Lecture 2: Ban these evil games!!!

In the Daily Mail several years ago, there was an article on this very subject, entitled, oh-so-surpisingly, "Ban these Evil Games" after there was a violent killing which the paper claimed the game Manhunt was responsible for. As it was, it was merely the media blurring and distorting the information, in reality, whilst the style of the killing closesly resembled one used in the game, the game actually belonged to the victim, and his murderer killed him for drug money the victim owed him. As it was, this sparked off a whole media furore against video games, with articles coming out left, right and centre, and people coming forward to talk about their bad experiences with games. In short, it was....a MORAL PANIC! This was one of several moral panics that have occurred in recent years over video games, each one starting over one incident, then growing and growing until the entire media is after the blood of the games industry.

Another such "panic" occurred last year over the game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas when it was discovered that someone on the internet had unlocked secret porn scenes in the game, this would have been bad enough, but what caught the media's attention was that some children in the US had a copy of the game, and had found the game hack on the internet. The parents decided to sue the developers of San Andreas, and the story was widely reported in the news. However, what no one seemed to question was that the game was rated 18+ in the first place....so whilst the porn scenes should not have been in the game....how did the children get hold of the game...? The answser was : their parents bought it for them, but the media seemed to ignore this little fact, and instead zoned in on the "awful" fact that the poor children had seen these scenes. Oh no! Perhaps the parents should have considered the fact that in an 18+ game there were likely to be things that weren't suitable for their children! Perhaps the parents should have been told this rather than being allowed to create such a fuss over something that would not have happened if they had not bought their under-aged children an 18+ game in the first place!

Perhaps what the media and society should consider is that the games themselves are not what is causing the problems that games are blamed for, it is teh people who play them. The average gamer would not play a game like Manhunt and then suddenly decide that they wanted to go and kill someone. Games have age ratings for a reason, if a game is rated 18+, then it should be pretty obvious that it will contaqin scenes of a graphic and perhaps violent nature. The games industry is not to blame for how its games are abused. The people that should be looked at are the people who play the games, rather than just using the games industry as a scapegoat for the problems of society.