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The Moral Pathology of Vice City
SiliconRedox writes "An interesting article at the NYTimes (reg req) outlining the rise of rockstar games and the imminent release of Vice City. What the article mentions but never brings together is the ability of the player to win the game through peaceful(ie: not killing people) or criminal means. The game, while being hailed as morally reprehensible, is in fact only acting out the pathology of the player." Everything worth knowing in life can be learned from GTA. For example, upside down cars explode, and flying cars can jump the bridge between the first and second city without finishing the quests. Just like in real life. I still haven't picked up Vice City, but I'm stoked. And I will most definitely not win through peaceful means.
I just saw Bowling on friday, and this movie tries to get to the issue, of why there is so much gun violence in the us. It does happen to graze on the video game aspect, however it bypasses that as the reason, and later says, that the two columbine boys went bowling on the morning of the killings, so, is bowling responsible?
The movie touches on that most first world countries have yearly gun murder rates below 200, whereas, the us has over 11,000.
From what i gathered from the movie, they come to the conclusion that gun violence comes mainly from the extreme paranoia generated by every form of media. They compared the nightly news from canada versus the news in the US. The top story in the canadian news was about speed bumps, and the top stories in the US were all about death, and killing. Plus, to really bring their point home, they point out that canada has 10million homes, with over 7million guns in the country, so it's not the prevalance of guns that cause violence.
However, every person who wants some ammunition (pun intended) to fight the 'videogames kill' mantra of unenlightened politicians, and parents, go see this movie. It will definitely give you very good arguments to defend our position.