Wasted Seconds Wasting your precious time since 2009.

I saw the recent episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit about the violent video games. I also saw a short interview with Dan Akroyd regarding Ghostbusters : The Video Game where he said that the game isn't a "murder simulator". That you don't actually harm ANY humans in the game. With all the bullshit Jack Thompson pulls with regards to games like Grand Theft Auto and all these parents bitching that games shouldn't exist, it gets ridiculous. And I'm a parent. I have a 7 year old daughter. I'm also smart enough to know that those ratings are there for a reason. She LOVES horror movies, and I can't wait for the night when we sit down together and watch one of the old Freddy or Jason movies. She loves The Grudge, and I went out and bought her her own copies of the movie (rated PG-13 versions thank you), she loves Army of Darkness and stuff like that. She loves watching me play Left 4 Dead and DooM 3. And , much like me as a result of seeing those, she doesn't wanna hurt a fly.

I've been playing these "murder simulators"(first person shooters) since Wolfenstein 3D. I love them. I'm more into the run and gun style gameplay of the old Wolfenstein 3D, DooM, Quake and Unreal Tournament. Later on I tried Grand Theft Auto when it went 3D and didn't like it. I don't like Halo ... I see it as a substandard shooter with a boring story. I don't really like the Call of Duty games, though I do own CoD 4 : Modern Warfare for the 360 and the PC ... though with the PC version I was more interested as to whether or not my PC would actually run it than actually playing it. Gears of War was alright for a playthrough, but the multiplayer gets old quickly.

And I got to think about it, they say these games train kids to kill. You look down the barrel of a rfle and kill kill kill. Grand Theft Auto teaches you to pick up hookers, fuck 'em to get your health back and kill them to get your money back (didn't Zelda 2 do something like that minus the killing part?). Halo and Call of Duty are kinda like "sniper simulators" because that's all I've really encountered when I've played the games. Here was a rundown of my last play of Call of Duty 4 : I spawn in, look around. Nobody around. I run up to a wall, peek around the corner. Nobody there. I go to run across to an opposite wall, I hear a gunshot and I fall over. Then I say "fuck it" and return to a game that's actually fun : Unreal Tournament 3.

But back to what I was saying, these people are retarded. I understand that these games are not made for children. I do plan on letting my daughter play games like Left 4 Dead, because that's the kind of thing that I'm into. And in Left 4 Dead you don't actually kill humans (unless you're a dick to your team), you're killing all zombies. And when I let her play something like that I'm going to make damned sure she knows that it's not ok to hurt people. It's not the game industry's concern to tell kids what is right and wrong. It's us as parents. When I let her watch The Grudge and Army of Darkness I make sure she knows the difference between fantasy and reality. Yes, I know that Army of Darkness is rated R, but if you've ever seen the movie before you can agree with me the movie is comic bookish in nature and WAAAAAY too over the top. And my parents did the same with me when I was a kid and watching the Freddy and Jason movies. Later on, Wolfenstein 3D came out and I knew the difference between fantasy and reality. DooM came out and I just had a blast with it. And I've never deliberately caused physical harm to someonee who didn't deserve it.

Parents out there, quit assuming the games industry owes you. If your kid plays Grand Theft Auto and goes out and kills someone, YOU fucked up. The game didn't cause anything like that. The kid would've done it REGARDLESS of the game. For now, my kid is perfectly content playing games like Pac-Man, Sonic : The Hedgehog (the Genesis versions, not the 3D crap), Mario, Dance Dance Revolution and board games. And if she wants to keep playing games like that as she gets older, that's fine. Or if she doesn't want to play them at all, that's fine too. But regardless of any of that, it's MY job as a parent to make sure she knows the difference from right and wrong. And fantasy and reality. She isn't going to see those games as "murder simulators". She is going to see them as GAMES.