Friday, November 6

Misunderstanding people give gamers a bad name


The law, lawyers, judges, and politicians give video games a very bad reputation among parents and casual adults in general.

When Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold decided to go into Columbine High School with guns blazing, they sparked a media frenzy where everyone was desperate to find something else to blame. They singled out things like violent music, movies, and video games as the cause of all this, yet shouldn't they have been blaming the psychopaths who went into the school and started killing their classmates in the first place? Let's not blame the people who sold them the weapons they used or the parents for not noticing the signs, let's just blame video games instead.

One of the games that was mentioned quite often was 'Doom' because it was one of the boy's favorite games. Are you kidding me? Doom? I don't fully understand how killing demons from hell in a video game could possibly compel teenagers to replace the demons with their classmates in reality.

Just recently, a drunken, drugged up teenager lost a few games in Madden '09 for PC, so he took an axe and murdered an elderly woman and somehow, people felt it was right to blame the game for this. How about blaming the drugs the kid was on, or maybe the alcohol that was impairing his judgment? Not to mention he also had Schizophrenia.

One of the worst parts about it is that many teenagers will go out and commit a crime and when they are caught, they will instantly say they were inspired by something they saw in a video game like Grand Theft Auto 4. They just believe that if they blame video games, people will sympathize with them and the sad part is that they do.

People also blame games such as Grand Theft Auto 4 for being controversial because you can drive drunk in the game and kill people. While this is true, it is very hard to drive while intoxicated and the police are after you almost immediately and getting away from them while drunk is very hard to do.

Another issue that is always singled out in video games is sex and/or nudity. This is the one controversy that is always at the front of the pack which makes no sense. It's more frowned upon to see a moment of breast than it is to go out and gun down thousands of people for no reason at all. I believe that the people who are complaining about these games really need to get their priorities straight, especially if they are trying to make a valid argument.

Even different races are hoping on the game-hating band wagon. When Resident Evil 5 was announced, it was singled out as being racist because you play a white man shooting African people. They didn't mention that the game takes place in Africa for the entire story and the black people are not innocent, they are infected with a virus that makes them try to kill you. However, when Resident Evil 4 was released, it took place in Europe and the people you were killing in that game were European but I did not see anybody causing a big uproar about that one.

Games are being treated like a sinful item to play and because of this, gamers also get treated badly because people assume we are outcasts or crazy. Maybe you should take a look in the mirror before you start judging us.

11/06/09 Colton West

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