I've been reading quite a bit of these anti Jack-Thompson blog posts, and how he's a neo-Nazi, and so on and so forth, but no one, from what I've heard, has raised the core question of the issue yet. And now I will:

Why, exactly, is violence (in media in general) so damn important?

And, since violence will be brought up many, many times during this editorial, I might as well define it:

Violence (noun): behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.

And, fortunately, I think I have the answer, and it stems from our primal instincts. Yes, violence exists in the media, because of our fear of death. There is nothing more pulse pounding than fear, the fear of getting killed or otherwise wounded, in some way. We know, that if put in the situations that our heroes (or anti-heroes, such as Marcus Fenix or Kratos) are in the games we enjoy so much, we would fight for our lives. Battling it out, getting close to death, and surviving are celebrated accomplishments in real life and are sure to be told around the campfire with your grandchildren if, say, you're a veteran from Vietnam. What video games allow us to do is get in these same intense situations (or situations that AREN'T grounded in reality) from the comfort of your living room. Those accomplishments, in-game, instead become discussions around the water cooler at work. Who wouldn't want that, after all? Video games allow us to interact with a virtual world, and Thompson & co. (Lieberman, Clinton, etc.) act like that's a bad thing. Instead, it's a boon.

Imagine that you're a member of an elite counter-terrorism team. You and you're team drop out of the chooper, on top of a casino. You give the orders for your team to form up, and you rappel down the side of a building, no one alerted to your presence. Slowly creeping down the side, you come to a window, and you invert your rappeling, going down the building -- upside down. Your team gives you the command to breach through the windows, but that's against your better judgement. Slipping your goggles on, and setting them to thermal vision, you can see a tango on the other side. Silently, you remove your pistol from your holster, and put on the silencer. You aim, just like it's a training course, and put a 9mm bullet right through the skull of the unsuspecting gunman on the other side of the glass. You give the order and you breach in the window, drawing your H&K G36C assault rifle as you creep into the room. So far, so good. No tangos are alerted, yet. Pointing to the door, you tell your team to stack up, and put a breaching charge on the door. They count to three, blow the charge, and storm in, you taking the lead. Before you know it, you're dead, a double-tap to the sternum; the terrorists outwaited you.

But wait, that's just Rainbow Six: Vegas, and you can restart from your last checkpoint, this time you can go down the stairwell instead of rapelling, or use smoke grenades instead of breaching the room.

And yet, this raises an ethical (rhetorical) question: when it comes down to it, kill or be killed? And the answer: Kill. What Jack and his supporters are leaving out is in 99% of these games (GTA is the only one I can think of that doesn't MAKE you kill), you are absolutely forced to kill. No ifs, ands, or buts. You HAVE to kill, to progress in the game. Most of these games don't have violence for the hell of it (read: fun), but for necessity, to advance your progress in the game. Yes, I realize that the violence is most of the fun in games, but I love good stories (hello, BioShock, another game that Thompson attacked).

And, if we're talking about the necessity of violence in games, how about in life in general? Let's face it: we have to kill to survive. Yeah, I understand that there's a fine line between killing other animals, and killing humans, but the lawyer's cronies say violence itself is pure evil, like it's some kind of disease. I'd sure like to see them survive alone, in the wilderness, having to hunt for their own food, if violence is so bad. We kill everything we eat, pretty much. Like that chicken you're having for dinner? Well, someone had to decapitate it last week so it'd end up on your table. And that salad, even? Those plants are dead, and someone had to yank it out of the ground, comitting plant homicide. That's hurting, and killing the plants, so it IS a violent act. So, in retrospect, if Jack's so right about video games causing violence outright, then we should've invented games a long, long time ago, increasing the efficacy of hunter-gatherers. Actually, the vikings must've played tons of video games -- considering their warrior culture.

Sarcasm aside, whether Jack admits it or not, violence is an important part of our culture and life in general. And it's here to stay.