That doesn’t seem to be the case; while playing a game is more involving than watching a film surely that only means that the player’s reaction to the horror of war is going to be that much stronger.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6912159.ece

This just reminds me of the hysteria surrounding the video nasties of the 1980s or Mary Whitehouse “Clear up TV” campaigns and who opposed shows like Doctor Who because it was “teatime brutality for tots”.

A game is just that, a game. It is clearly labelled 18+ so if children play this it is no different than them watching an 18 rated movie, it falls to parents to be responsible. It is completely unsuitable for anyone under that age, simple as!

If such scenes as the airport shootout were featured in a film or a book we would not hear people clamouring for them to be banned, they might find it distasteful but unless it was a book/film glorifying massacring civilians it would just be a part of the story. If the action had been you dropping a bomb on the airport would anyone have made such a fuss, probably not – it’s because you’re actually seeing your actions that is causing the furore. Yet this is a 4 minute section of a 6+ hour single player story but you’re judging it on that.

So from this, I think if Grand Theft Auto or another game included a scene of brutality or rape what difference does it have to when a film or book deals with the same subject. Books such as Thirteen Reasons Why, Go Ask Alice and The Tenth Circle feature rape scenes as do films such as “The last house on the left” or “Killer bitch” (which is in production and features scenes of a disabled woman being raped and murdered). Are these acceptable because you just so happen to only be watching or reading it, why should games maintain a kiddy glove approach to hard hitting storytelling any more than any other media? I find that a well written book or well acted film is just as immersive and engrossing as a well produced video game.

Is it because gaming has always been labelled as a juvenile pursuit – maybe that was so 20 years ago but the teenage gamers of Atari/Commodore 64 days are the 30 something gamers of today. We want adult content to challenge an adult mind.

I would hope that a choice to participate in the massacre would provoke thought on the subject and hit home the weight of your choices. Or are gamer’s completely unadjusted social retards say compared to film or book buffs who think reservoir dogs was the height of film making because it features a graphic torture scene.

Do you care? Or are you just trolling for attention?

Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games, Lawrence Kutner PhD and Cheryl K. Olson ScD
“Video Games and Real Life Agression”, Lillian Bensely and Juliet Van Eenwyk, Journal of Adolescent Health, vol. 29, 2001
^ “Video Games and Health”, Mark Griffiths, British Medical Journal vol. 331, 2005

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_violence_research
http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/youthviolence/chapter4/appendix4bsec2.html

If the idea of extreme violence in computer games disturbs you, then by all means vote with your wallet, and don’t buy those games. But your bleats of “has it gone too far” are disingenous, and your straw-man arguments are pathetic. Where does your assertion that Grand Theft Auto is “notoriously violent” come from? Where is your evidence that games (or any other medium) have any impact at all on violent acts.

The only danger here is the one that lurks in your mind, a mind that can imagine savage acts of violence against children. Try reading something other than the tabloids, and try listening to people other than that idiot Vaz.

Yours sincerely

Cronan

However, let me correct an error in the letter. The airport scene relevant to the story and **SPOILER** is the pivotal point in the story where you realise that the terrorists have someone on the ‘inside’ of the US Army. It is not some arbitrary ‘deleted scene’ and if you want to follow the story line then it has it’s role. There could be other less graphic ways to do it but this is a thought provoking situation. And it calls in to question as a lot of ‘art’ does, how our own government gets its way in situations we don’t know about. They presumably have operatives infiltrating terrorist groups and having to do stuff which is morally repugnant. Perhaps not on this scale but the thought is there.

I admit it wasn’t my favourite part of the game, but it has its place.

I think if there was a game to come out where you had to rape a 13 year old or kill a pregnant woman then I think people would be balanced enough to make their own decision on whether they wanted to buy that game and I suspect that if the (and politicians) didn’t kick up a fire storm then the game would not do very well at all and people would vote with their feet. The problem comes that by making all this fuss you play into the hands of the games makers because everyone goes out and buys it to see what the fuss was about and the game get publicity that money can’t buy.

In summary:

The decision whether or not to play a game should be mine not a politician’s.
The game should be marked as possibly offensive and be age rated accordingly. In this case they have gone a step further and offered to cut out the section in question if you want.
The real question in my mind is the parents who happily let underage kids play these games. They are rated this way for a reason.