Confessions of a Video Game Addict

In the late 80’s I got my first video game system. It was an Atari, and for the last few dying years of the era of big hair and acid wash jeans I helped pac man escape several angry multi-colored ghosts, helped a small man jump over a white scorpion that wanted to kill him for a reason that was never defined, and helped two italian plumbers flip over and punt bugs that were invading the local sewer system.

From there, things moved rather quickly. Systems came and went, and for the most part, I stayed up to date with it all. I saw the rise and fall of the Sega empire, I watched as congress had little fits over a game called “Mortal Kombat,” and mused over the death of “cartridge” games. Currently, I have a Playstation 2, and a Nintento Gamecube. I’m also seriously pumped over the release of the new Nintendo system in the near future, titled the Wii.

Basically, I am, and always have been, a video game junkie. I love playing games, interacting with a story, and doing the impossible with a little more than mashing a button. I enjoyed playing as a eccentric character and solving puzzles, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. In short, video games are quite the hobby. Anytime you need a new one, it’s easy enough to find one.

However, the one thing that makes me extremely angry is when I hear people blaming video games for every single violent thing that a kid does. Suddenly, it doesn’t matter that the parents were letting him play games for hours and hours on end. It doesn’t matter that the kid knows that the game isn’t reality, especially when they need an excuse for what they’ve done. It also, for some reason, doesn’t matter that no one blinked an eye at selling a minor a game rated “M” (for mature). Basically, I’m rather angry that my hobby has become everyone’s scapegoat.

I look at it this way: Anything that you see done in video games, you can see in the movies. You shouldn’t drop the game “Grand Theft Auto” into your young, shapable child’s mind any more than you should drop the movie “Scarface” into his lap. I mean, come on! They make games and movies for kids. If you don’t want your kid playing or watching violent pixels, then don’t get those kinds of games or movies. Keep an eye on the rating system, really.

Also, it seriously bothers me when kids use video games as an excuse to do whatever they want to do. I think it’s slightly suspicious to think that the only time they know the difference between reality and fantasy is when they need a good alibi.

I hate to say this, but this society loves violence. If you want to blame video games for kids shooting each other up in the back alleys of the world, then you also have to blame television, movies, and about three fourths of the websites on the internet. You can’t pick and choose and say that video games need to go, simply because that’s the only violent media you don’t like.

I’ve played video games my entire life, and I don’t think I’m a delinquent. I don’t think that I can kill someone and hit the reset button right after, and I don’t think that I can break large, brick blocks with my head. I also don’t try to eat ghosts after I eat large white pellets, and I’m not too keen on the idea of driving my poor, pathetic, filthy car ninety miles an hour into a building. It’s all a matter of perspective. If video games do influence people to do violence, it’s because the people around them, the people that are supposed to be there for them, aren’t keeping a very close eye on them.

As a kid, whenever I played video games for too long, my mother made me shut the thing off and go outside. Heck, in my day we didn’t even have a “save” option. We’d actually lose levels if we turned the system off! Kids these days, I tell you, they don’t know what they’re missing.