Babbled by Nebagram, January 22nd 2006

I blew up a tank when I was 2. Bet you never knew that, did you? Oh yes. When I was 6 I moved onto kicking the shit out of near-defenseless turtles, and when I was 8 I gunned down guerrillas in the jungle.
Okay, I'll now stop sounding like that evil "and cornkoored wuurldz" Playstation advert, by now (especially considering the website you're at) you'll know I'm talking about videogames. Combat for the Atari 2600, Super Mario Brothers for the NES and Operation Wolf for the Master System respectively. For two whole decades I have found endless entertainment and fun in the noble media that is the videogame. Some people might see me as a bit of an obsessive- myself included- and some people might call me a bit weird- again, myself included.

But to some people, though, I am a cold-blooded monster. A psychopath in the waiting, all because I picked up a joypad and kicked the crap out of my opponents in Mortal Kombat (when I was 11) or ran over Hare Krishnas in GTA (when I was 14). Clearly, I should be sectioned now, and without doubt, my prospective teaching career should be put on indefinite hold while all violent tendencies are ECTd out of me six times a day for the rest of my life.

I won't deny I let out a sick laugh the first time I saw Sub-Zero rip someone's spinal column out on the screen. I won't deny that I was too young to play many games when I was yet to enter adulthood. And I am very, very much in support of restricting sales of games such as GTA to adults only, in the same way sales of Ahnolt movies are restricted (er, for the violence, not for the shite acting). But I am NOT a psychopath. I am NOT a threat to children. I am a child-friendly (in a non-paedophilic way, I might add) trainee teacher, I help out in my local church, and of a Monday evening I can often be found playing Scrabble with people older than me at a local community centre (whooping their arses at scrabble, but never mind that for now). I have played games that have involved some form of violence for twenty years. And I turned out alright.

And yet, I can't help but keep hearing my favourite pastime be slagged off by media whores like Jack Thompson and, to a lesser extent, Joe Lieberman (although many of Lieberman's actions, while somewhat neurotic, are to be commended). These men would have you believe that youngsters brought up shooting people in videogames will wind up shooting people in real life. "Murder simulators" is a phrase that has passed Mr. Thompson's lips more than once. I've been a fan of Doom since I was 12 and so have many of my mates. We've been brought up pumping imps and cacodemons full of lead for a whole decade now. None of us have ever pointed a gun of any kind at another human being. EVER.

Incidentally, this could be because of the severe sanctions on guns that we have in the UK. Hey Jack: rather than pick on an easy target, how about you attempt to challenge the gun laws in the USA? Or don't you like taking on someone bigger than yourself?

VIDEOGAMES DO NOT PROMOTE VIOLENT CONDUCT. It's a simple enough statement and for 99.9% of the population, it's also a true one. Yes, I will admit that certain portions of the population are susceptible to suggestions planted in their heads by videogames, but these are the type of people also easily influenced by something as "sanitised" as the News, or the violence on Eastenders, a show that goes out well before the watershed. Videogames (and the other media listed) will be used by the unbalanced individual as an excuse, a "fallback" position to justify something they've secretly longed to do for years. Just hypothetically, suppose a person does play GTA and then shoot someone. I'm willing to bet real money that if they played Tetris instead, they wouldn't immediately go out and become a bricklayer. Or if they played Gran Turismo 4, they wouldn't immediately take racing lessons.

So, lay off the videogames. When tragedies happen- and I'm denying for one second that they are tragedies- analyse and find the REAL cause of what provoked such anger and hatred. Again, I'll be willing to bet that waggling a joystick and hitting a few buttons wasn't the root cause of it all. Sure, the offender may claim that it was, but any half-decent psychologist will inform you otherwise.

And parents: for god's sake, control your children. You don't let 12-year old Timmy watch all the Friday 13th movies back-to-back, do you? No. So don't let him fucking play Manhunt either.
Take some fucking responsibility for once in your parenthoods.

Peace out, y'all.

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