Wednesday, October 22, 2003
The article.
This stuff bugs me to no end. Personally, I don't even care for Grand Theft Auto. The game engine is revolutionary but the game itself (to me) is uninspired.
Let's get this straight people. A videogame can hone your ability to press a goddamn button - a button! Sure, you'll be able to lift refrigerators with your thumbs after a few bouts of Street Fighter II, but that won't make you a marksman over night.
Can someone please explain to me how a kid playing Quake, with mouse and keyboard in hand, can know how to shoot a firearm right off the bat? I'm not saying it's overly difficult to shoot a gun. I'm just saying the 2 skills are not intertwined, it takes effort, previous knowledge if you will. Lest one puts an eye out.
Videogames are not the "death simulators" so lovingly espoused by our piss-poor journalism. On the contrary, they're an escape so we _don't_ have people acting out their agressions in the real world. Not that every game can be lumped under the violent category. That's only one genre out of hundreds. I played a lot of Super Mario, but you don't see me trying to jump on people's heads to squash them. I'm not at the construction site hurling steel girders at people for many nights of Tetris either.
Grand Theft Auto has sold millions of copies. So if logic follows we'd have at the very least thousands of re-enacted murders, correct? Coupled with gangsta-rap, The Matrix movies, and Martha Stewart, we should be a country bathed in blood. Sigh, There's no accounting for the media gleefully jumping on everything.
I do so enjoy poor parenting these days. Motto: "Hey! Let's blame everyone but ourselves!". Modern society lacks simple common sense. It's far too easy for a single person to ruin everything for the whole. Hell if I were more evil I'd go on a rampage and blame it all on knitting. Take that grannies! "So how'd you kill her son? I stabbed her with a sewing needle. I just got caught up in the thrill of knitting, I couldn't stop myself officer!"
Sadly we live in a world where you can sue for spilling hot coffee on yourself. A pity really.
End rant.
By TVT - 11:51 a.m. |