In what is surely a case of misplaced bravado, Senator Hillary Clinton has taken a stand against video games that give kids the "wrong idea". She pressed for an investigation into how simulated sex cropped up in a modified version of the criminal adventure video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas."
Never mind that the “hot coffee mod” is an unauthorized third party modification that alters the retail version of the game. The unmodified game allows you, the player to:
- Beat to death anyone you encounter with a baseball bat (you see animated pools of blood, hear them cry, and watch their body twist)
- Throw a molotov cocktail at a crowded group of pedestrians and watch as they burn to a black skeletal crisp
- Go to the beach, encounter a woman in her bikini, point a gun at her head, watch her put up her hands and beg for her life, and then blow her head off
- Stand on a second story of a building, and toss grenades at crowds of people below while you watch their limbs bounce around
- Torch someone with a flamethrower, then watch as they run into other people and set them on fire
- Dismember people with a chainsaw, or carving knife
- Shoot a cop, then shoot the next cop that comes after you, then blow up the police cars they send at you, then steal the FBI car that comes for you, then blow the police helicopter out of the sky with your bazooka, and then, after a few tries, steal the Army tank they send after you
4 comments:
And you know, kids play this. I just don't see how parents can think this doesn't affect their kids. I just can't see it.
Heidi
Even though the game has an "M" for "Mature" rating, people still buy this crap for their children. My students tell me all about these games. I find it rather disturbing that most parents don't research the video games their kids play.
I myself prefer games that are "E" for "Everyone", but I'm a wimp; I don;t like it when things jump out and shoot at me.
I agree that computer games have gotten very violent, but I'm not yet convinced playing them is a recipe for acting out that violence. What I am convinced is that governments don't understand the issues enough to be trusted with the task of censoring our entertainment. Parents should be the censor. Of course I often find myself living in a dreamworld, where parents actually look out for their children.
I think that Karl made a couple of very good points here. I would consider myself (and my friends) as perfect examples of kids (now adults) who spent a disturbingly large quantity of our time playing violent video games including (but not limited to) the Grand Theft Auto series, Half-Life, Doom, Quake etc. and are now contributing to society without criminal records and more or less upstanding citizens.
Having been an avid video gamer my whole life, I have SERIOUS issues with sensorship being applied to video games in any manner different from other mediums of entertainment. Video games are simply another medium of escaping from reality and in some cases being a member of a community. A lot of video games are simply stories with multiple paths open to the gamer. This is not very different from the "choose your own adventure" novels that used to be very popular in youth. There are a "semi-finite" set of paths that a user can take to live out a story and the only difference is that the interaction has visuals and sound. Would an attempted sensorship be as widely accepted if such sensorship were attempted on novels? Perhaps this parallel isn't quite fair since there is a serious decline in the literacy of our youth since kids are playing video games and watching TV instead of reading... but I digress.
The bottom line is that the ultimate responsibility falls on the parents of children to ensure that their kids to not turn into psychopath mass-murderers. Video games may give some ideas or scenarios to be re-enacted as the one scene from GTA in the Police Station, but the root of the problem will always come back to the lack of solid relationships between parent and child. It is only natural that children will seek out influence and guidance from other mediums in order to fill the void left by the lack of adult supervision. Perhaps parents should stop depending on video games to babysit their kids...
"Only the stupid people are breeding" - Eminem
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