The Insatiable Urge to Beat Hookers with a Baseball Bat

Grand Theft Auto IV is out today and I just might be the only gamer in the tri-state region that isn’t going to run out and buy it. I played II back in the day and got bored quickly. Call me crazy, but shooting cops and beating hookers just didn’t hold my attention.

Even though I don’t play it, I respect the market that does. Still, I get irritated with Rockstar because this series always brings out renewed calls to ban or censor video games. Jeez, even Rod Ryan on The Buzz was complaining about IV’s new feature of simulating drunk driving. Rod, like most people ignorant about gaming, makes the leap that people run out and do the things they see or simulate in video games.

So. Completely. Intolerably. Stupid.

Rod’s sidekick, Mark Wiggins, pounced on Rod’s hypocrisy; he pointed out that Rod feels incensed about the drunken driving aspect of the game, but not the fact that you shoot and kill innocent people throughout the game. Rod’s only response was that few people have access to guns, but most everyone has the capability to get drunk and drive a car.

It’s the same old tired argument that gets brought up every time a violent, controversial game comes to the public’s attention. Though there’s no data to back the claim, most everyone makes this startling assumption that kids and adults promptly try to reenact what they played in a video game. For the brief amount of time I smacked a hooker around in GTA II, it never once occurred to me that I wanted to do that for real. Hell, I doubt I could even SPOT a hooker in real life, let along beat one with a baseball bat.

The fact of the matter is that people prone to violence or stupid behavior are going to act on those impulses no matter what. The sad coincidence is that some of these people just happen to play video games. The vast majority of gamers are well-adjusted, non-violent, happy-go-lucky people who can easily differentiate between the fantasy world in which they indulge and the real world in which they exist. In fact, some of the sickest, dumbest people I’ve ever met in my life DIDN’T play video games. I guess I could start making an assumption that non-gamers are more prone to violence and stupid behavior.

I’d be right most of the time.

Though it’s far more likely I’ll be named the next American Idol, it’s time we stopped blaming games for violent or irresponsible behavior and instead look for problems with authentic cause-effect relationships. That might involve taking a look at the country’s divorce rate and the consequent children raised by a single parent. Or the broken health care system. Or educational institutions that spend more time testing students than teaching them something. Or a mortgage-lending system that got so greedy, the entire housing industry almost imploded. Or an energy policy that now finds the country paying an accelerating price at the pump. Those are real issues causing real problems in our country. But they’re difficult to fix.

Much easier to blame video games for perceived social ills than try and fix problems that are a true burden on our country.