Gamers are people too.
Monday, November 21, 2005
I want to apologize to anyone who saw tonight's (Nov. 21, 2005) episode of CSI: Miami. While normally, this is a great show and generally very real and accurate, tonight they created a picture of videogamers that I think will only reinforce the already negative image associated with gamers. To spoil the plot, what happened was that several college students were using a video game as the basis of their criminal activity. It turns out that the writer/developer of the game was providing weapons to help them out in order to boost sales of the game: "Urban Hell Raisers".
Unfortunately, thanks to people like Jack Thompson, this has become a widespread fear for many people. Reports that criminals had copies of certain games leads to a media frenzy about whether the video game was the cause of violence and speculations that criminals may be using video games as "trainers" abound. Let me se something straight here. Video Games Do NOT cause violence. Violence is something inherent within each and every person. It has to be. Humans did not evolve to become the top of the food chain by being pacifists. Humans had to fight in order to be where we are. Individuals however may not necessarily be inclined towards violence, and human society in general is not violent, but we all have violence within ourselves. Some people more than others have a very thin layer of civility separating them from being violent while others may take a lot to get to that core. What's more is that some either cannot or chose not to distinguish fantasy from reality. However, these are preexisting conditions. Yes, video games may be the catalyst for some people to behave violently, but for others they are the a means of escaping where they can act out aggresive fantasies in non-harmful ways.
Posted byJ. R. Guinness at 11:13 PM
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