Guns don't kill people, violent games do

Have you ever wanted to stab a man? Maybe you’re not a blade sort of fella; perhaps gunning down a group of helpless pedestrians on your nearest pavement just because you can, just to see quite what this murder lark is all about, before you hurtle your Ferrari, new-car smell still lingering, into the nearest wall/river/yawning chasm, is more your thing.

Probably not, though. Most of us would be horrified at the thought of such monstrous, inhuman behaviour. It just wouldn’t be polite, frankly. But more importantly, because we know there are consequences. That man had a wife and kids. He had dreams, ambitions. He was scared of bees. Similarly, that Ferrari took a group of underpaid Italians weeks to watch the automated machines to make, cog by cog. Wrecking it would be like licking the Mona Lisa clean – tragic, inexplicable and pointless.

That’s real life, though. What about in games?

Games are not real. Regardless of what Jack Thompson (that guy who hates GTA), Barack Obama or the BBFC (those stiffs who slap 18 symbols on our games here in the UK, along with PEGI) might have told you, the guy you just ran over on Liberty City’s grimy ‘street’ isn’t real. He didn’t have thoughts, feelings or a family to go home to. In fact, he’s the same guy who was in the gun shop a minute ago – and I swear he just came back from the dead and is now walking around the park without a care. In short, he was a just a bunch of polygons, duplicated ad nauseam. It doesn’t matter that you just checked your tyre pressure on his legs.

But that’s not how the government, angry mothers and the media seem to see it. Games, to these groups, are sick, depraved filth causing our youth to turn into violent yobs, stabbing everyone they meet for kicks because they saw it in Call of Auto 6: Generic Subtitle.

It is, quite simply, ridiculous. As a society, we’ve gone – in just a few hundred years – from ‘children’ marrying at 10, being industrial slaves by 12 and fighting wars by 16, to a bunch of mollycoddled fatties who might be influenced by the ‘horrific’ scenes in the latest shooter – so terrible that they’ll obviously cause an entire generation to run into the streets and overthrow society one pistol round at a time. By that logic, the 1980s should have seen a sudden uprising of sickening turtle stampings, ghost persecution and Italian u-bend menders eyeing apes suspiciously.  Violent games don’t modify children’s behaviour any more than watching darts makes us all fat beer drinkers.

Games are an arena in which we can live out our wildest fantasies; driving obscene race cars, saving the hot girl and shooting the bad guy. But they are also – and this is something that some people will simply never grasp – consequence-free simulations in which we can let our darkest curiosities play out; stealing a cop car, causing a 10-car pile-up and yes, mowing down every Tom, Dick and Harry in the latest ‘sandbox’ city just because.

After all, better that than on a real street; with real people, with real families. We can’t hide away our healthy desires any easier than we can our slightly psychotic thoughts (“let’s see what happens when I minigun that helicopter”), but we can at least have a place that we can explore both sides of our psyche without causing problems.

After all, parents shouldn’t be letting their children play these games anyway. They’re sick, violent, and they’re all mine. The difference is – I’m over 18. I understand where gaming ends and reality begins. Parents need to understand that they have the responsibility to protect their kids until they are old enough to realise, too – whatever age that is in each case.

Now pass me the pad; I’ve got this sick idea.