Your Honor, Mario Made Me Do It!

Video Games are to blame for violence?

Published on February 17, 2005 By Zoomba In Gaming

It's been a big thing in recent years to sue game developers, publishers and retailers over the claim that their games make children violent. Doom caused the Columbine shootings... iD is the cause of all school shootings many would claim. EverQuest forced someone to committ suicide. World of Warcraft made a guild mate lose their job. Grand Theft Auto made me run people over.

MARIO MADE ME HAVE AN IRRATIONAL FEAR AND HATRED FOR MUSHROOMS!!! Every time I see a mushroom now I pull out my "fire flower" (aka flamethrower) and kill it on the spot. It's not my fault your house burned down as a result, I couldn't help myself. The red and blue plumber made me do it!

There's an amazingly faulty piece of logic in all of that. A *game* can't *make* you do anything! Nothing! There isn't a game out there that can convince you to do something in reality that you wouldn't normally be willing to do. That's like saying reading crime novels caused you to committ a crime. Or that the evening news sent you on a shooting spree. Even kids can't pull stuff like that. Is alcohol at fault when someone gets into an accident? Can you blame a crime on an illegal drug? Nope.

I'm tired of people trying to take personal tragedy and cash in on it like this. It's like the D&D suicide craze of years past. Or how rock and roll promoted satanism. Rap music also caused violence and shootings. Video games are like any other source of entertainment, they don't cause people to do things.

Negligent parenting, apathetic teachers, or just flat-out mental instability contribute to these problems far more than video games do. If you get a kid who's crazy enough to shoot someone because they saw it in a video game, eventually they'd shoot someone because they saw it on TV, or in a movie. Video games are the convenient target of the day.

What happened to personal responsibility?

Comments

Gideon MacLeish

on Feb 17, 2005

Excellent article! It reminds me of when they tried to blame Columbine on Marilyn Manson fans. While I generally detest Manson's music (a few selections excluded), my response was (and is): "I'll let them hang school shootings on Marilyn Manson fans when they start hanging Mafia killings on Frank Sinatra fans".

(btw, I cross busy highways in an erratic pattern....think I could sue the makers of Frogger?

Moderateman

on Feb 17, 2005

terrific point gid, glad to see you back on track... personal responsibility went out the window as soon as liberal lawyers saw a buck to be made sueing people.

bakerstreet

on Feb 17, 2005

I feel your pain. Pac Man inspired my raging amphetamine addiction in the 80's...

People sue game companies as if they were sueing day care centers. No one ever asks why these little knuckledraggers were allowed to play them 40 hours a week. If there's any negligence here, it is parents who allowed the "morality" in a videogame to be more influential than their own.

dharmagrl

on Feb 17, 2005

Negligent parenting, apathetic teachers, or just flat-out mental instability contribute to these problems far more than video games do. If you get a kid who's crazy enough to shoot someone because they saw it in a video game, eventually they'd shoot someone because they saw it on TV, or in a movie. Video games are the convenient target of the day.

What happened to personal responsibility?

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!!! I've been saying this for years...

..and I don't know what happened to personal responsibility and accountablility. I think that it went out of style years ago.

Zoomba

on Feb 18, 2005

There are so many larger issues here than the game and people don't get it.

Where were the parents?
How do these kids get ahold of firearms?
What other catostrophic failures occured to bring the kid to this point?

It's rare that people snap suddenly and without warning. Especially kids. There are almost always warning signs... how many adults are around these kids and just never notice or never do anything for fear of hurting self-esteem or pissing off a parent and getting in trouble only to have the warning ignored?

"Tommy would never hurt another person"
"Then could you please ask dear sweet Tommy to get off the roof and put down the AK-47?"
"Oh, he's just playing, he wouldn't shoot anyone"
"Your neighbor Ted is laying on his lawn in a pool of blood and a bullet hole in his head"
"Oh, I'm sure it was an accident and he was just trying to play a prank on Ted."
"Now he's taking pot shots at passing cars"
"Well, what can I do? I mean, he learned that from his video games... nothing I could do to stop that"
"How about not let him play them?"
"Oh, I couldn't do that... he gets so angry when I take things away... and he's such a good boy normally... this isn't his fault"

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