Tommy Collison

Video games have pretty much always been embroiled in all sorts of controversy about what they’re encouraging our kids to do. Specifically, the Grand Theft Auto series have come under a lot of controversy for all sorts of reasons.

Photo owned by superkas83 (cc)

Reading through that Wikipedia article..

…New York City officials were appalled with the choice of their city as the inspiration for the setting of Grand Theft Auto IV, that a game like GTA does not represent the city’s crime levels accurately. A spokesperson for Mayor Michael Bloomberg said:

“The mayor does not support any video game where you earn points for injuring or killing police officers.”

As a response, Jason Della Rocca, executive director of the International Game Developers Association, accused New York City officials of double standards, for criticising video games but not other forms of entertainment, such as books, films and television shows, which use New York City as the setting.

This strikes me as a little odd. Della Rocca’s rebuttal isn’t entirely valid. Video games are completely different from books, films and TV shows, because you’re playing the game. You read/watch the others, but video games require a much higher level of participation. For this reason, I’d consider video games a hell of a lot more influential on kids than books or films. Della Rocca’s claim about books being as much trouble as such games is plain stupid.

When I did my CTYI Saturday morning course on debating, one of the motions we debated was how influential violent video games are on today’s youth.

I think the games are only dangerous as long as the line between right and wrong are blurred. So long as some teenager can play it knowing that this isn’t an acceptable way to behave in normal society, then there’s no problem?

But what do you think? Are we sheep, that if we see our character throw someone out of a car and drive off, that we have an urge to do same? Or are we smarter than sheep, able to make our own decisions?