Flashback 06.28.07: Videogames = Evil?

Posted by Steve McHugh on 06.28.2007

The righteous involved in games and my thoughts on the Benoit situation.


With the recent banning of Manhunt 2 over here in the UK, once again the debate of the effects of games on children has resurfaced. I thought it was time for me to go looking into exactly what these people have a problem with and to see if there is a way in which we can all live happily.


Sex


Seeing how sex is such a big seller in most forms of entertainment, it's amazing to see how much conflict it can cause when put into a videogame. Duke Nukem has low-res strippers with their breasts out and God of War had some naked breasts too, in fact it's suggested that Kratos even got to have some sex. Now, to me, sex is a natural part of everyone's lives. Without it no one would be here (well mostly no one) so I really don't see what all of the fuss is about. Fahrenheit had a very complex and adult story but because it had a few sex scenes there was a bit of outrage. How can people get all upset about something aimed at adults when movies and TV manage to put sex into our lives on a daily basis? Who saw Rome when it was on the TV? The whole series lasted about 16 hours, which is about the length of GoW or Fahrenheit yet the games only have a handful of adult situations with characters that are not real whilst Rome had plenty of graphic acts of sex throughout its many episodes.

So yes sex in videogames gets much more stick then any other medium and seeing how there's very little sex (and practically no explicit sex) in mainstream games I fail to see why games are singled out other then the fact that people still see games as a kiddie medium. This is a grossly inaccurate view point as more games are bought by over 18s than under. Personally I'd like to see games developers be allowed to use nudity and sex in games in a more adult way more often. If movies can do it then why not games, as they cater to just as many adults as any other medium?

But once you've dealt with the tasteful sex and nudity issue you've got the less than tasteful aspects. There are 2 real culprits here. Firstly is Custer's revenge. This was a very old game released for the Atari 2600 and featured a naked Custer trying to get to a naked and tied up Native American woman so he can rape her. Apart from the distasteful idea behind the game the actual graphics and gameplay were so bad that it really didn't sell at all and mostly just went away quietly. It was a stupid idea and quite possibly one of the few occasions where people actually had a genuine complaint against a videogame.


Hot Coffee


The other one is GTA:SA. By now everyone in the world has heard of ‘Hot Coffee' and how this one thing has caused the minds of the young to be irreparably corrupted by the evil it contains.

For those of you who remain innocent it was basically a piece of unused code within that game that, when accessed by a Mod through a PC or Action Replay cartridge, you could have simulated sex between the main character and one of the girls you can pick up. You use the controls to go faster etc and it's awful.

I don't mean awful in that it's a morally corrupt mini game I mean it's a dreadful piece of gaming. It's worthless and about as titillating as watching scrambled German porn but even so its two people having simulated sex, so when this all came to light Rockstar got a big old slapped wrist.

Now I'll get hate mail for this but good, they deserved to get a slap. Not because it was a moral thing to do, or that the mini game could lead to some bizarre craze where people starting having weird sex, they deserved a slap because they were stupid. They kept that code in knowing full well that it would get found. It wouldn't have taken them long to remove it and certainly wouldn't have changed the game in any way but Rockstar have always courted media attention. If they didn't they wouldn't have named a game Bully, which I'll get to in a minute.

But the media blew all of this out of proportion. The ‘Hot Coffee' media attention got so mad that Hilary Clinton got involved. She said (and I quote) that GTA is a "Major threat" to moral health and:

"Children are playing a game that encourages them to have sex with prostitutes and then murder them,"

Now I've played SA and I never once felt encouraged to kill prostitutes after having sex with them. Hell after the first novelty of being able to get a prostitute I got a little bored with the whole idea and just stopped using them. That doesn't lead me to believe that I was involved in a major threat to my moral health it just means I got bored.

But GTA:SA is a one off, well the whole GTA line is a one off, and very few games have even tried to match it for content. However, as you'll see, GTA just keeps coming back.

So sex wise I really don't see that anyone had a leg to stand on. It's a ridiculous idea that people are actually titillated by sex in video games and if you are then you really need to seek help because there is something wrong with you. Video games are not sexy but they can contain adult content and that's a good thing. More games need to cater to a more adult audience, which seems to be where games in the new generation are heading.

There's another part to that Hilary Clinton quote and that's the word "Children." Now over here GTA:SA is an 18 and that means you must be over 18 to buy or own it. So why the hell are children playing this game? Instead of saying how it corrupts children maybe she should be looking at how they got hold of the game in the first place.


Violence


Violence on the other hand is a whole different story with plenty of people annoyed about one thing or another. People's main arguments seem to be that games have inspired people to go out and actually kill other people. This has happened a fair few times now with there being a couple of very high profile cases.

The main one of which was when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold entered a High school and killed 13 people and then themselves. Obviously this was a huge event that affected many people's lives, but once the media got hold of the fact that they both played Doom well, that was all they needed; Doom did it.

Now I don't see the link. In Doom you are a space marine who has to kill the minions from Hell. There are no bombs, no people and no school. There are floating skulls that shoot plasma out of their mouths and big pink horned demons. There doesn't seem to be a link between floating skulls and living, breathing school children. So how can anyone suggest that Doom prepared the two for murder? Well naturally they can't. At least they can't prove it but what's better then a nice scapegoat. Saves everyone the problem of actually having to deal with why these 2 decided to go nuts. Maybe a better idea would have been to check into their family lives or possible past bullying. It's a ridiculous notion that just one thing could lead to something horrible and to find out why it happened, people should have looked a lot deeper.

This is a bit of a recurring theme with crimes where videogames are found to have been played by the perpetrators of crime. But there are a few problems, firstly videogames are a huge industry these days and out of all those millions of people who own a console of some sort obviously some of them would be morally bankrupt. Law of averages. But if videogames really made us all kill then surely it would be happening all the time, yet my murder rate stands at a fairly healthy 0 at the time of writing and I have no intention of raising that number. I've played games for 15 years or so now and not once did I want to kill someone.

Jack Thompson


Now I couldn't write this piece without mentioning that bastion of moral compasses everywhere Jack Thompson.

Now I could just bitch and point out how single-minded, arrogant and self serving he is but that's like shooting fish in a barrel and besides it's already been done much better then I could do it. So I'm going to take a look at a few of the issues he seems to have.

GTA seems to be his main point of contention. He describes them as "Murder Simulators" and "They're dangerous physical appliances that teach a kid how to kill efficiently and to love it," he even called games "mental masturbation."

Basically most of his points seem to be the same, in so much that games teach people how to kill and enjoy themselves. He said the same thing in the case of Jacob D. Robida in killing a police officer and the case of Cody Posey for the wrongful death of 3 members of his family. In that case Thompson filed a 69 page complaint saying that he was "obsessively" playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City which made violence "pleasurable and attractive," disconnected violence from consequences, and caused Posey to "act out, copycat, replicate and emulate the violence" when he shot and killed his father, stepmother, and stepsister, and then buried them under a manure pile at a ranch in July, 2004.

"Posey essentially practiced how to kill on this game. If it wasn't for Grand Theft Auto, three people might not now be dead." He goes on to say that GTA taught him "how to point and shoot a gun in a fashion making him an extraordinarily effective killer without teaching him any of the constraints or responsibilities needed to inhibit such a killing capacity."

Okay that's a lot to deal with so let's start at the beginning. First of all I've never played a game (and don't know anyone who has) where they would describe it as teaching me how to kill. I've played Ridge Racer but certainly can't drift a car at 100mph around a hairpin. I've played Ghost Recon but I am not a qualified Special Forces operative. Games have never taught me how to do anything apart from play that game. Anything I've learnt is from living my life and reading about things and actually learning.

I'll use a different example. When I was 15 I got jumped by someone who wanted to beat me up. Fortunately for me the person in question ended up in hospital with a broken nose after losing. At that time I was playing Street Fighter 2 on SNES and I can say with absolute certainly that SF2 did not teach me how to fight. If it had then I would have bided my time with defensive maneuvers until I could unleash a dragon punch, knocking him out. That didn't happen in any way, shape or form. Since that time I've played Virtua Fighter, Tekken and countless other fighters so in theory I should be able to be UFC Champion within a fight or two. Certainly no one should be able to match up to my fighting ability because i've learnt from games. Yet this isn't the case. And why is that? Because games can allow your imagination to be let loose but it certainly can't give you tips on how to do something. GTA's shooting is a joke; anyone trying that in real life wouldn't be able to shoot the side of a barn. The first time the kick back from the gun you were holding wrong got you there's a fairly large likelihood that you'd break your wrist. No one shoots like they do in videogames like GTA. It's a bizarre idea.

Secondly at no point in any GTA game do you hide a body under some manure in a ranch. Thompson was, as usual, grasping at straws and trying to get publicity on something that had no relevance to the case in question. Now I'm sure that the pro- Thompson's will read this and decide that I'm just a big GTA fan and my opinion doesn't matter. Well I'm not a big GTA fan at all. I thought Vice City was excellent and GTA3 was groundbreaking but I found GTA:SA to be overly long and boring and have no interest in the new game apart from seeing what they've managed to achieve. I'm certainly not some fanboy who just disagrees because it's Thompson and therefore as a videogame journalist I'm meant to disagree.


Manhunt


Manhunt caused quite the stir upon release for its relentless killing and torturing of enemies. These included some pretty brutal deaths and just like The Punisher people complained that they were too graphic and disturbing. They had a point, the deaths were disturbing and graphic but that was the point. The game was meant to be disturbing to fit in with the tone. Unfortunately, the game wasn't the masterpiece it was meant to be and in fact was merely an ok game with some good points and a decent adult story. It probably would have gone away quietly if not for the murder of Stefan Pakeerah, 14, by his friend Warren Leblanc, 17.

The victims' mother, Giselle Pakeerah, claimed that the killer had been obsessed with the game after he pleaded guilty in court to the murder. Games retailers decided to remove the game from its shops.

Now it's very sad that this boy died but the police stated there was no link between the murder and the game and in that the boy was killed for a robbery. In fact the killer didn't even own a copy of the game although the victim did, even thought he was well under the age of 18, the age at which you needed to be to own the game in the first place.


Bully


After complaining about GTA got him nowhere Thompson got to work on Bully, which was Rockstar's next game. Now as I've said, Rockstar seem to like the publicity and hey who can blame them? Publicity means sales and the more people bitch and moan in public the more people want to know what all the bitching and moaning is about. Now Thompson said the game "taught you how to bully" and had "white on black crime" in it, all without ever playing the game.

Many anti-bulling campaigners also got involved and denounced the game without ever seeing it. In fact when people did actually play the game and it was found that you were in fact trying to stop bullying there was no general apology sent out by those who not so long ago were saying how evil the game was. In fact Thompson then complained that there was an option to kiss a boy in the game and went nuts again. It seemed like it's a case of anything will do so long as it can be complained about.


Saving


Now these are just a few games but there are countless others such as Halo, Counter Strike and Dead Rising. People have complained about each of these games having an effect on those playing them and influencing their behavior. I wonder how that's possible. How many people actually battle aliens on a regular basis or get stuck in a shopping mall with thousands of zombies? The idea that a game not based even slightly on reality can make people commit heinous crimes on actual people is an odd one. Surely if you can't tell the difference between fiction and reality then whether you play a game or not you'll still have these horrific thoughts. And the crux of the matter appears to be how impressionable everyone is and therefore how we should be saved from the horrors of these games.

I for one don't want to be saved. I'm nearly 28 years old and have a well above average IQ, and can make my own decisions about what I play and what I don't. I don't need people saying that one game is wrong and one is right. I certainly don't need someone deciding that they're going to take up a cause that I don't need taking up. For example in Germany they still ban any game with the swastika on it even if the game depicts Nazi's as the bad guys. It's okay for them to be displayed in films but not games, why is this?
Why can any country just arbitrarily decide to ban anything that depicts something they don't like? The BBFC did this in the 80s with Video Nasties such as Driller Killer and all it caused them to do was make people gain these films via other means.

The main reason is that as i've said, games are not seen as a viable source of entertainment for the majority of adults. People still see gamers as nerds who never get out and that's a long way from being true any more. Games are more adult centric because we're the ones with the money who actually buy the games. Nintendo leant this the hard way by having a much more child friendly console in the N64 whilst the PS1 was making huge-selling games that moved towards more adult friendly content such as Resident Evil. It's a gross generalization but it's an accurate one.


Children in need


The problem is that everyone seems to want to stop the children from playing games that could damage them. This is a good thing. Children shouldn't be playing games that are above their age group but the governments or self appointed protectors are going about it all wrong.

When I was 13 or 14 I played Mortal Kombat for the first time. I brought it at the shop and despite the ELSPA putting a 15 certificate on it no one asked me my age. My parents didn't know the content of the game until I'd got it home but it looked fake and over the top even by standards then. And besides, my parents knew I was a smart and non-psychotic child and allowed me to play the game. They took an interest in what I was doing and that seems to be something we've forgotten to do.

As a parent I take an interest in what my child does. She's 3 years old and doesn't get to play with toys that are for a 6 year old. Not because she's stupid, because she isn't, but because they are not appropriate for her age. The same is true with games. If you have a 12 year old child why would you by them GTA? It's irresponsible and stupid and about as good parenting as letting your kids watch the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They won't understand the context of the game and graphically things have come a long way in 13 years. GTA is not suitable for a 12 year old. If you have a 15 year old who wants it then do some research and check to see if it's suitable. You should know your own kids and know if they're mature enough to handle the content or not.

It's called parenting and maybe if more people did it properly we wouldn't have people like Jack Thompson bitching about nothing all the time. And we wouldn't have political idiots trying to push their own agenda. Kids are not dumb and aren't as innocent as they once were but as parents and adults we are the ones who should ensure that they don't get
hold of things they shouldn't.

But here's the shocking thing. Studies have been done to show a multitude of things but the majority of reputable ones seem to show that people who already have a mental imbalance are the ones who go nuts when playing games whilst normal people seem to be fine after playing. One study showed that children played Quake 2 for 20 minutes and after those 20 minutes the children who had behavior problems were hyper for a while but those without seemed to be perfectly okay. This proves my earlier point that if you have a child then you should know if they'll be ok playing games that are a few years above their age group based on their mental maturity.

Also if your children are playing games for hours and hours on end then here's a stunning idea. Switch off the console and tell them to go outside and play with people. Kick a football around, read a book, go for a walk, anything. Gaming is a lot of fun but they need to spend time away from the computer.


Where to next?


As you may know by now Manhunt 2 has been banned in the UK. You could try to import it but there really isn't much point. After seeing some of the stuff the BBFC has passed in film (Hostel and Saw 3 for example) I'm a little surprised about the decision. Especially when you consider that the only other game banned is Carmageddon and that was in 1997. Surely Kingpin, Silent Hill, Resident Evil and a host of other games are just as violent but they got through unscathed.

With Manhunt 2 being banned, that means that lots of adults who want to play the game can't without importing it and hoping it goes through customs unscathed. Now personally I don't care about the game one way or the other. It certainly seems like just another game which is made purely to court controversy as opposed to providing a well thought out gaming experience. Now I may think that the game should never have been made in the first place but that doesn't mean they should ban the game from people who may want to play it.

But is there a better way? It's obvious that ratings on games don't seem to work. Shops seem to ignore them more often than not and parents just buy games for their children out of indifference or ignorance. Well one way is to say that 18 certificated games can only be brought with ID and they need to employ people who go to these stores under cover to ensure that this is done. But that won't stop online sales.

So maybe everyone who buys an 18 rated game has to give ID and then at a later date someone randomly rings, say, 1% of the total and asks them some questions about the game. But then how would that even work? What if it was brought as a gift?

It's a difficult question with no easy answer but what does need to happen is that shops need to be fined more for selling under age children games they shouldn't play and adults giving these games to their children need to grow up and start actually acting like adults.

I doubt there will ever be a solution but the one that doesn't work is banning games because it doesn't fit in with the sensibilities of a group of people who don't play video games on a regular basis. The BBFC needs to have a proper, effective, video game aspect to it exactly for these reasons. If I was able to I would happily volunteer to give ratings to games so that people can still get hold of the games they want to play without worrying about people who shouldn't be playing it, playing it. Banning it just makes it into a game that people will try to get hold off via other means.

That's not to say that if a game was ever made that did truly despicable things, an updated version of Custer's Revenge for example, that it shouldn't be banned from stores but I can't ever see any reputable companies ever actually making that game and I certainly don't think any games stores in the world would actually stock it.

So overall, no I don't have a perfect answer but having people who want their own agendas noticed jump on the ‘games are evil' bandwagon just look stupid whilst the government needs to communicate more with gamers to arrange how to deal with rating games and ensuring they only stay in the hands of those who should play them.


Well that was going to be it for this week until Chris Benoit and his family died this weekend.

I'm not going to go into the details because you can easily go check them out yourself, and I'm not going to go into the ‘roid rage' stuff because that's speculation and I don't deal in speculation.

Chris Benoit was, like he was towards many in the internet wrestling community, one of my wrestling idols. He was the one I knew would bring out a good match out of anyone and was a joy to watch. On top of that he seemed like a genuinely nice guy who was loved by many of his fans and peers. When I found out that he and his family were found dead I, like many others, were shocked but assumed it was an intruder or something. As news began to come through it became clear what Benoit had done and everything changed.

A few months ago people were thinking about who was going to be on the WWE suicide watch. Who thought it was Chris Benoit? No one even mentioned him in the same sentence as suicide let alone someone who could carry out such a monstrous crime.

Hopefully in the next few days and weeks we'll learn why he did this, not so we can all discuss the morbid details but so it can help us all heal and deal with why this horrific act happened.

I saw a clip of him winning at WMXX a while ago and it was surreal, as if that couldn't possibly be the same person who was currently all over the news. I wish I could say that over time I'll be able to separate the man with his achievements in the ring but I can't say that I either will be able to or will want to. Celebrating his life's achievements seems to be an act that would take something away from the two innocent lives he took.

Personally a few years ago one of my heroes did something so evil and reprehensible that to this day I have not, nor will I ever, forgive him for it. This man betrayed the trust and love of everyone close to him and for that I hope I never have to see him again and if I do I hope everyone around me is much quicker then I am. I should imagine that many of the people close to Chris Benoit will have those same feelings yet because Chris is dead that anger and shock will need be dealt with in other ways.

All I can do at this time is offer my condolences to the Benoit family and friends who are currently having to deal with this situation. I hope one day you all manage to carry on with your lives to some degree of normality and I hope you all get the answers I'm sure you desperately want.