WHD.
Because of unfortunate recent events some people and industries have tried to blame video games for the violent acts of psychopaths. I have some personal experience in this area so I am inclined to voice my position. I am a video-game artist, I am also a conceptual artist and an author. I will add that I am an avid gamer and have played video-games all of my life. I also grew up like most boys watching cartoons and anime some of which were violent. As a child I played with toy guns, water guns, Transformers, Robotech toys, dragons and dinosaurs. Yet I am not a violent psychopath despite all of these “horrible influences.”
I also read books by authors such as Stephen King, H.P Lovecraft, Terry Goodkind, Harry Turtledove, the late Robert Jordan and his successor Brandon Sanderson, Dean Koontz and many others some of which include classics like the Iliad and the Odyssey for example.
On a personal note I have also actually survived as a victim of violent crime that endangered my life. So I do have some experience there as well. If you want to address crime or violence in society at its core then try addressing things like stress, hunger, poverty, hopelessness, education, Those are real issues, the world is full of real issues that should be addressed we hardly need to sit around and make up false ones that are ridiculous.
I have played video-games since I was a kid and they never made me violent nor did they corrupt my psychology. William Shakespeare’s Mcbeth is a historically tragic tale shall we ban that to because it might run the risk of possibly making someone sad and as a result they might be prone to suicide? Why were at it lets not forget the Greek Classics like the Iliad or the Odyssey. Both of which are violent books with tales of battle death and violence and add onto that just about anything else in the world. If you misconstrue reality enough down a twisted tunnel then really where does it end. Shall we ban the sun because it might be to bright one day and hurt your eyes? Frankly I like violence in video games, its part of the fun because its NOT REAL. I for one am not willing to compromise my enjoyment of games because other people like to politicize everything. Yes while playing Ninja Gaiden on my PS3 I like the fact that when you execute a cool combo that your enemies blood sprays the ground, it is part of the fun after all.
I will not pretend that because there might be a potential psychopath out there in the world that I am willing to give up the fun I have. A potential psychopath will find anything at some point to justify their insanity and I’m just not willing to compromise something I enjoy for this false blame idealism. Bad people or disturbed people have existed since the dawn of time and they will continue to exist, when you give in to them then they win. No I am not giving up my enjoyment of video games whether or not they involve violence because people are looking to politicize it. With a world population nearing 8 billion there are all kinds of people out there and there always have been.
Articles keep emerging because the media has thrown the talking point out there that the massed New Town shooter played video games. Well so do about a hundred million other Americans but their not going on massed killing sprees. If a violent psychopath happened to like apples should we factor that into the equation as well now since some people have already jumped off the cliff into the realm of blaming anything that seems convenient. My heart goes out to anyone who has suffered as the result of violent crimes or the death of loved ones, but I will not just randomly assign blame to video-games because to do so would contribute to that injustice. Once again If you want to address crime or violence in society at its core then try addressing things like stress, hunger, poverty, hopelessness, education, Those are real issues, the world is full of real issues that should be addressed we hardly need to sit around and make up false ones that are ridiculous. It is impossible to anticipate what any given psychopath might do but if they have the tendency to be insane to begin with then anything at any given moment can be a catalyst. Arbitrarily blaming this or that is an injustice to the rest of us who are just trying to live our lives.
While the notion that video-game violence has any correlation on peoples actions may superficially stir emotions in the same way an un-intelligible sound clip on a 24 hour news station will have that effect. The reality is though that for the hundreds of millions of gamers around the world, there are not hundreds of millions of crazy murdering psychos. They don’t exist because there is no real connection. Attempting to manipulate reality in a misconstrued fashion just to support a false concept does not solve the real problems of the world nor does it address the fact that violent or dangerously disturbed people will rationalize their actions by any means. If a person is that horribly disturbed then it might take nothing more then a rainy day to trigger their rage. The rest of us and by that I mean the vast majority of people should not abide such irrational notions. The real issues (some of which have already been articulated) are what needs to be addressed and not false un-intelligible nonsense. People are responsible for their actions, stop blaming everything else in the world like video-games for instance.
Seals of Creation 