| Editorial: Hitler Didn't Play Doom
by Jim "Twitch" Tittle |
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Being damned because you have a fast car, target shoot, surf the web or play video games is sick. Should we all be suspect because of what we might do? The insidious undercurrent that propels this kind of thinking feeds on the reactions of the misinformed. At the risk of sounding paranoid, I believe that if the dark forces have their way it will make the Nazi Reich look like a Sunday school picnic.  It will not be so much in body count but in loss of individualism and personal freedom. It comes in the guise of the government or special interest group looking out for your best interests. Like Prohibition, "we know what's best for you." "It's bad for you so let's forbid it by law," is the concept. Their agenda is a total degradation of choices and liberties. But lawsuits have already been filed against 14 game publishers and developers by earlier massacre victims' kin stating they their games made violence "pleasurable and attractive." What did the parents do throughout their offsprings' lives to counteract that attraction? Or worse, what did they do that encouraged it? By the way, who should decide what game you can play and what game you cannot? Should games be "edited" like TV movies are? If we shoot a bad guy in a dark corridor game maybe his image should just freeze and fade out a bit so you know he is not "active" any longer. Shouldn't the same for combat simulations prevail? Perhaps you should no longer see simulated blood, explosions or damage of any kind. Let's just have enemy combat vehicles freeze and fade out with a big X to mark the spot. Let's accompany these demises with a "game over" Pac Man-like sound effect or a trombone's sad "wah-waah." Since the dim beginnings of mankind murder has been a crime of man and law. Yet since humans arose from the animals some two million years ago, murder has occurred with alarming regularity. Remember Cain and Abel? In 1999 it is still illegal to murder, but that, or any law, is not going to halt those determined to commit a felony. |
 Think of the immense number of hours that have been spent by countless people playing video games in roughly the past decade and a half. In how many homicides have games been the major contributing factor? Most likely none. Even if it were a factor, relative to, say, drunk driving caused deaths, drowning, cancer, or heart disease, where do you think it would rank in relation to its deadly competitors? In games people can escape from the humdrum and experience life from a different angle. They can control the simulated world if they cannot control the real one. Games are a break from the bleak. Simulated worlds can be preferable to the real one at times. They can provide a model of discipline by requiring close attention and strategy. In the simulated world accomplishments are acknowledged and rewarded. The military admits that people with game/simulator experience do far better in the multi million dollar pro simulators and later on the real electronic battlefield. Most people like them because they are just fun. Let's not allow ourselves to end up, after the book burnings, forced to drive speed governed, electric cars, listening to happy cartoon music, playing Tetris, watching "G" movies, and target shooting puff ball blowguns while the Internet is reserved for official government business. (Dear editor: Maybe you better erase that as it might give someone too many ideas.) Always check your six! The Safety Police may be on your tail. For further reading: A Violence Project Silicon Spin: Are Video Games Too Violent Join a discussion forum on this article by clicking HERE.
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