Project 1

My biggest problem with how video games are how they are used as a scapegoat for the problems of our youth. The politicians go on crusades with the industry. One of the first games to be crucified was Doom. In the game you play a marine that fights off hell on Mars so it does not get to Earth. There were two kids that loved that game, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Those two are the ones responsible for the Columbine massacre. They played the game almost religiously and created levels. The media blamed the game on their behavior and that the game’s violence went to them and that was the reason they shot up the school. This led to other games being ridiculed, such as, Mortal Kombat and any of the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) games. Mortal Kombat received bad press because there was a good amount of blood and guts in the game along with moves that eviscerated your opponent. There were a couple cases where people were killed and the media blamed the murders on GTA. Their reasoning was that the game taught the kids how to do it and that it was alright to do it. These issues are stupid and pointless because there is no proof on these biases. The people were not influenced to do this by the video game, they choose to do it on their own. The next big issue with video games is sex. The biggest offender of this was the game Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. This was in the media for a while based on the infamous “hot coffee mod”. This created a big stir due to that the “mod” wasn’t a real modification at all. It was already written in the game but turned off. Rockstar, the makers of GTA, should have removed it if they were not going to use it but it should not have gotten as much heat as it did. One thing that media did not seem to realize was that with all the bad press they were getting the sales did not go down. What actually happened was that with all the controversy people actually bought it to see what the problem was. The next game that was in the media recently was Mass Effect. This case ticked me off most. The media stated saying that there was an explicit sex scene with full frontal nudity and that there was the possibility of lesbian sex as well. I had played the game and gotten the scene there was none of what was said. It showed that the politicians will just prosecute without doing prior research.