(Apologies for the preroll ad)

This is the media’s idea of a ‘fair and balanced story on adult video games’

Alarmist “Won’t somebody please think of the children” crap.

The only reason “the children” would be getting their hands on this Mature rated game is the lack of R18+ rating in Australia, and/or lax parenting as a result of ignorance of the medium, something which this fear mongering does nothing to quell.

The problem is, the people in charge of this sort of thing (such as the Attorney General in the story) still see video games as children’s toys, and believe’s they should all be in the vein of ‘Pong’, ‘Pac Man’ and ‘Frogger’.

What they fail to understand (and what the above story completely fails to mention) is that the average age of a gamer is over 30, and that over 88% of Australian household have a gaming console, yet the medium is still treated as though it is a niche market with no artistic integrity (thanks in no small part to media attention like the story above).

The story also makes no effort to provide contexts for the games they mention, jumping between ‘GTA: San Andreas’ (a game which came out over 7 years ago, with the abovementioned sex scene being removed from the release of the game,and only available once the game has been hacked), ‘GTA IV’ (which came out 3 years ago, and has a mature storyline) and a military FPS (Likely ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’), even going as far as to show children playing these games (all of which have been rated for mature audiences). Each game has a very different ‘vibe’, and it is immediately clear to anyone (or at least, any mentally stable person) playing these games that these are not supposed to be ‘training sims’ for real life.

The story also insinuated that video games create violent killers. That Anders Brevik was inspired by a game to go on his massacre. I have been playing video games for years, and I have never killed anyone. More blood has been spilled in the name of God than has ever (and will ever) be spilled in even the most tenuous link to video games. So, if you plan on banning video games, by the same token, ban religion.

It annoys me to no end that I live in a country where ‘Beverly Hills Chihuahua’ and whatever poorly written, poorly acted piece of drivel that Paris Hilton has hopped on to try to convince us that she is an actress is given more artistic merit than ‘L.A Noire’ or ‘Uncharted’.