Let me start out by saying that I love video games. On any average day, I work until 3:30 pm; then I come home and sit down to play a video game. Yes, I find the time to eat and sometimes even be social. However I also love to be "lost", so to speak, in a world where I didn't just spend 8+ hours laying concrete.
The thing that bothers me is how everyone attacks video games for every crime a child does. From spray painting a wall to the awful tragedies in our schools, everything is blamed on violence on the tube. Who is to blame? The parents? The schools? The gamers?
As a gamer, I have to say it's partially everyone's fault. Not to save my own skin, but to help everyone to understand that it can never be pinned on one cliche'. To better explain let me break it down.
- Parents-
I would say that parents are 50% to blame in today's society. Yes, I understand that it's getting harder to make ends meet, and even harder to parent, with all the "devils of the world" and what have you. Just stop giving up. You cannot sit back and "expect" your kids to behave themselves the way you want unless you do it. The best way to get kids to act the way you want them, is to stop giving in. If I wanted something, I had to earn it. If you don't want your kids to play violent video games or watch it on TV, throw the games out, and turn of the TV and go play basketball with your kid.
- Schools -
Schools are 0% to blame. "Higher security" isn't the answer. We cannot protect our kids from everything, and we shouldn't waste all of our tax dollars on hall monitors who don't teach our children a damn thing. I remember the hall monitors better than I remember who did what in whichever war. That's wrong.
- Video Games -
Video games are about 10% to blame. You may not agree, but that's why debates are good. Sure big video game companies are making blood and gore part of every video game, however, it's a game, and it's not the publishers fault you cannot control what your kids take as real. Games are meant to let us escape the real world, not give us stupid ideas for real life. If you idolize a game so much that you do it in real life, then your biological makeup is to blame, not the game industry.
So who does the other 40% belong too? The government. The politicians want something to blame for the way our kids act, but the fact is the U.S. government makes a Massive multiplayer Online Game, or MMOG, called America's Army (http://www.americasarmy.com/), that allows you to become a soldier online and kill the "bad guys" with just as much blood and gore as the infamous grand Theft Auto series. They make the game in hopes that kids who take games as real life, join up, in real life. Talk about exploitation.
You may question games like Super Columbine Massacre RPG (http://www.columbinegame.com/), or JFK reloaded (http://downloads.gamezone.com/demos/d11901.htm). I am not saying these games are right, but think about it differently. The people who made these games are very smart individuals, who for one reason or another learned everything they could about the horrific, yet historic events. That takes a lot of determination and intelligence. Then they made the games with little or not official training and got your attention. Just think, if they could apply this type of concentration on a cure for cancer, or alternative sources of power, wouldn't you see them in a different light?
I am not saying we shouldn't watch what are kids are playing. I am saying we shouldn't blame games for societies problems. I love to play video games, but I also love playing outdoors, the sun, and breathing. I am not a spawn from the underworld, bent on world domination and shooting up my nearest higher education complex. The world as a whole needs to change what is the next coolest thing to do, so more kids will want to change it. That's the only way we can get out of this rut.
