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SOUNDS OF COUNTRY: Violence in Video GamesS. E. DURCHOLZ This article first appeared in the February 20, 2006 issue of The Dubois County Herald. We reprint it here, in its entirety, with the author’s permission. “And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a milestone was hanged about his neck, and he was cast into the sea.”…….. Mark 9:42 This week’s column was inspired by the letter to the editor of The Herald, Feb. 9, 2006, “Adults influence teens,” by Jasper High School students… (names withheld to protect student’s identity). The students expressed some very insightful ideas about parent responsibilities…..even what seemed to be a plea to parents and adults. Live your lives the way you would want us to live ours. “We have to hear the talk, but we also must see you walk the talk. Actions are much louder than sermons.” The letter cited concerns about peer pressure, alcoholic beverages, drugs, smoking, school shootings, violence and terrorism, and said to parents, “Youth also say that parents are their No. 1 influence in their lives. We don’t necessarily want materialism; we just need to know someone cares.” Further on the students, officers of JHS Students Against Destructive Decisions, made the profound statement, “Adults are who we ultimately emulate.” Right after the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, Tina Weisman of Otwell wrote a letter to The Herald(Apr. 29, 1999) with a message to parents. “Parents grab a mirror and look deeply. We’re the answer. Spending time with our kids, not money, is the underlying solution to this tragedy.” Weisman, expressing a view similar to the JHS students warned, that you can’t buy your kid’s love and respect with expensive brand name clothing as a substitute for your time with them…..”it leads to a sad ending every time.” The challenge for the JHS student leaders in their efforts to encourage responsible behavior and attitudes by young people and their parents is against the tremendous forces within the larger society. These forces impacting families and children in negative ways come in the form of both legal and illegal products, trends and destructive influences. “Every morning, in schools somewhere in the nation, the contagious criminal viruses infecting the larger society come through the school house doors to threaten teachers, students and stifle the educational process.”…….Sounds of Country series on schools and education, Nov. 27, 1995 to Feb. 12, 1996. Schools and families are getting a bad rap these days. They both have some faults, but I think it has become popular to dump the blame for society’s ills on them, when it should be recognized as being the other way around. They apologize for nothing in the name of “their rights” to produce and market anything, now matter how perverted or humanly degrading. An editorial in the October 2005 edition Christianity Today, “Deadening the heart,” describes how purveyors of unlimited sex and violent content video games take their sales pitch one step further. The article reports, “Steve Johnson, author of “Everything Bad is Good for You,” says violent video games are good for children. He thinks that video games such as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas may ‘function as a kind of safety valve….they let kids who would otherwise be doing violent things for the thrill of it, get out those feelings sitting at home at the screen.’ GTA, an interactive video, is said to be filled with random acts of violence, decapitation and killing of police officers who attempt to prevent car-jacking by the player. The CT editorial quoted more than 70 studies indicating that students who spent time playing violent video games “were more hostile than other children and more likely to argue with authority figures and fellow students.” In June 2003, a sixteen year-old Jasper, Alabama boy suspected of auto theft, shot and killed three police officers after a high-speed chase. He later bragged that “Life is a video game. You’ve got to die sometime.” It was revealed that he had played hundreds of hours of the GTA video game. The CBS “60-Minutes” segment included the Alabama killing as well other shootings around the nation and the resulting lawsuits alleging wrongful deaths related to GTA playing. The series of GTA video games, in which the violence escalates with each new version, is big business, reported to have sales of $2 billion dollars worldwide. Although rated “M” for mature audiences, it has become more than evident by all reports that the game is commonly owned and played by many children under the age of seventeen. I clicked on a site where GTA auto was offered through retail stores and on the Internet. Among the stores to my surprise was, “Toys R US” and a handy zip The purchaser was told that by “Ordering this item, you are certifying that you are at least 17 years of age.” The sales promotion describes GTA as “hugely successful, the biggest selling game on PlayStation. You can “trash, smash anyone or anything, if you’ve got the guts to take it.” And this stunning revelation from the CT editorial, “the military expert David Grossman showed CT readers how these games use the same operant conditioning techniques used by armies to overcome recruits’ natural aversion to killing.” GTA isn’t the only video game containing blood, gore, violence and killing, and one of the components listed for GTA, “blatant over-exaggeration of the female form.” And consider this, it is not only our children who are being exposed to this kind of “legal” degradation of humanity, but that children also know, that adults, perhaps their parents and other adults they may know and trust may be playing GTA or other violent and degrading video games. These violent and dehumanizing games are also being exported to many other nations where those children will also be “trained” in violence. These JHS students and all other young people who are keenly aware of the destructive side of the world, both legal and illegal, that adults promote in the name of profit, deserve our respect and admiration. Update!Take Two game controversy Take Two Interactive, creators of the Grand Theft Auto series of videogames, is embroiled in controversy again. It has suspended the release of its latest product, Manhunt 2, “because of a rating controversy in the United States and a ban in Britain and Ireland,” the Associated Press reports. The Entertainment Software Rating Board gave Manhunt 2 a preliminary rating of Adults Only, which can really put a damper on sales since stores like Wal-Mart won’t even put AO games on their shelves, and Nintendo and Sony “said their policies bar any content rated for adults only on their systems.” The game is about “the escape of an amnesiac scientist and a psychotic killer from an asylum and their subsequent killing spree,” the AP adds. “In the Wii version, the console's motion-sensitive remote is waved around to control a virtual murder weapon.” The game was supposed to be released in the US on July 10 for the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 2 consoles. Meanwhile, Sony apologized to the Church of England for using one of its churches as a backdrop for one of its games, the Associated Press earlier reported. 6/25/07 EC (Early Childhood) - age 3+ Peaceful videogames? Yup. The New York Times reports that the focus of videogame makers around the world is shifting away from “violent killer videogames” to the sort of game that promotes exercise, vocabulary-building, and nutrition. “The strategic shifts in the game industry come as critics and government authorities are growing impatient with violence in video games,” according to the Times. “The justice ministers of the European Union vowed last week to press for stricter regulations on the sale of ‘killer games’ to children.” Game manufacturers aren’t just responding to regulators, though, they’re trying to broaden their market, as Nintendo did by introducing the Wii console. Examples are Ubisoft’s My Life Coach with nutrition advice and Electronic Art’s Sommelier wine guide for the DS and Boogie for the Wii, with which users “sing and dance along with cartoon characters,” the Times reports. Other even more high-minded examples are Food Force, developed by the UN Food Programme, and PeaceMaker about finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (see “Gaming for peace!” below). 6/19/07 Gaming for peace! The world of gaming is certainly not all first-person shooters. An online game that was released by the UN's World Food Programme last spring - "Food Force," "in which players must figure out how to feed thousands of people on a fictitious island" - has been downloaded 2 million times, the Washington Post reports. That's half the number of players claimed by the world's most popular online game, World of Warcraft." And FF is not the only game project about "saving the world through peace and democracy." The Post points to "PeaceMaker," a game being developed at Carnegie Mellon University in which "you win by negotiating peace between Israelis and Palestinians"; the University of Southern California's just-launched competition "to develop a game that promotes international goodwill toward the United States"; and an MTV contest to come up with a videogame that fights genocide in Darfur, Sudan. For additional information please see:
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