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"What when it looks almost real when you kill a character?"
"Are we affected by the violence in games?"
"Should GTA3 be released at all?"
"Is it right?"
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Sound familiar?
Repeat after me, "It.Is.Just.A.Game"
Same can be applied to movies and music.
We have been maiming and killing each other since we swung through the trees folks, the only that's changed is now you can watch it live on CNN.
Games don't do it, movies don't do it, music don't do it.
We do it.
I read a thing about this precise topic in a paper today (probably the Daily Mail: Where homosexuals dont exist, England still rules the world and crime does not pay), and it was a question posed by some middle-aged dude that probably hasn't touched a video-game since he couldn't get the frog across the river on the logs.
Nobody asks us, the playing public.
We're not depraved rapists and thugs, we're polite, well mannered individuals that can laugh when we drive-by 6 pedestrians.
BECAUSE IT IS JUST A GAME.
That simple.
All there is to it.
If you are influenced enough to go out and try something, you're an idiot. Don't blame anything else, and don't make it so I can't get a game or movie because some tool thought Eminem told him to shoot his school up.
Has anyone here commited an act of crime since playing GTA3?
Has anyone here tried to infiltrate a top-secret miltary base since playing Metal Gear Solid?
Did anyone pull off a bungled-jewelry heist because of Reservoir Dogs?
Anyone?...didn't think so.
It's just the usual "Moral outrage" that sweeps us every now and then.
If it isn't GTA3, then it was "Lady Chatterly's Lover" by D.H.Lawrence. There was a public burning of that book when it was released. Now? You study it for A Level English.
Just relax. Or if you have posted here saying that games influence behaviour? Get rid of all your violent games and go play Nintendo.
Don't say it does cause something, but "Oh I can play/watch/read/listen because I am intelligent enough to not follow blindly."
I played GTA3 tonight.
I stole cars, I shot gang-members, I assasinated a paparazzi photographer (maybe not such a bad thing to try out for real). Yet I turned the game off, and went outside to play with kittens and squirrels and stuff.
Do you think Osama Bin Laden played a video-game and thought "I know!..."
No he didn't.
Those two kids in Columbine, did they listen to Marylin Manson and say "Hey,let's shoot those guys that have tormented us for years and then commit suicide because the song said we should?"
No they didn't.
Like Reed Rothchild said in Boogie Nights, "Hey if we stopped making these movies and the world was perfect because of that? Cool, I'll go do magic because that's something else I've been getting into".
It's just a game.
Play it, enjoy it. Turn it off and continue to do what you were doing before you played it.
Think of it like a mantra for your day
"It's just a game." Repeat it to concerned parents, or ask them what game made Michael Ryan go mental in Hungerford, or Dunblane.
No games at fault there.
Relax and enjoy your game.
Because that's all it is.
Now I'm tired and I'm off to yank old people out of their station wagons and try to join the local branch of The Yajuza.
Not that GTA3 made me or anything.
A bloody farce.
How utterly childish.
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