BBFC - Video Games Aren't to Blame After All

Reading this title I thought: "What? Again they're blaming games for who knows what this time?" But no, this time I stumbled upon a British Board of Film Classification report posted on GameIndustry.biz, containing information regarding why people blame games like Grand Theft Auto, Manhunt, or The Sims when something awful happens.

David Cooke, director of the BBFC stated: "We were particularly interested to see that this research suggests that, far from having a potentially negative impact on the reaction of the player, the very fact that they have to interact with the game seems to keep them more firmly rooted in reality. People who do not play games raise concerns about their engrossing nature, assuming that players are also emotionally engrossed".

The Board thus concluded that interaction keeps the player aware of reality, so it's not the game so much to blame, as the person's perception of what's happening on screen. Interviewed members of the board even expressed their discontent towards the fact that the world wasn't yet ready for the release of "an extremely good game" called Manhunt: "The reason that Manhunt is so difficult for everyone to deal with is that it doesn't let you dodge this fact, that you like pretending to be a murderer. It's an extremely good game and very moral game. It's a great shame that the games industry wasn't prepared to stand up for it."

Are they right, or are they right? If people hadn't been so stupid as to be ashamed of sex and if we could better understand our urges to have a thrill every once in a while, video games wouldn't be such an issue anymore. But it's not the case with our society. Every day, one more dumb-ball is born, gets bad education and he develops a bad perception of the reality surrounding him, ending up with a bullet in his head, after killing 32 others and it still isn't a video game issue.