Disclaimer: - The following article does not reflect the opinions of everyone involved with Saturday Morning Arcade.
Spoiler Alert: - This article also has spoilers from The Walking Dead.
On December 14th
2012, a 20-year-old male, Adam Lanza, was responsible for the deaths of 20
students from the 1st grade, along with six faculty members at Sandy
Hook Elementary School located in Newtown, Connecticut.
By 6 P.M. on that day, Newtown and the events within were
the most talked about topics on Twitter. While some mourned the loss with
silence, others wrongfully blamed the shooter’s brother, Ryan Lanza, as the
culprit. In a fit of emotions, many people jumped to conclusions based on
hearsay and incomplete evidence.
Concurrently, the National Rifle Association (NRA) was also
trending on Twitter. After being silent for a week, they came out with a statement
on the Newtown shootings:
“Through vicious, violent video games with names like Bulletstorm, GrandTheft Auto,
Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse. And here's one: it's called Kindergarten Killers.
It's been online for 10 years. How come my research department could find it and
all of yours either couldn't or didn't want anyone to know you had found it?”
Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse. And here's one: it's called Kindergarten Killers.
It's been online for 10 years. How come my research department could find it and
all of yours either couldn't or didn't want anyone to know you had found it?”
The NRA implied that this ‘shadow industry’ that sells video
games have a negative impression on young kids. This may have just been a near
perfect misdirection tactic which led the conversation from gun control to
video game violence, but it has sparked quite the reaction from several video
game bloggers and journalists.
Jim Sterling, Reviews Editor on Destructoid, said, “The
malingering attempts to drag videogames into the debate [are] intellectually
offensive.”
Isaiah-TriForce Johnson, in an interview with Kotaku, claimed he would fight the NRA’s accusations by using media as
well.
“Gamers, we're good at winning every single battle, whether it's
in first-person shooters, RPGs, action-adventure games, puzzles, races, you
name it."
Johnson did say that it’s not a video game issue, but about
a sick individual.
All of this happened two weeks after I
last played the Walking Dead. Why is this important? Because I shot a kid in
that game.
(Via GamePressure) |
He just sat there, back against a tree.
He was breathing heavily, almost as if an invisible hand were the wringing the
air out of his throat. A few feet away, his father had just seen his wife take
her life. His son was bitten by a zombie, so I knew what needed to be done. But
no father should have to see their own son die, let alone take that life
himself.
I couldn’t let Kenny, the father, do
it, and so I decided to shoot Duck myself.
“This was just a video-game,” I thought
to myself. How hard could it be?
Once I made my choice a new,
first-person view of Duck popped up, with an aiming reticule which I, the
player, controlled. After what seemed like minutes — I’m still not sure how
much time had passed while I hesitated — I finally clicked the left mouse
button.
I killed a kid.
The timing of the events in Newtown, coinciding
with the timing of my play-through, have got me wondering; do games really not
affect us negatively at all?
Not a few days before The Walking Dead,
I was gleefully throwing rope darts at British soldiers in Assassins Creed 3
without a second thought. A few months before that, I was playing an insanely
fun, over-the-top action game called Sleeping Dogs.
(via Medal of Honor: Warfighter IMFDB) |
Millions of people, kids and adults
alike apparently, are currently playing Call of Duty: Black Ops II, or Medal of Honor: Warfighter. The entire purpose of
those games, brought to a self-admittedly shameful basic description, is to
kill people.
What kinds of weapons are used? Just
check out the Wiki page for either of those games, and take a pick.
Violence exists in video games, just as
it does in movies. In that sense, the NRA is right. But are they also right in
calling video games and movies vicious?
There are several games which have no
shooting at all. Journey, a digital release on the PSN, is a game without any
enemies to kill. It is simply an experience that incorporates beautiful
designs, beautiful sound and minimal story, made whole only by the players’
interpretations.
There’s also Frog Fractions, a game I
heard about days prior to writing this. What’s it about? I’m still not quite
sure, but killing people is certainly not the main focus of this game.
One of the most popular video-games in
history, Super Mario Brothers, doesn’t deal with guns at all. Neither does
another popular Nintendo franchise, Legend of Zelda.
Some of my favourite games revolve
around stealth. In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you have the option to simply
sneak past most enemies—boss battles being an exception—rather than killing
them. You can also knock them out if sneaking past them is not an option.
(Via GameSpy) |
In fairness to Assassins Creed 3 as
well, you can go the non-lethal, stealth based route in certain missions.
Maybe the gaming community (for
arguments sake, I’ll involve everyone who has ever played a game), has become
desensitized to the killing that occurs in video games. Maybe it’s that
shooting someone in games has become more a natural instinct than a decision
made after careful deliberation.
I did decide to kill Duck in the first
place because I thought it was just another video game. It was when I started
thinking about what I was about to do that I realized it’s not as easy to kill
him.
Our culture will not allow for violence
to be completely wiped away from any medium of entertainment. Instead of
banning violence, we should, as a gaming community, have a conversation about
how to change the thought processes behind that violence. Gamers need to ask
why we killed the enemy, beyond the reasons of a high score. We need to ask why
we are at war, beyond the reasons that we need a map. We need to ask why a game
has as much blood, beyond the need to meet some minimum requirements of gore.
These are the conversations required to
make our communities smarter, and not just gamers. And I, as someone who wants
to have this conversation, can only hope that Isaiah-TriForce Johnson does as
much, instead of name calling if he does indeed go to “war” with the NRA.
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