Child's Play-Spawning Game Critic Praises, Apologizes

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing out a HeraldNet editorial praising online comic Penny Arcade for their 'Child's Play' charity effort, in which the author apologizes for having written the original anti-gaming article which helped the Penny Arcade authors to their decision that "the media seems intent on perpetuating the myth that gamers are ticking time bombs just waiting to go off." The controversy eventually spawned the Child's Play charity fundraiser, which ended up raising almost $150,000 worth of toy/game-related donations for the Seattle Children's Hospital, and the HeraldNet columnist praises the "speed and power with which this network of gamers mobilized their effort on behalf of children and Children's Hospital." He also apologizes for his previous views, commenting: "Certainly many gamers read my column as a statement that I believe that they are bad people. For that impression I am sorry. I did not and do not believe that."

Comments

Why write it then?

[BladeMelbourne]

"I did not and do not believe that."

Then one must ask why did you write that? Bad hair day? Boy-friend dump you? Broke a nail? ;-)

Violent games

[HalfFlat]

The Child's Play charity run organised by Penny Arcade is simply amazing.

But the column cited at its inception doesn't really seem to be demonizing video game players, but a class of very violent video games themselves. The column certainly uses language that while not outright stating it, does imply that ultra-violent video games lead children into becoming sociopathic serial killers, and this was unfortunate rhetoric clearly used to increase the impact of the piece. But there are certainly (at least) two valid points being made there.

Firstly, and most simply, age-restriction ratings on video games are having little actual effect. Either they are not being observed by retailers, or they are circumvented very easily in all the traditional ways. How they could be made more effective, or even if they should, is another question.

Secondly, and more contentiously, there are indeed some few video games which are incredibly violent in a spectacularly brutal and callous way. Interaction does make for better learning than passive exposure, and it's intuitively the case that a steady diet of this material at young ages is probably having some malign effect on the more marginally sane in the population. This leads to the question: why do game companies and publishers produce such games?

Video games can certainly be regarded as a form of creative art. And they're fun, too (or ought to be.) But they're also really expensive to produce these days, at least for any major title. I don't think any large publisher is going to pick up a title unless they feel it has a good chance of being a good seller. And so in turn, it must be that violence sells, even really nasty stuff.

In film, the extreme end of the spectrum is certainly available, but it's not trivially easy to access for minors. Especially for films which are refused cinema release. The creators of such films are almost certainly not doing it for profit motive, because no exposure means few sales. As such, the movie classification systems of (say) major Western countries generally work as a comprimise. They rarely achieve outright censorship, but do for the most part keep the most violent films away from people deemed too young to view them. It also removes the profit motive from exploiting violence as mere titilation.

So maybe stronger classification and enforcement is the answer after all, if it can be placed on par with film classification?

Re:Violent games

[dickiedoodles]

I think some of the responsibility has to rest with the parents in this matter. A normal child of 10 can understand the difference between real life and video games and knows that similar violence in real life is unacceptable, if they don't it needs explaining by a responsible adult. If that doesn't seem to work then the kid has problems and needs to be kept away from violent games/movies/sharp objects.

The problem is it's easier for parents to blame video games for all our problems and fight that instead of trying to figure out why people really go into a school and shoot half their class. maybe video games did inspire it somewhat but lets face it happy well-balanced people don't do that, people with serious issues do that and the cause of these issues isn't playing a few hours of doom.

As a side note it was mentioned on penny-arcade a few days ago that a local news show actually reported the donations were made by a local catholic school, no real point in me mentioning that, just seemed to kind of suck.