VIDEO GAMES CAUSE VIOLENCE IN CHILDREN...

I was sitting down on the train the other day and someone walking past plonks a paper down on the table I’m sitting at so as you do I pick it up to have a read through. Always good to keep up with what’s going on in this world I thought. I open it up, browse past all the boring headlines, and Wham! I see it. ‘Boy kills mother because of video game’. What a load of shit I thought, how the hell can a video game force a boy to kill his own mother?  so I carried on reading this article intrigued on how they were going to justify the heading. Well turns out, the boy went and got his dad’s gun from his wardrobe because the boys mum wouldn’t let him play halo 3. He then shot her because ‘that’s how they dealt with things on Halo’ he told police later. He was standing over her body waiting for her to ‘respawn’ when officers found him and it was quite clear he didn’t realise she was actually dead and never coming back.

I actually smiled to myself shaking my head when i read that. What kind of world had the parents brought this child up in? Fairyland? I mean come on, what good parent would let a child believe that people respawn in real life?  Me and my sister were brought up playing the goriest of gory games like Resident Evil and Silent hill and in fact still do play some of these games, but do I get the urge to grab a shotgun and blow people’s brains out? No! Our parents brought us up telling us that video games (like movies) were not real and as soon as we understood that important fact we were able to enjoy the fun world of possibilities that video games brought to us.

When I got home that night i decided to have a look online and see if there were any other similar articles about Video games. I stumbled upon some forums which had tons of parents on it ranting about video games and how they have gotten too violent and most should be banned. The fucking cheek I thought! I ended up turning the computer off in rage. Were all parents this naive to think that video games caused the violence in their children? My parents and lots of other out there with savvy used to sit down with us when we played our video games no matter how childish or gory they were and we used to laugh at the blatant un-realness of these games.

as a gamer it really pisses me off that games we love and enjoy are scrutinised by naive parents who just use video games as a babysitting tool! They are more than happy to let their child play the game when Jenny phones up for a natter but as soon as their kids re-enact a scene from the game, parents shit themselves and blame the game itself. They have got to understand video games can be gory yes, and take the time to sit with their kids and judge the game themselves, as well as look at how mature their child is and if they can cope with gory games full of death, like me, my sister and many others out there could and still can.