I believe the truth is nestled between these two extremes, but I also believe that all other forms of media hold responsibility. Freddie had his views,“My own position is that I can easily imagine that they have some effect on kids, but that the solution to that problem is parenting, rather than regulation”.
“I think parents have to talk to their children about violence in general and media violence specifically, and teach them to understand the difference between games and reality.” He continued, “I do believe the government can present incentives for effective parenting, but ultimately if you need government regulation to do your job for you in regards to teaching your child about videogame violence, you're already in trouble”.
And why should we hand control to our overlords? Especially when the internet is a minefield of shocking footage and it goes unpoliced. The responsibility should fall on the individual, or in the case of a minor, the parents.
Most parents are ignorant to the content on a disc, yet still buy the latest title for their children. Assuming the shops are enforcing their duty of care, then the countless teens, and indeed pre-teens on Call of Duty, can only mean one thing: the parents are buying age-restricted products for their children.
“Right”, Freddie agreed. “Parents have to know what they’re bringing into their home. If they think that they've done a good job of explaining to their kids about violence and why it’s important, they can make the informed choice to give it to their kids.”
I wondered if Freddie thought playing violent games conflicted with his pacifism. “It’s an interesting question,” he replied. “I mean XCOM is violent; I’m mowing down aliens with lasers and yet it’s not really considered violent because of the cartoony visuals and the situation isn’t considered ‘real’. For me, the question isn’t so much about the violence itself, but more the game’s orientation towards violence”.
I consider Fallout 3 as the best example of extreme violence in games. I asked Freddie’s opinion on it and surprisingly, he had played that too. “Yeah, I liked Fallout a lot, and that’s a good point; you decapitate people constantly. From the outside it’s a game about violence, but it takes pains to make compassion a major element. You’re in this brutal world, where cruelty is common, but you have the capacity to help people who can do nothing for you. Does that mean it’s sophisticated? Not really; if a guy shows up as red on your radar, you can kill him without concern, and that’s a bit juvenile”.
I thought of some of the meta-games that some might enjoy. The Sandman Perk, where you kill sleeping characters, could actually be used to roleplay as a serial-killer. I asked Freddie if this is troubling, or harmless fantasy. “What makes me troubled in that scenario isn’t that you have the capacity to be evil, because that exists in reality. What troubles me is why people would choose that? What conditions them to act that way?”
People like to push boundaries in a world without consequence as humans are curious by nature.The first thing I did when I booted up a recent demo, was try to slice a cat with a Katana. I wouldn’t do this in reality, I love animals, but that cat wasn’t a living entity.
The thing that I find most strange about the debate, is that regardless of the abundance of pornography in society, sex in games is still considered taboo – more than killing. Films often portray sexually graphic scenes, even sometimes based on true stories, yet if games were to try a similar trick they would never see release.
“Yeah, it’s strange” Freddie said on the subject, “But within the culture, it’s par for the course. Part of the reason that I’m not willing to blame videogames for violence is that they’re just an expression of a culture infatuated with violence”.
“So many of our myths and stories are based on the juvenile idea that problems can be solved by punching people. Meanwhile, sex is still considered something to be talked about in hushed voices. The whole Hot Coffee thing with Grand Theft Auto was hilarious”.
He is referring to a mini-game in GTA: San Andreas, where the protagonist could have sex.
Not only did they retain their clothing, but the content was hidden on the disc at the last minute, for fear of retribution. Unfortunately for Rockstar, a hacker found the hidden files, and the excrement hit the fan in a big way. Robbing houses? Fine. Killing working girls? Fine. Fully clothed rubbing? Not fine.
“Right,” Freddie agreed, “I mean, you're talking about a game where you can pull a guy from his car, beat him to death with a baseball bat, then use that car to run over a dozen innocent people. But it's this crude sex scene that you can only unlock through hacking that gets people offended. I think there's still this perception that videogames are for kids, which is part of it. Unfortunately I think the videogame industry has a hand in that perception”.
How will the medium mature when any risk taking is met with controversy? Hopefully the day when we find out is no longer so distant. The gap between ‘gamers’ and ‘non-gamers’ is closing rapidly and most people play games in one form or another, it’s just a matter of time until people who don’t game are in the minority.
I will leave you with a pearl of wisdom from Freddie, “I'm a pessimist by nature, but the independent game phenomenon gives me hope for as much diversity in games as we have in movies – where you've got the big blockbusters, the art house movies and the foreign films. But to really get meaningful diversity, videogame makers have to trust their audience enough to produce games with other mechanisms than ‘go kill this bad guy’. And I say that less in the sense of being anti-violence and more in the sense of just wanting more nuanced and complex games.”
