Murder Simulators and You

Now if I was a politician you would expect this to be an uninformed rant about the sexual deviancy of games and how these so called "murder simulators" flooding the market are corrupting our youth. I am not, and never plan to be, and maintain that the root cause of all of the problems with the world's youth can in some way be traced back to the glut of reality programming. Those ladies who clean your house will also pop a cap in your ass so you best watch out.

No, I am more troubled by the fact that the gaming world is making no effort to show that for every Rock Star game, there are 30-40 titles by everyone else that go unnoticed. From myexperiences with the unwashed thug mass that comes in to get their already abused copy of SanAndreas, I've concluded that no one has any idea what makes a game fundamentally good, orwhat makes a game bad. Not every game where you shoot a guy and make sausage out of hisremains and feed that sausage to your mother is bad, and not every game that is full of flowersand their upkeep is good. This is of course on the consumer end of things. When the idea o games is left to the government, even Chibi-Robo would have a considerable amount of questionable content.

One completely ridiculous view on this whole problem is that video games cause violence more so than the Power Rangers had children wanting to fight crime, and wear funny costumes. The concern here is that children will have access to such violent games and this will warp their sensitive minds to the point that they see nothing wrong with gunning down a hooker. Well, I'd like to say that gunning down a hooker is inherently wrong, and they do not fall into floating blocks of green bills.... but if they did, well, perhaps the world would be a bit different. What I mean is that you cannot assume that because a kid sees something like this they are more inclined to do it. More children actually respond to hero characters, and the violence that is in the name of justice. Now with a home environment that condones the shooting of hookers in an every-day way, or the beating of bitches for that matter, is more likely to produce a child that is capable of doing such a thing. Mortal Kombat was the series that was all the rage when I was young enough to be trained in the ways of the modern killer, and I remember my friends not being allowed to play those 'dirty games' because they were 'evil' and made people do bad things.

That truly boggled my little mind. What was so wrong? They weren't real.... It was a game, it was fun. I had had video games explained to me by my parents, about the time the ol' NES was hooked up in our living room. I never gave the concept much thought, I just went on assuming my friends were lame and my parents were awesome, but now I see that the issue is not violent games, but the irrational protective spirit of parents . For every family that produces a serial killer, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other families to strive to avoid such a result by presenting the children with the idea that absolutely anything that does not fit in a certain world view is wrong. Rather than explaining that video games simulate fantastic situations, they condemn the lot then when their children cry to be able to play games they only allow them movie games.


I feel for these children, as I have had to deal with the irrational parents who would not buy their 15-year-old Twilight Princess because it had a teen rating। Think about the complete ridiculousness of that situation. People have read this bizarre code into the ESRB, to the point that they cannot grasp the reasoning behind such a rating. These problems could be helped if parents actually put more effort into understanding the system, and there is no excuse now with the wealth of information online and even on magazine racks. I am not against the ESRB, and I am not against parents being cautious, but I feel more care could be taken to learn just why Twilight Princess is Teen and why Halo and Resident Evil differ greatly from Saints Row and Jericho.

Another problem with the idea that video games are inherently bad and corrupt children is that genuinely fun games are tossed aside in favor of the ones that are over-hyped. Professor Layton's American release was the exception to this, but the promotion for it was subtly charming with big posters of the heroes and the world, and little Nintendo pamphlets that many game stores neglected to put out. It was the first time in a long time a game sold out that did not have a soda, lawsuit, or exaggerated delay behind it.

I feel more effort could be made by the gaming population to devote less time to being hardcore and more time to enjoying all types of games than sticking to the controversial. Games like LocoRoco do not get the chance they deserve because there is no shooting. Were video games not created to be entertaining? I suppose I have very old tastes, where I like games to actually be fun every so often. I do not find 3/4s of a GTA game fun to play through again, Manhunt and Condemned are needlessly grotesque, but I am all about focusing on Japanese Survival Horror games because the emphasis is on how the game uses its horror elements.

The greatest downfall in gaming I believe was the first Manhunt game. Since I recovered from being irrationally afraid of the first Resident Evil game I came to see "horror" games differently. Manhunt had no depth, only mindless slaughter. No puzzles, but plenty of violent fetch quests. I compare this now directly to the Japanese games in the Silent Hill series that are not focused on fighting, or being outrageously disgusting for no reason. The gore in Silent Hill means weird shit is going down, the gore in Manhunt is a romp through Snuff Land.

I feel the real solution to the Murder Simulator problem is to better identify what makes a game appear questionable, and have parents understand their place in the filtering of the world to their children. It is bad to overindulge, but it is also bad to over protect to the point that the Legend of Zelda series is too questionable.

The fear of evil in games will not slack any time soon, not with Rock Star's new goal to make their games pure fuel for the war against freedom of expression. Politicians have worked their fear-mongering fingers into the minds of many a conservative, and to the point that I am yelled at at work for selling "This ungodly filth. People should be sent to jail for making these filthy displays...if they want to make them, make them pay." This same man was forcing his 14-year-old son to buy Billy Hatcher.