Friday, April 27, 2007

video games are evil again

after another disturbed person was able to purchase multiple firearms and dozens of rounds of ammunition, voices in the U.S. once again rise up to blame the real enemy: the video game industry.

as mentioned in an article from the San Francisco post, ignorant individuals have tried to shift the focus off of what really matters and on to an argument that has no basis in reality. school shootings happened a long time before violent video games -- there were two here in Canada in 1975 -- but I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that school shootings didn't happen before guns were accessible to kids (or young adults, as in the Virginia Tech case).

my favourite example of the media irresponsibly trying to bring video games into the story (I'm paraphrasing from memory):

reporter: "we have been told that [the killer] played lots of violent video games."
killer's roommate: "I've never seen him play video games."

it's about time that the media catches up with today's multimedia. video games are bigger than movies. still some people love to dismiss gaming as an anti-social nerdy past-time. gaming has clearly surpassed those early stereotypes, and it's about time that there is mainstream acceptance for something that is well... mainstream.

BTW - best paragraph from the article: "According to a TheStreet.com story last week, Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive settled a lawsuit against Thompson with an agreement from the activist to stop suing the company and contacting retailers to ban the company's games -- the equivalent to getting a signed statement from Don Quixote to stop harassing windmills. "

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