Violence in Media

Let us stop portraying the media consumed by a murderers as the cause for their crimes.

I was sitting in my family room with my Dad, discussing the Newtown mass shooting. I brought up the rampant scapegoating being condoned by the mainstream media with my father and he agreed, while adding "except that one game... what's it called?"

I guessed "Grand Theft Auto". That and Mortal Kombat are the two games that have been getting panned by the media for years for allegedly creating psychotic killers despite the fact that millions of people play them and they are just fine.

He said "Yes. That's the one where you shoot cops and rape prostitutes, right?" My Dad has never played the game, and based on what the media has communicated to him about the game, that's literally what he believes the game is about.

To set the record straight, the Grand Theft Auto series consists of loosely connected open-world games set against a sprawling story in the criminal underworld, more easily compared to Goodfellas than "raping prostitutes". You are given the ability to explore the game's world, always a parody of a major American city, at your leisure. If you want, yes, you can shoot a police officer with a bazooka. But where the media seems to stem away from the truth is that you are not rewarded by this or given "points" (I heard that once). Rockstar, the game's developer and publisher, spends millions of dollars making the best story they can tell in these games, all of which are critically lauded for their intricacy, plot, and humor. But my Dad, because of the media, believed it was about "shooting cops and raping prostitutes".

Likewise, since the culprit of the 2011 Norway mass shooting, Anders Brevik, mentioned that he prepared by playing Call of Duty, the media exploded, condemning its existence and essentially identifying it as a motivation in the cases of other murders.

The Call of Duty franchise is one of the highest sold video game properties of all time, with millions upon millions playing. Out of all of those people, literally a handful of people end up being mass murderers. I believe that you could find a different commonality between the murderers that actually identifies with a smaller demographic that could prove as an even better scapegoat. Maybe they all belong to yacht clubs, and only 6 million U.S. citizens belong to yacht clubs. YACHT CLUBS CAUSE MURDER!

It comes down to personal responsibility. If there is a violent game, it may desensitize your child a bit. I admit that I am somewhat desensitized to violence. But my parents did not neglect me growing up, and took the time to explain to me, I don't know, morality.

Video Game Graphics: Do They Matter?

Recently a whole slew of new video games have been released. Among them are Halo 4 and Call of Duty Black Ops 2. With these new releases i have been constantly overhearing conversations concerning things like how certain aspects of these games are but one thing always seems to be a serious topic within the discussion. Im talking of course about the graphics. It seems that graphics is one of the most important things to gamers these days. It makes sense. Why wouldn't you want to play a game that has the best graphics around.

While games like Halo and Call of Duty improve there graphics with each new release, there has a computer game released recently that challenges the idea that graphics are one of the most important parts of the game. The game i am referring to is called Minecraft. The concept surrounding this game is very simple. You are a character in an extremely blocky world, mining resources like coal and iron in order to build things. You can build anything from a house to a scale model of the starship enterprise. The graphics in this game are incredibly simple. Everything is made out of blocks and the coloring is very simple. There is no such thing as shading, all of the colors are basic and simple. The most interesting thing about this however is that this game is extremely popular. I found this very interesting because while it is fun to play (albeit extremely time consuming) the graphics look like something that would have been released 15 years ago. However Minecraft is extremely popular. Once released, all over the internet there were forums and screencaps popping up concerning the game and who could build the most ridiculous thing in there chosen world. I really like that this is as popular as it is. It has always bugged me when people get really serious about the graphics in there video games. I personally have never really cared. This shows that there are others out there like me who do not really care that much about graphics and are more concerned with the actual gameplay.