Xbox 360 Game News, Reviews, and Columns - XboxFocus

Ignorance Killed the Video Game

by March 24th 2008 7:57 PM CDT2 Comments

What critics refuse to acknowledge is that videogames are now a modern form of art, just like movies, music and books. It can take a team of up to a thousand people to create a single game, and when the media lambastes those people, they’re insulting their life’s work and their passions. But hey, videogames take viewers away from television, reducing ratings. Instead of providing better programming, however, the television media would much rather defame their competition.

Okay let me put it this way: movies constantly depict bad conduct. That conduct is mimicked in the real world. You may ask, “Why?” The answer is simple: movies attempt to depict real human emotions, and real human reactions. If real humans commit crimes, then movie directors have to show those crimes in their movies. If real people have sex, then in movies, people have to have sex. Same thing goes for books and music.

God forbid the media uses facts to back up their arguments (but when has it ever?). They spread their ignorance without even having played the games they deride. Not only that, but they completely neglect a little graph that proves every study conducted in their favor wrong. The graph shows that since 1993, youth violence has been at a dramatic decline. More so, ever since the release of Grand Theft Auto III, violence has continued to decline dramatically. None other than the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Statistics, provides the graph.

Parents, stop blaming entertainment and the government for your idiot kids committing murder. You’re the ones raising them; you’re the ones telling them what is right and wrong. Take some time from drinking booze and gambling, and teach your kids. Teach them the difference between what they see on a television screen and reality.