I’ve been a gamer for almost 30 years, and in all that time – during the highs and the lows, the giddiness and the crushing depression, the drama bombs and rampant Benedryl abuse – not ONCE have I ever:
-
Shot up a space station on Phobos to save earth from demons
- Fought my way out of a Nazi dungeon to infiltrate the SS Paranormal and Special Projects Divisions
- Driven a moon buggy through Sector Nine (home of the toughest thugs in the galaxy)
- Engaged in a rockin’ Tokyo-to turf war fought on jet-powered rollerblades
- Been a boy genius who built a spaceship out of soup cans and defended earth from the Vorticons while my babysitter slept
- Assumed the party escort submission position
- Car-jacked a motorist, driven into pedestrians for fun, killed a cop, then relaxed by beating a prostitute
- Rolled the planet up into a ball to be sent into space to replace stars accidentally destroyed by my megalomaniacal royal father
- Been chosen the greatest warrior of my realm and sent to battle other champions in a desperate bid to save my realm from Outworld
- Attempted to clear a minefield without blowing myself up
- Launched myself or my infuriated friends at a series of bizarre, rickety structures to get my kidnapped young back from some smug swine
- Squashed pedestrians for fun
- Played god
- Thought that perhaps I should move to another town to get away from the never-ending fog and nightmares
- Enjoyed Final Fantasy
- Wanted to become a theoretical physicist
- Gotten into archaeology
- Blown up a secret underground laboratory belonging to a pharmaceutical giant
- Left anyone 4 dead
- Contracted, spread, or cured the plague
- Zerg rushed
If I can do all these things and more on a daily basis for almost 30 years without a single real world fatality, how can you claim that video games are training us to kill?
Enough scapegoating.
Video games do not create killers.
