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New Mexico Newspaper Row Shows Game Violence Microcosm
Thanks to the Albuquerque Tribune for its pair of editorials, one praising violent games, tongue-in-cheek style, by lauding "the sheer joy of freeform gaming mayhem", and the other a rebuttal suggesting children are genuinely at risk. This provincial echoing of the ever-present worldwide debate starts with Sue Vorenberg's contention that: "There's nothing quite as satisfying as running over virtual French people with a souped-up sports car", and ends with Bob McCannon's statement that "the correlations between violent media and aggression are stronger than between smoking and lung cancer." What can be done to make such arguments a little more evenhanded?
But these fears have been allayed by the phsycologists view that children, right from an early age, can tell the difference between fantasy worlds of cartoons and the real world.
I would have thought the same is true for video games?
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
The anti-violence article is actually quite even-handed and fair except for the one "correlation" remark.
Firstly, she mentions that the studies that claim videogames are not determental to society are funded by the videogame companies themselves (sound like a certain OS maker we all know here?). She then mentions that there are beneficial games out there too.
But everyone here is talking about censorship, when she doesn't even mention it in her article!
What she does recommend is (gasp!) spending time with your children, and closely watching what they do, especially if certain signs appear (they only like violent games, spend too much time, etc.).
In fact, this article seems to be promoting common sense among parents, a stance usually quite popular here!
Um, read the article again. It's NEW MEXICO, not Mexico.
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