mature rated video game. Who are the ones who buy this shit for them? THE PARENTS. Who are the ones who don’t check the very clear and easy to understand rating labels before buying a game for their children? THE PARENTS. Who shouldn’t be complaining about the content of video games they themselves bought and didn’t even take the time to check and see if the content was appropriate? THE PARENTS. Even when a child somehow gets ahold of a mature, violent game, either through a friend, older sibling, aunt, uncle or negligent store who should make themselves damn sure they’re aware of the content of what their child is exposed to and if in finding that content inappropriate have the balls to take it away from their kid? THE PARENTS.
And yet when a pair of idiotic parents in Tennessee let their 15 and 13 year old play Grand Theft Auto, apparently never really bothering to teach them the difference between fantasy and reality, or anything about gun safety, and like many dumb American families thought giving their kid a game system and a Bible and then ignoring them was good enough parenting, it’s Rockstar Games that gets the lawsuit when the two fuckhead kids took their father’s guns and decided to go out and shoot at cars, blaming the game for the influence. And because the children blamed the game, everyone else immediately followed suit. It never occured to anyone that the boys were possibly using it as a scapegoat to get out of personal responsibility, and the worst part is because everyone was so eager to demonize a video game the two dumb fucks got off on a rather light sentence (taking their crimes, the fact they killed a man, and the idea that 15 and 13 is old enough to know the cause and effect of shooting at a moving vehicle into consideration.) Now what sort of message does this send to other delinquents? If you blame a video game, no one will blame you?
No one ever blamed the parents for allowing two underaged kids to play the game in the first place. No one ever blamed the parents for keeping accessible guns in the house (and allowing young teenagers to be familiar enough with how to operate them.) No one ever blamed the parents for raising two out of control little shits. Curiously no one ever even blamed the fact the kids also listened to hard rap music. And of course it couldn’t have been their unstable family life that drove them to acting out, no, it had to be the game and only the game. God forbid anyone actually have to take responsibility for their actions or the actions of their children. The parents carefully try to paint themselves as completely innocent, but I highly doubt it, something had to be going on there for this to happen. Or probably, something that wasn’t going on.
Getting arrested in GTA: Vice City
But in our culture of avoiding personal responsibility and adopting the confounding mentality that outside forces can somehow completely take control of a normal, healthy person it has to be Rockstar’s fault. It’s their fault despite the fact they did the responsible thing and put warning labels all over their game packaging that the game was intended for ages 17 and up, along with exactly why it’s intended for ages 17 and up. Despite the fact that there’s nothing in Grand Theft Auto you wouldn’t see in an R-rated film (of course stupid parents bring kids to those too, but that’s a rant for another day.) And not to mention the game does indeed show the consequences of crime, as mentioned earlier, because when you kill someone the cops come after you. If you cause more damage while evading the cops, more cops come after you and start ramming your car. Before you know it police heliocopters, S.W.A.T. teams and the FBI are after you. If you somehow, miraculously, manage to survive all that (and its bloody difficult even with cheat codes), martial law is declared and your ass is dead no matter what you do. If the police get ahold of you in the early phases of your rampage they drag out of your car and arrest you. If you’re not in a car they just shoot you to death. When they need to be more agressive they tend to just ram and shoot your car until it explodes, and if you manage to escape the burning car they shoot you. Sure it’s not completely realistic, I mean you can’t even flee to Mexico, but it does indeed show the consequences.
Police blocking me, the recklessly driving criminal,
just like they would in real life
Yes you start over after a death or arrest, but it’s just a game. A very tongue-in-cheek game at that. Grand Theft Auto 3, for example, plays on alot of mob movie cliches. An item in the game known as a "bribe" will knock down a star on your wanted level. Getting a hooker fills your health meter (people often cite the fact you can "kill prostitutes" as shocking, but this is not mandatory gameplay and hookers can be killed like any other wandering NPC. You can kill cops too, how come no one gets mad about that?) In Vice City if you’re arrested you hear the voice of your lawyer making outlandish claims and excuses. And the radio stations playing in the cars in the game always have the most hilariously satirical fictional ads and talk shows going. This is all very funny, but it’s adult humor. In a game intended for adults. I’m sick and tired of incompetant parents trying to censor all media because they’re too damn lazy, stupid or cowardly to filter what their children hear, watch and play. It’s like idiots who let their kids watch adult cartoons because they assume all cartoons will be automatically appropriate for children because of their perception of cartoons as a juvenile medium (despite the fact if you watch old Looney Tunes or Betty Boop cartoons this was certainly not the case.) I mean for God’s sake, my mom wouldn’t even let my littler brother and I watch Chuckie, Jason or Freddie Krueger movies even though most other kids in our elementry school had seen them. My dad on the other hand, in some spectacular laspe in judgement, showed us the Rocky Horror Picture Show. But that’s not important right now.
But going on a wanton rampage and shootouts with the virtual, artifically intelligent police officers isn’t the point of the Grand Theft Auto games (even if it is really fun.) Little do most non-gamers realize, and this goes for many games besides Grand Theft Auto as well, is the GTA games have a plot, they have a cast of characters, they have spoken dialouge (and pretty good acting at that.) Generally, you play the role of a criminal, a hired hand carrying out organized crime (although in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas the plot was more taking the neighborhood back from violent gangs, but it was still in a very less-than-legal manner.) At the beginning of each game, and before and even after some missions there are cinematic scenes that play out as if you’re watching a film. I believe it was back in 1993 that one of the creators of the Star Fox series predicted that eventually video games would become like interactive movies, and boy was he ever right. You’ll be hard pressed to find a game without at least a little bit of a plot and a few cutscenes these days.
In the end, violent video games are not turning people into killers. There needs to be some pretty extreme circumstances in a person’s brain and environment to make them go out and imitate a video game after playing it. The likilest cause is neglectful parents who use video entertainment as a replacement for parenting, as a replacement for spending time with their kids, for engaging their kids, for seriously talking to their kids, for raising their kids. Left with a violent game intended for adults as their only stimulation, likely craving attention and any sort of fulfillment, of course there’s going to be a kid now and again who is going to snap.
But the key phrase here is "now and again". People try to claim that the advent of modern video games, through the 90’s and now the 00’s, has bred a violent out of control culture and sadistic killer children. This is a complete and utter myth and anyone stupid enough to believe it deserves a lobotomy. I think this is an instance of "if you say it enough it becomes the truth", a technique often used by extreme Conservatives to warp our perception of reality. Where professional asshole Jack Thompson and others of his ilk refuse to believe it, numbers don’t lie, and the numbers have told us that since the early 90’s overall violent crime rates have dropped dramtically. If we want to use the generalized logic of those crying for game censorship, one could conclude that video games have actually made people less violent.
So whenever a random coocoo clock out there selects something in art, literature or pop culture as his guide and mantra, it’s not the fault of the medium. That person had to be batshit insane to begin with. I mean, do books make people violent because Mark David Chapman claimed the book Catcher in the Rye made him shoot a pop star? Does music turn people into murderers because Charles Manson referenced the song "Helter Skelter" in his ritual cultist killing plot? Hey those are both incidents invovling The Beatles… are The Beatles a bad influence on the world because they’re connected to these two incidents? This sort of blaming is so transparent and so flawed it’s incredible that people can still get away with it when it comes to the medium of video games.
In conclusion, you think video games are going to turn your kids into violent maniacs? Fine. Then stop buying games for your kids and quit your bitching. Most of us out there can still handle this form of entertainment and we shouldn’t have it censored, watered down, or lose it completely just because your incompetant ass raised a crazy person.
Great, great points. Things I’ve been saying for ages.
My brother’s twelve and plays GTA and many other games similar to it. I think it’s stupid. x:
Huzzah I say! Although I personally don’t play many M rated games (well there was Vice City back when I we 12) I do enjoy indulging in them once in awhile; as do my friends. Really you can’t get much better then sniping or sword-assassinating your ‘team mate’ in Halo2, or kicking your friend’s ass in SC. But, I digress.
The fact is, like you said, it was my parents who kept me on the path of ‘this is reality; that is not.’ Granted, they never knew about Vice City till a few years AFTER, and therefore never allowed me to rent the game (sadly D;), but there you go. They looked at the label, and the game was not to be mine. Hell, mom wouldn’t even let me get Sims until JUST THIS YEAR (I’m 15 now) because of the adult humor and all that.
Media can be a SMALL reason as to why a kid got overly violent, but um… how do you think the kid got a hold of that media in the first place?
Excellent rant, once again. Cheers.
Lunar
Both comments here mentioned 12 year olds playing Vice City XD goddamn. I’m more surprised cause I can’t imagine a 12 year old being able to play the game missions, they’re friggin’ hard.
Another thing is to consider the percentage of people who play these games, and the percentage of people who do these things. Most teen/young adult males play some form of violent videogame. Those who act on it are like… what, one percent?
And regards to the VT shooting… Jack Thompson was blaming videogames before they even released the killers name. Apparently there MERE PRESENCE of videogames in society is enough to drive someone to insanity, so it’s not important whether or not this person actually played videogames.
I keep hearing things about games that give you points for killing cops, yet I can’t really think of any. I know GTA doesn’t although a lot of anti-game people seem to think so.
@LisaGreywords: According to one of the articles I linked to CBS has claimed that you get points for killing cops in GTA, which is totally untrue. Maybe they mistook the wanted level for points. There ARE a list of stats that add to your overall “criminal rating”, everything from number of headshots, to distance traveled, to how many days have passed in the game. But I’m looking at the Vice City stats screen right now and I don’t see any space for “how many cops killed.” I’m too lazy to look at GTA 3, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be there either.
Oddly enough, Rush Limbaugh is a voice of reason with the Virginia Tech shootings. http://kotaku.com/gaming/rush-limbaugh/limbaugh-games-arent-to-blame-253132.php
Sure it was also meshed with a pro gun control argument, but he eerily made sense.
Jacko just saddens and sickens me. It’s so frustrating that he goes on and on with the bold faced lies. It shatters my optimism for the world. Sure any crazy fuck can get onto Fox News or even the other news networks, but the fact that he is still around with people believing the shit that he dumps all over their faces time and time again makes me… I lost my chance at a proper sentence there…
Jackenheimer here and the Anna Nicole hurricane of stupidity makes me jaded and concerned with the well being of the world. We are not going to all get wiped out by nuclear warheads, we are going to be ended by assimilation into the mindless masses and heartless corporations. When individuality and thought among the people disappears from the face of the planet, then the human race has died that day, and any events that happen afterward do not matter to me.
Maybe I went a little off topic, but I think my little tirade still stands as some sort of undefined point.
I wish I could add something intelligent, but I really can’t. My inner self (you know, the one that isn’t using its hands to type) is APPLAUDING though.
THE COMMENT WILL WORK THIS TIME.
I apologise for skimming the majority of it after the initial reference to it being the parents’ fault, as it began to get very similar to a previous rant you had on a similar subject. :3
Anyway. I’ve been playing violent video games since I was little, too, and I’m almost a pacifist (except for the fact that I’m known to issue gruesome death threats).
Have you seen Bowling for Columbine? It basically boils down to the fact that USers are so gun happy because not only of their history, but their media and misconceptions about the world around them. The media is lying to them, the politicians are lying to them.
Ever watched Canadian news? The breaking story is about a new building opening, or the homeless crisis.
Thanks for this rant Sai. I grew up on video games, and had smart parents. They read the back of the packages, and we weren’t allowed to play mature video games in our house until I was 17 and brought Resident Evil home for the first time.
My brother was 9 at the time, and of course, wanted to play too. I asked my dad, told him everything that gameplay included, and he told me as long as I (or one of my parents) was there while the game was being played by my brother, it was alright.
But then again, my brother had a rather mature mindset for a 9 year old as he spent most of his time with me and my friends. That’s an 8 year age gap.
My parents made sure that we knew the difference between reality and fiction. And were there when we had questions. Instead of blaming video games, they were responsible adults about it.
Praise the Gods that Sai is here! I’ve been playing video games as long as I’ve had hand-eye coordination. I saw violent movies starting with Halloween III when I was three or four. Have I ever seriously injured someone just because I could? Hell no. I’ve done it in self-defense, but never because “Oh, hey, I have a knife in my pocket and that guy doesn’t look cool.”
I really, really, dislike those people who try and blame video games for everything that goes wrong in the world. You think they have violent video games in countries having civil wars? Hell no. No one would buy them. They’re living it. So, tell me Conservatives, who’s fault is that?
Are you going to tell me next that the president waged war on Iraq because he played a game like “State of Emergency” before going to bed that night? I mean, come on! This isn’t cool. Not at all.
@BetaLogan: Holy shit, Rush Limbaugh of all people is defending video games? We must be in bizarro world.
Either Rush thinks it’s a comparison to aid his disapproval for gun control or sommeeboodyy’s a cloosseet gaaammmeerrrrr…
You’re SO right.
Newspapers always blame videogames, RPGs or tv when a teenager commits a crime.
Some years ago they arrived to say that Sailor Moon should have been censored because if boys looked at it, they could become gay O_o;;;
Thank you! It always annoys me when people try to blame videogames. Admittedly I don’t really play violent video games but I’m pretty damn sure that if I did I wouldn’t suddenly start a bloodbath. Come to think of it, how do the parents NOT know the kid knows how to use a gun? I mean, they’d have to practice somewhere, surely they’d get caught? By someone?
To be fair though I don’t tend to get my games etc censored, my parents allow me to play/watch quite a lot as long as they’ve had a quick look beforehand… So I’m not really a poster child for this XD
Jack felt like exploiting the situation, which is just sickening.
I love how he calls them murder-sims.
I suggest we make “I’mma go play some murder-sims!” a meme.
Woo-hoo! As usual, that was one heck of a good rant! I really enjoy reading your rants. I bet you can make a good research paper out of this. (Okay, I’m just joking.)
And I totally agree with you! Though, I won’t say to entirely blame the parents, but I think they should get some of the blames, too. Mostly, it is their fault for not teaching their kids to extinguish the differences between the reality and the consequences you get and the “fantasy” world. I remember when parents would punish their children if they did anything bad back then. But nowadays, most parents don’t even do anything but just say, “Oh sweety, it’s okay. It’s not your fault. It’s fault.”
Riiiighto.
But man, I have a grandmother who thinks all video games are evil. With this incident, this gives her ANOTHER reason to rant at me. That just really sucks.):
I don’t know if Rush is a gamer. I do know he’s a total video equipment dork though, going as far back as Betamax.
Anyway the transcript suggests that he was trying to get people to stop blaming everybody but the murderer for the murder since all his callers were trying to make excuses for the action (hates the country because of his professor, plays games, on his meds, off his meds, not enough gun laws etc.)
I wholeheartedly agree, it’s the parents, they don’t want to admit they’re wrong, so they try to put the blame on something else. I remember a few years ago, I saw the little brother of one of my friends (who was only about ten or eleven at the time) playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and going on a massive rampage and saying stuff like, ‘That was cool!’ and ‘I got you good!’ I sarcastically told him that he was being a maniac, and he looked at me and said with a grin, ‘Thank you!’
Now let’s take a few steps back to the mid-1990s, when Mortal Kombat had just arrived on the SNES and Genesis. My friend owned a Genesis, and a couple of my other friends brought a rented copy of MK over to his place to be able to enjoy the ‘real’ Mortal Kombat, only to have my friend’s father come in and yank the cartridge out of the slot, telling them not to play that garbage in his house anymore. Mind you, my friend was only about seven or eight at the time (I didn’t know him that well at the time though.)
It’s the parents, and not just because they’re allowing their kids to play that stuff, but also because they’re being inconsistent about it. They tell my friend not to watch violent or inappropriate movies or play inappropriate video games, yet his little brother is allowed to them with little to no problem. It’s total crap I tell you.
I’ve been playing video games since I was about two or three, back when the Atari 2600 was the biggest thing, and I knew from the start that what I was playing was all fantasy. Just because I was going around shooting at Space Invaders didn’t mean I was going to go outside and shoot at people who came close to my house just because I thought they were invading!
The parents always want something to take the blame off of them, and they choose violent media, since they don’t want people to see the truth that they’re not good parents. To tell the truth, there is no such thing as a perfect parent. My parents (especially my mother) always had faith in me that I would make the right decisions about life, and never had any problems with me playing video games.
Like you said, it’s not the game, it’s the parents!
oO; Wow. You raise a good point. x3 I couldn’t be a parent, because I’m too strict. oO; I never had real parents growing up. In fact, I clearly remember, at age twelve, cooking Lil’ Smokies over a liquor fire in my room. >>;
you need your own fucking talk show.
thats about the only talk show i’d consider watching :/
“entertaining myself in GTA by getting on top of a parking garage and sniping the random NPCs (Non-Player Controlled/Characters) until police heliocopters arrive to gun me down and kill me”
i did that alot,then i’d get in my car and launch off the ramp when “tha choppa” came, once i even crashed into the helicopter mid-flight!
Someone should condense this rant, print it out and pass it out as fliers in every GameSTop and EBGame store in the country.
My school newspaper actually had an article about this, and Ron White has an amazing comical rant about it in his special “You Can’t Fix Stupid”. This side of the argument actually has a lot more base and proof behind it that the other side. Hell, I’m proof of that enough, I started playing super Nintendo when I was 3 and one of the most passive, positive people I know.
Besides, every national study that’s been done has come back mixed or inconclusive.
So why does this even cross peoples mind.
And if media in general actually does have an effect on a person?
If some little kid is stupid enough to jump off a building with an anvil because “they saw it in a cartoon once”…Weeeell, I believe someone in the Gaiaonline GD referred to this as “Natural Selection”.
I totally agree, and this issue has been frustrating me especially lately because we were working with the topic of television and video game influences for about two weeks recently. Video games are a scapegoat, and it’s not the industry’s fault–their rating system is accurate (especially considering the MPAA’s often faulty ratings) and the only reason children get their hands on them is due to irresponsibility by those that sell the games and by the parents.
I’ve been an avid player of Final Fantasy since VIII came out (I was about 10 when we first got it). I know for sure my parents knocked some sense into me, considering I haven’t beat up or attacked anyone (score one for me?). I explicitly remember even my older sister making sure I didn’t watch any scenes I shouldn’t (all things considered, Final Fantasy is relatively clean). I certainly don’t think I’m worse for wear, and as people in their teens and 20’s right now, as the generation raised among video games, are severely underrepresented when this topic is discussed when we should really be a foremost authority, ridiculous as it may sound.
Wow a lot of really good arguments there - it’s sad that the media prefers to dig at fairly shallow sensationalist ideas without really looking into it.
I’m actually also interested in the amount of press being given to this boy’s stories. As if they somehow predict his actions. Well - they’re saying he was mentally ill and I can certainly believe that but really, to an extent, the stuff he wrote for english classes is not unusual. I’ve been in creative writing groups where the hero gets gutted alive, where kids take revenge on molesters, heck my own story was about a bunch of kids who stole a giant cargo ship and buggered off like chocolate addicted pirates! Not to mention the heart attack the “omg his story was so violent” crowd will have if they ever venture out into Fanfic or Fictionpress sites.
Same again - they’re saying it was a sign of his mental illness well maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. Where are the REAL signs? His withdrawn nature and lack of communication. Oh but don’t pay too much attention to that - LOOK AT HIS HORRIBLE STORY! … and while they’re distracted less people will be asking “he never spoke? why didn’t someone DO something?”
Ahhh okay I’m being cynical, you can’t spot everyone who is having problems like that. It’s just sad he had such easy access to firearms.
I hope that there aren’t reprisal attacks against asian students though, I would like to think we as people on earth are getting past all that… need I remind them the number 2 record is held by a white guy? (was the same thing, person with known mental illness - was allowed to collect firearms he had a bag of them when he went shooting).
Before video games kids played ‘pretend shootin’ with toy guns. How soon we forget that it’s parents who need to teach kids that these things aren’t toys and the responsibilities of protecting others.
oh and i would like to point out that yes - some kids are just shits - regardless of the how much they’re told/taught/trained. In this case it’s not okay to just give up - you gotta get that kid HELP! I remember a lil boy who was utterly horrible, really vicious and gleeful about it, but his parents really were trying hard to stop it, punishing and all that. I heard them saying “well, what can we do?” and I thought “well - if you give up, this kid is lost. How will he hold down a job?” I wonder though how easy it is for parents to get that kinda help? Is it really as simple as that?
OMG wall of text. I am just a noob though dont’ take too much of what I ramble on about seriously. ^____^;
you’ve heard me rant enough about this subject, but yes, i have the same views. sadly, they will never get it.
Jack the Ripper played GTA.
All this anti video game BS is because of Jack Thompson.
He tried to out Janet Reno as a homosexual.
He attacked Rap music and lastly video games.
He’s also gone after various radio personalities.
He claims street violence is caused by video games yet that violence dates back to the 1950’s and has been on a steady increase from that time.
Today the street gangs are seen as cool and imitated in the United Kingdom by Chavs.
The vast majority of the gangs have not had access to video games violent or otherwise due to the high cost, turn over and “planned obsolescence”.
In short he’s franticly trying to destroy what other people enjoy just because he is a jerk
Yarg. I know what you mean! We at our school must write an essay about a controversial topic, and I chose to write about video games and how people should stop blaming them for juvenile violence
It’s really sad!
In my country, GTA is a best selling game.
Every PS2 rental has it and the majority of the players are kids, not more than 10-12 years old.
and the seller/ rental staff don’t even care about it.
So do “parents”
reminds me of the people that are too afraid to fly in planes… and still love driving everywhere. even though there’s a much more likely chance one has of dying in a car crash as compared to a plane crash. again, the media’s fault, b’c there’s so much attn put on the few plane crashes that occur throughout the year.
and, i definitely agree with you on all of your points. it is the parent’s responsibility to teach their kids the difference of right and wrong, and not let the media at large (tv, the cpu, video games, etc) babysit their kids. i also understand that in itself can be difficult, as many of today’s parents need to both (if there are two) work full time to support a growing family, but they still at least need to keep up with what their kids are watching and doing.
Good points there, Sai. The most violent game I’ve ever played is… well, Mario! Yeah! I tried GTA a couple of times a friend’s house, but it was boring as hell!
I think the ones to blame ARE the parents, too. I mean, what kind of moron do you have to be to breed kids like that? Any parent that doesn’t show his or her kid what’s right and wrong, and creates so easily influenced beings by what is NOT REAL; clearly has issues.
And, is ADULT games are meant for adults (as in older than 18), I don’t even whant to think about why on Earth someone would possibly want to simluate killing other people? WHy, Sai? Why do you play videogames? I think that really is the point, like you said. Parents shouldn’t buy a videogame as a nanny! Hell, why not hire a real one?
The effect of vidoegames really depends on who the person is, right? And people are, ovbiosuly, shaped by their parents!
Augh, completely agree. It’s true that various media can influence someone’s mood, but they’d have to be a pretty unstable person already to actually shoot someone because they did on a video game or because they listened to, say, Marilyn Manson.
There are signs that a person is not mentally stable or whatever. And while some signs aren’t going to be noticed by all parents, if your child is acting oddly, as a parent, you’re supposed to notice, and you’re supposed to do something about it, but too many parents are too lazy and/or use things like video games and television to raise their kids to notice.
Honestly, if parents can’t be bothered to raise their kids (I understand that there are a lot of families where both parents work, etc, but they can still have an active part in raising their children, or at the very least, restricting what they watch and play), they shouldn’t have them.
Yup Sarah Bee.
Parents can be stupid and shitty.
I’m glad mine aren’t.
At least not my dad.
I r late, but I love topics about video games :B
I could have gone on a whole rant about how I grew up with decidedly non-violent video games (disregarding brother and his love of Mortal Kombat then, and GTA and SOCOM today), yet turned out violent because of something completely different. (Gee, guess what that something completely different was? That’s right, divorce, death, various struggles of a split household, suck ass teachers, sadistic ‘peers’…I could prattle on about how I’m a different statistic of a girl turning anger outward instead of inward, but all of that would take forever, so I’ll just say this.)
Pretty much all parents (mostly hopeless newbies) suck; they spoil their little shits rotten and employ all sorts of suck ass tactics. Yet, they will always put the blame on something simple to make themselves look like the victims. Their children, since most of them were raised to be cowards who refuse to take credit where credit is due if it’s negative, will follow suit or incite this rhetoric of crucifying video games and all who make them.
With video games in general, I’ve always thought that it’s not some mysterious brain-washing power that’s enticing our ‘poor widdle babies’ to do evil, it was just their own weak minds. That may or may not have been a pretty dark thought for a ten year old at the time =P