David Jaffe is an accomplished game designer (with Twisted Metal and God of War as part of his resume), as well an opinionated one. And he had a lot to say, in response to a recent segment on CNN. One delivered by anchor Erin Burnett, who tried very hard to illustrate a link between video games and violent crimes.
The clip can be seen here. The report as a whole is more than a little offensive, though the most outrageous part is how Burnett tries to get psychologist and author William Pollack to agree with her. Instead he disagrees and attempts to shift the conversation to gun control, which does not conform to Burnett's agenda.
As a result of the train-wreck of a segment, Jaffe issued the following, via Game Informer:
Dear @ErinBurnett : you, ma'am, are at best an idiot that @cnn should be ashamed to have as an anchor. At worst, you are the worst kind of American: one who has allowed the healthy desire for success to morph into a capitalistic cancer that makes it ok to ignore the facts in order to make your product more appealing, regardless of the consequences. To make matters worse, your own views about video games- which you seem to have no problem sharing with your hundreds of thousands of viewers- clearly have not been formed by any actual research or real life experience with the medium.
I am sure you will think yourself quick and insightful when you tell me- a video game director/designer accusing someone from another industry of making products for profit regardless of consequence- that I am the pot and you are the black kettle. However, if you actually listened to your guests and read the studies (aka if you actually did some….some….hmmm, what's that word you journalists have for it? Oh right: RESEARCH!) you would see you are wrong; you would see there remains- after years of studies- zero evidence of video games with violent subject matter causing real life violence.
On the flip side- you know: YOUR side- there is very real evidence that our society suffers greatly when our news media fails to properly inform the public.
The fact that you think a guy who 'trains'* on a shooting video game would be granted the skill to horrifically, tragically kill those CHILDREN in Norway only serves to show how little research you do before you open your mouth in front of your world wide audience under the guise of delivering news. I'm not sure what makes your argument look more ignorant: the fact that you don't back up your idiotic statement by showing a correlation to the current health of America's agriculture sector with the popularity of Farmville OR the fact that the sick, deranged evil loser who killed those poor kids in Norway had picked such a poor 'training' tool that after 700 hours of play, he was only capable of hitting little kids with his bullets versus the well armed pretend terrorists and highly skilled virtual soldiers that he was battling in the game.
Shame on you. But more importantly: shame on your profession. It deserves so much better.**
David
