Thursday, September 14, 2006

Games as Mind-Warpers

Get ready for a fresh round of debate about violence in video games. News is out today that the sociopath in Montreal who shot 20 people listed an online game about Columbine as his favorite.

Who knew there was such a game? What kind of heartless dope would take the time to design such a thing? Politicians are going to use this as an opportunity to grandstand and offer more legislation restricting violent media, nibbling away yet again at First Amendment rights. Passing laws is easy. Changing the culture is the real challenge.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why doesn't anybody moan about camouflage fashion, The Sopranos, American football, or hockey for that matter. One way of changing the culture is to passively and actively resist it.

BJ said...

Violence in video games transferring to the real world is a slippery little eel. I've seen articles like this one that assert a connection between the two but also recognize the dificulty in identifying video games, and only video games, as a source of violent behavior.

I used to be of the opinion that there wasn't a valid connection between the two (games/behavior), but it looks like I may have been mistaken.