14 DAY TRIAL // If you have a weak stomach Do Not Read This. I know that what I am about to say will make you believe that at some point I will run amok through the office with a gun in hand saying that my life is over. This is not the case and is for educational purposes only. You will feel then entitled to ask how this can be an educational piece. Well? this is electroshock therapy.
We all get electroshock therapy in our petty and insignificant lives (some of you will beg to differ): your girlfriend left you, you loose someone dear, you get hit by a car or you witness a terrorist attack like 9/11. But every time you see or hear something like this, you start to think, really think and you finally get to understand some bits from your life and the ones around you.
Right about now you start to wonder ?what in God?s name is he talking about and why is this related to games in general?. I will say only this: remember and imagine. These are the only two actions you have to take to realize that this is the truth... Remember how games looked 15 years ago, with tiny red dots chasing other blue dots. The imagination filled the rest. You were chasing bad guys, chopping arms or pulverizing their heads with a well placed shot... but then no one could tell you what you shouldn?t imagine and no one could place an 18+ warning on the back of your head to mark your imagination. There were only dots and they had no soul.
Of course, much has changed since then and the graphics on a computer are way improved. When I slice a man or woman?s throat (The Hitman Series) I can see him/her struggling and I can hear his/her voice begging. I no longer have to imagine killing or maiming.
The side effect of beautiful graphics is the closeness to real life. In a game you don?t have suffer the consequences of your actions, no one is sending you to the electric chair for a crime you have committed. And if we have problems now with children that are unable to distinguish the games from real life, imagine how games will look in 15 years.
15 years from now.
?I entered the room through a back door. A tall, tattooed man was standing at a table. My army knife sliced his left ventricle and, due to the force, the tip burst out of his chest. The blood splattered the table as he was trying to say something. I twisted the knife and it ripped the ribcage like they were toothpicks.
At this time I noticed a frightened little man I didn?t see before, in the corner of the room. As I walked towards him, I couldn?t find a suitable weapon to kill him. He is asking me for his life, like it is mine to give. The bullet from my 9mm hits him in the shoulder and as he turns away to run, a second one enters his neck. He is not dead, but he will soon be, at the rate the blood is spilling.
I had to find Johnny and take my revenge for what he had done to me. The next room had two bodyguards. I took my sawed off rifle and blew his head off. At that range, nothing was left from his cranium, just some tendons hanging from his neck and for some strange reason, he didn?t fall and his right arm was twitching uncontrollably. I looked in the eyes of his friend and watched him puking on the standing corpse. He started screaming and tried to attack me, but I severed his leg with the second round from the gun. Not surprisingly, the screaming didn?t stop. I took my time as I chopped his head off. He was there that night.
I removed the brain from the door handle and I entered Johnny?s office. He had this terrified face and a trembling gun pointed at me. He was standing in a pool of his own urine. I took out my knife and cut off both his hands. At first, he was screaming but he stopped as I broke his kneecaps. He wasn?t dead and he was looking at me like a boy that looks in the eyes of his mother on the first day of school, asking why. I wasn?t feeling guilty, just uncomfortable. It took me over an hour to cut him in exactly 27 pieces. My revenge was complete. I tasted the blood from my knife. It was bitter sweet."
Now imagine your 12 years old kid is playing this.
Don?t get me wrong. I like playing violent games but at the same time I agree with whatever form of self censorship the game industry is undertaking (like ESRB). What most people don?t know is that ESRB ratings are just recommendations. There are lots of laws analyzed, passed and dismissed these days regarding the right of children under 18 to buy games that are rated 18+. Yes, this could be a good idea in a utopia, but in the real world there is a little thing called ?precedent?. Once you go down that road, telling people what they have the right to buy, these laws can be used to forbid the sales on a range of other products.
The only self regulatory organism in this world regarding the education of kids has to be (like the last and only line of defense) the parents. They are the ones that should substitute the law until children are able to think for themselves (this is not a joke ? consider adolescence and you?ll know I?m right). Extremely violent games harm children. It is a fact and whatever lies we tell ourselves, this is the truth.
I am only issuing a warning here and this is the bottom line: You have to consider that games are becoming more and more real and someday they will be undistinguishable from reality. Parents have to get more involved in what the kids are playing and exercise a much better control on the entertainment factors that influence childhood.