Violence breeds violence, so the argument goes. The world around us is littered with imagery of cheap violence with no consequence. Movies and TV regularly present us half-witted ‘heroes’ with a degree in casual violence and all the wit and humanity of your average worm. Statistics abound about the fact that the average child has witnessed more death and destruction by that age of five than the most battle-hardened mercenary. Books depicting horrors unspoken generations ago hardly raise an eyebrow.

And all that isn’t even real violence. As far as the non-virtual world goes, violence has become just another daily problem, along with taxes, bad plumbing and noisy neighbours. Children have to be searched for weapons on entry to school, traffic jams have become an excuse to test out your new baseball bat on a human skull and getting sacked from a job seems to be a perfect justification for carrying-out your Uzi fantasies.

Amongst all this urban decay sits the humble computer game. Concerning violence, it would seem that the main thrust of complaint against games as opposed to films is that a game puts you in control of the violence. In other words, you are responsible for the violence whereas in the case of a movie, you are simply a witness. This is assuming, of course, that all computer games are violent.

Even if we do concede that most computer games do contain a death of in one shape or form, it’s hardly a new thing. Almost all games of one sort or another are about competition. This means beating an opponent as effectively as possible. It doesn’t mean you have to actually kill your opponent but as any writer will tell you, there’s no greater drama than death. In other words, the most dramatic result of any encounter is to ‘see off’ an opponent. Ever play chess for example? Checkmate - death to the King. You get the idea.

The point to remember is that it’s all fantasy. If I play Rogue Spear with some friends on the net I will no doubt become engrossed in a simulated battle of life and death. Simulated. Remember that word. It’s important. Now, put me and the same friends in an real abandoned warehouse, deck us out in military garb and slap automatic assault rifles in our hands with the instructions to hunt down and kill the others and I think you’d get a slightly different response. I’m hardly likely to enjoy seeing my buddies lying on the ground with the life rapidly draining from their bodies because of a bullet I put in their skull. I think not, somehow.

Computer games give us representations of enemies. As in film, they are very seldom full, rounded people. Usually, the enemy is a boring representation of all we are supposed to hate and abhor. God help us they should be likeable, interesting and even, possibly, funny! Oh no, we don’t have to think twice about blowing large chunks out of someone with mutations, a voice several decibels below what is deemed human or even better, something with no visible mouth - they really do deserve to be destroyed! Anything, as long as it’s somehow…..alien.

Why do computer games so often ignore the fact that most real murders are committed by ordinary, mundane people and not by three-headed Xarb the Bastard? For exactly the same reason that film and television does - it’s a diversion from the real horrors of life over which we feel we have little control.

To accuse computer games of giving us the idea of violence is utterly ridiculous. If we want our world to be free of violent imagery then we need to ban just about every media in existence. To paraphrase Bill Hicks (the sharpest American mind of the last twenty years), what came first - the erection or the porn film? His argument is simple and equally valid here. Porn, for example, doesn’t create sexual thought, it merely stimulates it. As does hot weather, bumpy car rides, itchy trousers and, of course, the opposite sex. So were all the porn merchants to disappear tomorrow, we’d still be left with hard-ons.

It’s getting hot outside now and I’ve got to go, I’ve got a bus to catch. I think I’ve said enough.

Later,
Jazzer