The BRUTAL Truth with Debaser - Video Game Violence and Sad Times

I want to touch on a subject that can be comical at first and heartbreaking near the end. This article contains facts about horrible tragedies with my opinions mixed in. Please read with caution.

I am truly amazed by the amount of politicians and members of the media who decide to step away from the real issues to blame violent crimes on video games. Rather than actually doing some research and trying to find out if something actually triggered such an act out of someone that originally never acted in such a way or simply to cover up something that no one wants to admit, these groups will spin any issue to attack what some would consider an easy target.

To begin understanding why I feel that these attacks are silly in just about any form, one must understand exactly what a video game is. It's a fictitious portrayal of various actions by various characters. They can be simulations at times, but an overwhelming majority of gamers can attest that video games are what they claim to be: games. We do not step outside of our homes and jump on top of oversized turtles. The turtles, in return, certainly don't immediately retreat into their shells so we can kick them down a road like a hockey puck. These outlandish portrayals are works of art for our amusement, and we should not accept them as anything more than this.

Violence, by definition, has plagued the world of video games since the earliest days of electronic gaming. Donkey Kong would be savagely tossing barrels to fend off a pesky carpenter, Mario would gain the ability to toss fireballs and kill enemies, and Link is known for killing off the bad guys with his Master Sword. Yet with all of the violent actions I've mentioned so far, not a drop of outrage existed in the late eighties. Gaming was actually something that was praised in those times. There was a video game hotline that kids could call for tips, the media was constantly covering the new waves that Nintendo was making with its NES system, and there was even a breakfast cereal that featured characters from Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda. This violence, though cartoon-like, was actually embraced by parents and the media alike.

The attitude toward violence in gaming actually began to turn in the early 1990s when a fighting game titled Mortal Kombat decided to add what anyone with a brain would expect to see during a fight: blood. Sure, the fatalities were a little over the top, but most of these actions are so completely silly that nobody in their right mind – or even wrong mind – could begin to perform them. Children were not trying to rip the skin off of their faces to reveal their skull and spit fire at one another, and the release year of Mortal Kombat ended without any reported heart rip fatalities.

Mortal Kombat II was released in the arcades a year later with more characters and more ways to finish an opponent at the end of a match with the Babality and Friendship features. One would think that this would suggest that perhaps it's just a game and intended to be fun, but no. That type of logic is simply unnecessary. Instead, parents contemplated over whether the game would influence their children to kill, people began debating if games like this were murder simulators, a rating system was created for video games due to the outrage, and a lawyer from Florida named Jack Thompson became synonymous with Satan to gamers. Still unable to prove that the actions of Mortal Kombat characters was creating violent children, critics continued to slam Mortal Kombat – and it became immensely popular because of these constant slams.

Doom, a first-person shooter that pitted players against demons from Hell, was also a controversial title that was released on PC the following year. This game decided to be far less ridiculous and actually include blood when the player shot an enemy instead of having the enemy explode like Contra – which never really saw any controversy I might add. The second subject of controversy concerning Doom was its "demonic" theme that provides a vast array of demons and other baddies from Hell to fight. Finding this unfit for children, several people claimed that the game's theme was blasphemous. Since the game used demons, something that is actually mentioned in the bible quite a few different times, I have to wonder if these people ever really read the bible. It's not happy or fun.

The outrage toward video games increased ever so slowly with time as games moved into a three-dimensional era and became more "lifelike." I can't watch over the lives of everyone, but I don't believe that any of us have to shoot zombies or dinosaurs on a regular basis. But if one did have to shoot a zombie or a dinosaur, I would assume that a hole would form where the bullet entered the target and blood would escape the wound. Insanely enough, this is what happened in the games. So, in this sense of reasoning, wouldn't someone who is imitating a game by shooting someone actually be imitating real life since the game was imitating real life to begin with? It's all insanely mind-boggling.

The video game violence controversy came to a head when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a violent rampage at Columbine High School, killing thirteen people and wounding nearly two dozen others. Shortly after the tragedy, the media learned that these two boys were fans of id Software games Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. A rumor quickly spread that Harris had created a mod for Doom that resembled Columbine, and media and sympathizers alike accepted this as truth without any proof of the claim. Id Software then became the victim of several lawsuit attempts that didn't stick. The simple reality of this is that a scapegoat was needed, and the old punching bag from '92 wasn't getting knocked around enough in the media.

Klebold and Harris were described as kids who didn't fit in with the rest of the crowd. Both had a history of violence, and Harris was court ordered to take antidepressants. Though Harris was an enthusiast of the natural selection theory and wrote about the desire to test it in a "super Doom game," it is quite clear that these kids both had a very dark state of mind that was hushed by both peers and members of authority. It appears that Doom was just something that possessed their favorite things rather than an item of influence. The idea that Doom was an influence eventually drifted away from the public eye, and musicians such as Marilyn Manson(whom the boys didn't even listen to) became a target. The media actually went from the full-blown visual violence argument to music.

It is truly depressing when one thinks of how this tragedy could have been prevented. These kids were calling out for help in their videos, in their obsession with talking to only each other through Doom sessions, and in their writings. These cries for help were either shushed with medication or simply ignored while their peers continued to mistreat them. The very idea brings a tear to my eye when I count the victims of this mess – and I do include Harris and Klebold in that count.

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto III was a rather easy target for those looking for a reason to be outraged. It presented such opportunities as the ability to shoot random civilians(which never happened in such NES games as Bionic Commando), the ability to collect several extremely destructive weapons(like Samus does in the Metroid series), the ability to steal cars(as if we weren't running them off the damned road in Spy Hunter), and the ability to use and kill hookers – okay, that was pretty new for the time. People were outraged and afraid that their children would be desensitized to violent actions if they played this game. Afterall, the Power Rangers were done kicking the hell out of things by then.

The rage against the Grand Theft Auto series came swift and without mercy as such enemies as the notorious Jack Thompson began filing lawsuits against retail companies that he believed were ignoring the ESRB ratings on games like GTA III and were selling the game to minors. Since no law demanding that the ESRB be followed existed, these lawsuits didn't stick. That didn't stop Jack from lurking and more or less being an ass as often as he could.

Rockstar would again become the target of Thompson and other groups looking to be outraged with the release of the game Bully, a game that involves a kid with a troubled background who gets dropped off at a boarding school. The main gripe of the game is the actual acts of bullying that occurs in the game: fighting, shooting others with slingshots, etc. According to groups such as Peaceaholics, teenagers could get the idea that bullying others in their school is okay by playing this game. Thompson went even further by claiming that the game allowed players to rehearse vengeance against those who had victimized the them and "like Klebold and Harris in Columbine, become the ultimate bully."

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City would come under fire when Cody Posey shot and killed his father, stepmother, and stepsister and hid the bodies under a manure pile at a local ranch. Jack Thompson teamed up with Steven Sanders to sue Rockstar Games along with Posey and several others, claiming that GTA: Vice City trained Posey to kill. The complaint filed by the lawyers claimed that the game "disconnected violence from consequences" and "caused Posey to act out, copycat, replicate and emulate violence." I ask myself why these lawyers would sue Posey if they portray that he was unable to control himself due to the game's influence.

Grand Theft Auto IV was brought into the world of gaming with several trips to the courthouse. Take-Two Interactive would in turn sue Jack Thompson in attempt to block him from preventing sales of Grand Theft Auto IV and Manhunt 2 to minors. The suit claimed that Thompson was violating the company's First Amendment right. Take-Two and Thompson did eventually settle with Thompson, and now the Florida attorney cannot attempt to block the sales or file suit against any Take-Two owned games. Thompson would later send a letter to Strauss Zelnick's mother claiming that her son was releasing "the gravest assault upon children in this country since polio." The chairman of Take-Two Interactive has not made any official retort or statement concerning the letter.

Counter-Strike is a first-person shooter computer game developed by Valve Entertainment and published by Vivendi Universal(published by Microsoft for the Xbox). The game began as a Half-Life mod created by fans Minh Lee and Jesse Cliffe. The basis of the game is either the terrorist team must successfully plant a bomb at a specific bombing site or the counter-terrorists must rescue hostages from the terrorist hideout. The round also ends if everyone on a team is killed. Each round is played with only one life, so players must wait for the round to end if they are killed. The game features realistic weapons and realistic damage such as a shot to the head instantly killing an enemy. However, there are plenty of unrealistic flaws in the game to point out that this game is hardly a counter-terrorism simulator. Loading guns requires the press of a key, there is no way to slow down a player's heart-rate(a claim Jack Thompson made), shooting someone in non-lethal areas such as the shoulder or arm with the AWP rifle normally kills the victim, and the aiming of weapons in the game is hardly a realistic depiction of aiming a real firearm.

The counter-terrorism themed first-person shooter game went under fire shortly after the Virginia Tech Massacre – the deadliest shooting rampage in US history. Gunman Seung-Hui Cho killed thirty-two people while wounding several others on April 16th of 2007. Hours later and before the gunman was even identified, Jack Thompson made a statement that he believed the gunman trained to kill by playing Counter-Strike. Thompson held this stance even after police had searched Cho's dormitory and no video games were found on his computer or in his dorm. Thompson even went so far as to pin partial blame on Bill Gates even though Microsoft had not developed Counter-Strike but rather published an Xbox port of the game – and might I add a bad port at that. Even though several reports that Cho had been determined as mentally ill many years ago began to surface, Thompson would not admit that maybe he had overreacted.

The idea that Counter-Strike had even a sliver of influence on Cho is laughable and simply childish. The truth of the matter is that Cho was diagnosed with several anxiety disorders years before the Virginia Tech Massacre. He came to the state of Virginia seeking help, but was released as an outpatient for his disorders. Since he wasn't involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, Virginia state law allowed him to purchase weapons that he obviously should not have had access to. The problems even stretched back as far as high school when Cho wrote that he wanted to "repeat Columbine" in an assignment. He was teased mercilessly, and it was no secret to anyone on the faculty staff that he was suffering these disorders – he was already diagnosed with these disorders in middle school afterall.

There is a very large issue that links all of these stories together: lack of proof. There has yet to be a single psychologist who can link violence in video games with violence in reality. Of course several have tried, and they have all reported that the majority of their study patients showed no violent activity when exposed to what would be considered "violent" video games. It is simply a wide assumption that is slowly being accepted as truth, and that is truly vulgar in my view.

While several supporters of this movement against video games tend to believe that the ESRB ratings are upheld by law, they are not. Politicians and lawmakers have tried to bring the ESRB ratings into law, but this attempt has failed. The ESRB rating system is nothing more than a suggestion tool that was created to help the parents make informed decisions about what electronic entertainment is right or wrong for their children. I find it appalling and unprofessional of lawyers such as Jack Thompson who bully retailers into agreeing to some type of age restriction policy on video games when no actual law exists and the parents of various children do not see an issue with their children buying rated M games. This, to me, is nothing more than a movement to trample the freedoms of others in the name of someone's personal agenda.

One can easily prove that the lawyers in question have a personal agenda simply by their practice. If Thompson and Sanders truly believed that GTA: Vice City "disconnected violence from consequences" that "caused Posey to act out, copycat, replicate and emulate violence," then why would they include Posey in their lawsuit? Wouldn't Posey be considered a victim and ultimately innocent? They certainly worded it this way.

Another thing that escapes the minds of many who criticize video games is the fact that a lot of games are influenced by the real world. Counter-Strike is based off of the realistic counter-terrorism operations that happen all across the world, Kano's heart rip fatality was influenced by the film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Raiden was influenced by a character in the film Big Trouble in Little China, Duke Nukem is a mixture of several Hollywood action characters, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was heavily influenced by the film Scarface.

The truth is that video game violence has always existed and is no more brutal than what people see on television, on the news, or in the movies. The reason why video games are targeted is because they started out as a "kids mostly" form of entertainment, and this is simply no longer the case. The average American gamer is in his twenties, and these people live normal lives without conflict.

I think everyone can now understand just how silly the idea of being influenced by "violent" video games is. The truth of the matter is that America needs a scapegoat for when parents fail at being parents. The moms and dads of this nation have the power to show their children between right and wrong, but they're too busy with trivial matters to exercise this power. Instead, they allow video games to be the babysitter. Later, they wish to point the finger at video games as if the babysitter had somehow become the parent. Does this sound silly to you, parents? You know how the gamers feel when we hear the same tired, old "violence" excuse then.

I want to dedicate this article to everyone who has suffered due to the Columbine and Virginia Tech tragedies. I admire your strength and wish you the best. I also want to dedicate this article to anyone who is desperately calling for help and is being ignored. Please continue seeking help before turning to this final solution.

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