I’ve played all those bad games Hillary Clinton warns America about. I look at myself in the mirror – Am I really that bad, because I played a game? Did that game affect me, like she says they are? If not me, maybe they are affecting others I know.. Yeah that’s it, it must be affecting others who cannot distinguish reality from fantasy.

The problem is, I can’t find anyone who fits this description. Are there some malignant people who play violent video games? Sure, there are some malignant people who don’t play violent video games.

My theory is that people who are generally fucked up, will be generally fucked up before they even touch video games. There are quite a few different genres of games – Does that mean it’s possible that if a derranged person picked up a football video game, they would dream of playing in the NFL? Maybe if we stocked our video game shelves with Sports games, we’d end up with a youth interested in football, not blowing away schools and churches? Maybe if the youngsters were spending more time playing games like ‘Sim City’ they would aspire to balance municipal budgets and services instead of making home made grenades.

What my folks did, or what I realized at the time, was there was a big difference between pressing buttons to fight villians on a game, and grabbing a rock to throw at the neighborhood kid. This is very simple to understand, so simple, that growing up with the amount of gaming friends I had, that all of us got along well enough with non-gamers, and there was no noticable different concerning attitudes or ‘desensitizing’ done that can be attributed to video games. I found more violence in kids growing up who grew up in fucked up houses with abusive parents, broken homes, drug-addicted parents. This is the problem – Not violent video games. And guess what – If he did play violent games, it is up to the parents of that house to either not allow the child to play that game (as in, parents: Do not buy your children violent video games), or teach them the difference of simulated violence versus real life violence. Teach them that violence is wrong.

It all stems down to parenting. If the child has responsible, loving parents, and grows up in a safe community, it won’t matter if he is playing soccer or playing ManHunt. On the flip side of it, imagine all those communities in America who are too poor to purchase these expensive game consoles. Is it safe to blame the lack of video games for violence or drug use?

There is another factor at work for youth violence. And if some out there are not convinced, well then it is time for them to be responsible parents and either teach their children, or not purchase those games. The answer is not to buy Hillary Clinton’s idea of banning violent video games outright. The answer is not to allow Hillary Clinton (or anyone for that matter) decide what games or what video or what music YOUR children should have access to. That’s for the parents to decide, not government, and not the game companies.

something tells me he will join the haters…

Recently I read an article about a real study of violent video games. My bad, can’t find a link. But it was a double blind study, control group, etc. Good protocol. The results were interesting, broken down into three response types. A plurality of whom were actually less tense after 20 minutes; a small group that were more hyper after; the last was essentiall ho-hum about the whole experiment.

One does remember that the violence in ancient Greek drama was intended to achieve ‘catharsis’. Maybe it was a good idea.

I remember years back, when I felt like shooting the TV, I’d walk away, play some Doom or Descent 2, name the real-life annoyances as I blew them away, and felt ever so much better. And the TV thanked me for it. ;-)

*sigh* always some object to be demonised! Back in early 50s, some control freak wrote a book proving comic books would be the death of Western civilisation. It sold well.

And there was rock’n’roll. And and and.

I still wonder why some people want the young not to be exposed to violence but an illegal war is different and OK?

I take offense to that. I’ve played violent video games since I was a kid. I am not desensitized. I still play violent video games too. Some of them are a lot of fun.

If this is an attempt to prove she can work with Republicans, I wish she wouldn’t. She’s never going to convince folks of that even if she has worked on legislation with them successfully and on better issues than this. The MSM has decided on her narrative – with help from Edwards and Obama – and it’s that she’s polarizing. Now, i don’t want to work with Tom Coburn and Mitch McConnell so I’m okay with polarizing.

I keep thinking about how video games de-sensitize kids to violence but it would take hours to write it all out. I also thinks it diminishes the humanity of those who play them. The violence in the games teach players to see people as objects rather than living, sentient beings.