This blog is here generally not to point out the obvious, which I am doing in stating that video games are under attack. People like Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton think that video games are poisoning the youth of America, especially a certain series named Grand Theft Auto. The fact is that we still haven't gotten decent enough research to prove that video games cause agression (a neutral testing facility please?), so this argument should be put off until there is, without a doubt, PROOF that video games cause agression.

There is a bigger thing that we should be concerned with though, is that, is it really the developer's fault that these games get into the hands of children? No. Who buys the games for the children the majority of the time? Parents. Other times the clerk shouldn't let a 13 year old buy Grand Theft Auto IV, but they do. Not to mention that tragedies like the one at Columbine and Virginia Tech could have been prevented EASILY! Just simply keep the gun away from the guy. Sure, he plays Grand Theft Auto and Counter-Strike, but then again, who doesn't? They should be looking into how he got the gun, not what games he was playing! Before you know it policemen will see you driving badly, will pull you over and ask: "Have you been playing Burnout recently?".

I'm getting ahead of myself. The real reason that games are getting targeted is that parents don't want to take the blame. "The game MADE my Johnny want it and steal the gun!!!" These people don't want to think that their "Johnny" could do such a thing, or that they could have done anything to stop what happened. So, they simply blame what is the easiest thing to blame, which are video games. They are the only form of entertaiment that is truly interactive, and it's still a fairly new media. Easy to get away with blaming it.

Before I go on, let me tell you a story about a grandma and her grandson. May I remind you that this is a true story, although some details might be a little off. So a grandma takes her grandson to a store, and the grandson tells her that he wants a game. He points at Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, she looks at it, and says okay. Later on, at her house, she walks in on him playing GTA San Andreas, and it was the Hot Coffee mod. She obviously wasn't happy. So what was her first course of action? Why, sue Rockstar of course! As far as I know, the lawsuit didn't go very far, but still, this is an obvious example of what I was saying.

Not to mention that because of this, there is a great bias towards the gaming industry. Ask the governor of New York, he just signed a bill requiring that in the state of New York, every game was rated and every system has parental controls. While the gaming industry has already done most of this themselves (ESRB and every system except the DS has parental controls), this shows a great bias towards the gaming industry, and only the gamers recognise that. You know it's not good when GTA IV was on the news simply because it was violent and a lot of people were buying it. You could sense Jack Thompson in his evil lair going "Good, good, good...".

The gaming industry, however, is not going down without the fight. Organizations like the ESA are making sure the games don't go under because of all of this bad press. G4's Adam Sessler has had many of arguments with Jack Thompson, and in fact has a episode of "Sessler's Sandbox" that says all that I said above and more. You can find it here.

Well, just make sure you use all of these arguments to your advantage. Video games seem to be winning the fight, but when you go against the government, even when you're winning, you could be losing.