Play games, become a druggy or alcoholic

You know, this kind of thing really starts to annoy me. A lot of these people will just not be happy until violent games are eradicated entirely. But to do that, we’d have to eradicate pretty much everything.

Whether its cartoon violence or something more realistic, there are very few games made in modern times that do not have some sort of violence within them. The objective of most games now days is to reach an end point, but to get to that point you’ve gotta kill stuff.

On the flip side, a lot of games that are doing very well on the web now are the puzzle games. These are games you play inside your browser and that can take maybe 15 minutes to play. The sort of thing you can do during your lunch break if you’ve got nothing else you’d rather be doing. However, these games often don’t capture peoples attention for long periods of time.

So we get people like Hillary Clinton and her crownies trying to get games banned in the US because they’re deemed violent. This starts to spawn studies such as the following.

Their study set out to test the effects of media violence exposure on young men aged eighteen to twenty-one years of age (no female gamers were included in the study). They claim that their results indicate that violent video games may play a role in the development of negative attitudes and behaviors related to health.

The study, published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, suggests that violent video games negatively affect a player’s blood pressure and lead to uncooperative behavior, permissive attitudes toward violence, alcohol and marijuana use (other drugs are not mentioned), sexual activity without condom use and hostile social information processing. More information on the study is available at its abstract page.

^{Study Suggests Game Link To Marijuana And Alcohol Abuse}

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to dispute their findings because I have no facts of my own to dispute with. However, I find it highly suspect that these are the results of such a study without there being a serious bias one way or the other. Without knowing the questions asked and without knowing the environment these people were studied in, it becomes very hard to know just how objective the study really was.

But quite aside from that, there is one thing that really gets me annoyed in this whole debate. As an adult, I am well within my rights to play any game I choose. If I want to play a violent game, thats my choice and as a free citizen, I have the right to make that choice. If I want to play some warm fuzzy game, then I am well within my rights to do that as well. But I seriously resent anyone that says they have the right to restrict the games I should be allowed to play.

Having said that, I do not have a problem at all with games being classified in the same way movies are. In fact, in New Zealand they are. The same Censors Office that classifies the movies we see in theatres and that are for sale in stores is the same office that classifies games and sets restrictions on them.

Using a relatively “innocent” game as an example, The Movies is classified as being rated M (for mature audiences) because it contains “moderate violence, sexual references.” The Sims 2 is also rated M15+ because it contains sexual references as well.

Those are two games that most parents would have no problems letting their children play unattended. In fact, I know people that do let their children play them.

The issue here is not whether games should be restricted however. The problem is that there are people that want to completely eliminate games that contain violence from the shelves.

If we remove Grand Theft Auto, then we need to remove games like Doom and Half Life and Far Cry and Quake and F.E.A.R and Max Payne and so on. All games in which there is gratuitous violence. All games in which the whole objective is to kill everything you can.

But we can’t stop there. We need to remove all violence because thats the objective. We need to remove games like The Movies because that also contains violence. And why not remove SimCity while we’re at it because you can cause tornados and hurricanes and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and worse. Mass killing on a god-like scale.

The point is, these people may only have an eye on games like Grand Theft Auto, Bully and Hitman, but those games aren’t even the tip of the iceberg. Lots of childrens games also contain violence in one form or another. While we’re at it, lets completely censor all violence on TV. Including news broadcasts. But we can’t stop there. Why not remove all sexual content as well.

Once we start down this slippery slope, it becomes extremely difficult to stop. Next thing we know, we have vigilante groups outside Electronics Boutique with placards protesting the sale of the next FPS to hit the shelves.

Instead of banning these guys, why not start to enforce a rating in much the same way movies get treated? It’s illegal for a child to buy an R18 movie, why not make it impossible for them to buy a game thats rated M15 unless they can prove they’re over 15? Most schools now issue students with an ID. In New Zealand, we also have the 18+ card for people to prove they’re 18 or older if they don’t have a drivers license.

It seems far more sensible to me that we put these kinds of limitations on games than go to the lengths that Senator Clinton wants. If we follow her intent, we might as well all just pack up our valuables and send them in to the government now because her path is very much a “We know best” kind of ideal. Reminds me much of the socialist nations such as the USSR, China, Cuba, North Korea and so on.

Then again, in New Zealand, the Greens would probably like that.