I am 22 years old. Of these 22 years (and some months to be precise), at least 14 have been spent playing video games, either at home, or at friends, net-cafes or Nintendo/Playstation clubs. Some say it’s an addiction, one that turns healthy little kids into raving, foaming-at-the-mouth, hungry for blood animals with no sense of right or wrong.
The truth is it’s more easy to play patsy and blame it on violent cartoons, angry music or violent videogames than it is to be a good parent. Parenting has never been an easy job, and since the afterburners of human innovation have been ignited, these so called „generation gaps”, these invisible walls which make understanding between people of different ages nigh impossible, parenting has become something not everyone is suitable to handle.
Many people have more or less joked about parent licences, but I sometimes fear that the time has come to enact and impose such a rule. It’s not overpopulation that makes me think of it, fuck no, all the more important for as to move to the moon or Mars if there are too many people living on the same strip of land. No, dear reader, parenting should be only allowed to certain people because of responsibility.
People get so shocked when they hear about kids who, withouth their parents knowing, end up playing violent games, and without having someone to explain to them the inner workings of the REAL world, end up substituting reality with what they see in these polygon paradises. A world where the rules are few and far between, where they are the masters of their own destiny, may it be demise or fame, a world where they feel they count. The REAL world to them is the world of reheated food, baby sitters, or relatives watching over them while their parents are away working, to busy either earning money to sustain the family or too self centered to remember they have a child, a world where they don’t count as much as they should. A nice quote from The Crow: „Mother is the word for God on the lips and hearts of all children.” These children aren’t monsters, they’re misguided children, misguided because they are left alon without guidance.
I remember when we first got our 286. A Compaq Deskpro.... 1 MB of RAM, 10 MHz processor, 20 mb Conner Peripherals HDD. The first person to look at what I was playing, and asking if she could have a go was not my elder brother, or my elder sister, it was my Mother. Yes, imagine a forty something year old woman, with a wounded left hand (work related accident, she can’t really use her fingers on her left hand, except for her thumb, all the other fingers are in this semmy clenched position) sitting down for the first time in front of the computer, or a videogame for that matter, and playing Xenon 2 – Megablast almost to the end. My mother, she was always into these things. She didn’t really get along well with the consoles, but PC gaming, oh hell yeah. Fun fact: she finished Quake 2 before I did (actually I don’t think I finished Quake 2, since I didn’ like the futuristic setting), she played with cheats of course due to the hand issue, but even so, that’s something to be proud of. She used to laugh whenever bits and bloody pieces of here enemies flew by her. Any other parent would have been shocked to death that his/her child is playing such a game. Mine was actually ok with it. What she used to do though, is kick me out of my room, or send me to study in the kitchen, or send me away on some pretense just so that she could play some more.
But what is important is communication. My mother used to let me watch horror movies when I was small, but she always explained that it’s a movie and it’s fiction and that this is done as a creative thing, as a „what if”, because people like being scared, and that villains sooner or later get caught and that all life is sacred and violence should be avoided. She knew that when I clicked my mouse I was playing a game, and not a MURDER SIMULATOR, because she knew I see these games not as alternate worlds in which to escape, but as stories waiting to be discovered, with rules that were meant for that specific setting/universe. A game, like a bok or a movie, often depicts, or has you perform(hence the novelty) things of questionable morality, but it’s all roleplay, it’s simulation. It’s trying what it’s like to be the bad guy without actually being him. It can be a valuable lesson, if taught well.
And for the naysayers: a little list of some of the things I have done
in these worlds:
• Fought and beat the Shredder and his minions multiple times in multiple incarnations
• Conquered the Dark Water and defeated the evil pirate lord Bloth
• Ran over and fought alongside all the (ig)noble races of Azeroth
• Stopped Hell from permanently relocating to Earth by shooting John Romero in the head several times
• Spent time kicking ass and chewing gum, being all out of gum, paying strippers cash for them to flash their boobs at me
• Took part in the most awesome sniper battles ever fought in subarctic regions, while fighting through enemy ranks to reach my twin brother who I deftly defeat with the aid of a rocket launcher, a ninja sidekick and a virus
• Killed a floating fetus alien with a crowbar to stop an invasion only to cause an even bigger invasion that I am currently in the process of re-stopping
• Stopped a Soviet terrorist from prostituting the US and probably the rest of the world, after his country’s leaders prostituted it to the West, while also seeing what it’s like to be shot in the head on prime-time, or die of fatal radiation in a fallout zone that recently „fell out”
• Acrobatically across rooftops trying to not kill anyone in order to save my sister from being convicted of a crime she didn’t commit
• Saved the galaxy and my babysitter from stupid aliens using a spaceship built by myself, a raygun powered by potatoes and a pogo stick
• Stopped the Triad from rising, occasionally being either high, a dog, or a God
• Have been the cause for the extincion of pretty much all prehistoric life with the help of a club and a mallet, and just to prove how badass I could be, I also had a REFRIGERATOR in the STONE age where I gathered all the stuff collected through my journey
And the list could go on forever.......... and it still goes.
and so I can only say that although there are more important things that video games in my life, it would certainly be a lot more dry without them. to quote an elderly lady still playing:
GAME ON FUCKERS
next up: will I get the collector's edition of Street Fighter IV?
The truth is it’s more easy to play patsy and blame it on violent cartoons, angry music or violent videogames than it is to be a good parent. Parenting has never been an easy job, and since the afterburners of human innovation have been ignited, these so called „generation gaps”, these invisible walls which make understanding between people of different ages nigh impossible, parenting has become something not everyone is suitable to handle.
Many people have more or less joked about parent licences, but I sometimes fear that the time has come to enact and impose such a rule. It’s not overpopulation that makes me think of it, fuck no, all the more important for as to move to the moon or Mars if there are too many people living on the same strip of land. No, dear reader, parenting should be only allowed to certain people because of responsibility.
People get so shocked when they hear about kids who, withouth their parents knowing, end up playing violent games, and without having someone to explain to them the inner workings of the REAL world, end up substituting reality with what they see in these polygon paradises. A world where the rules are few and far between, where they are the masters of their own destiny, may it be demise or fame, a world where they feel they count. The REAL world to them is the world of reheated food, baby sitters, or relatives watching over them while their parents are away working, to busy either earning money to sustain the family or too self centered to remember they have a child, a world where they don’t count as much as they should. A nice quote from The Crow: „Mother is the word for God on the lips and hearts of all children.” These children aren’t monsters, they’re misguided children, misguided because they are left alon without guidance.
I remember when we first got our 286. A Compaq Deskpro.... 1 MB of RAM, 10 MHz processor, 20 mb Conner Peripherals HDD. The first person to look at what I was playing, and asking if she could have a go was not my elder brother, or my elder sister, it was my Mother. Yes, imagine a forty something year old woman, with a wounded left hand (work related accident, she can’t really use her fingers on her left hand, except for her thumb, all the other fingers are in this semmy clenched position) sitting down for the first time in front of the computer, or a videogame for that matter, and playing Xenon 2 – Megablast almost to the end. My mother, she was always into these things. She didn’t really get along well with the consoles, but PC gaming, oh hell yeah. Fun fact: she finished Quake 2 before I did (actually I don’t think I finished Quake 2, since I didn’ like the futuristic setting), she played with cheats of course due to the hand issue, but even so, that’s something to be proud of. She used to laugh whenever bits and bloody pieces of here enemies flew by her. Any other parent would have been shocked to death that his/her child is playing such a game. Mine was actually ok with it. What she used to do though, is kick me out of my room, or send me to study in the kitchen, or send me away on some pretense just so that she could play some more.
But what is important is communication. My mother used to let me watch horror movies when I was small, but she always explained that it’s a movie and it’s fiction and that this is done as a creative thing, as a „what if”, because people like being scared, and that villains sooner or later get caught and that all life is sacred and violence should be avoided. She knew that when I clicked my mouse I was playing a game, and not a MURDER SIMULATOR, because she knew I see these games not as alternate worlds in which to escape, but as stories waiting to be discovered, with rules that were meant for that specific setting/universe. A game, like a bok or a movie, often depicts, or has you perform(hence the novelty) things of questionable morality, but it’s all roleplay, it’s simulation. It’s trying what it’s like to be the bad guy without actually being him. It can be a valuable lesson, if taught well.
And for the naysayers: a little list of some of the things I have done
in these worlds:
• Fought and beat the Shredder and his minions multiple times in multiple incarnations
• Conquered the Dark Water and defeated the evil pirate lord Bloth
• Ran over and fought alongside all the (ig)noble races of Azeroth
• Stopped Hell from permanently relocating to Earth by shooting John Romero in the head several times
• Spent time kicking ass and chewing gum, being all out of gum, paying strippers cash for them to flash their boobs at me
• Took part in the most awesome sniper battles ever fought in subarctic regions, while fighting through enemy ranks to reach my twin brother who I deftly defeat with the aid of a rocket launcher, a ninja sidekick and a virus
• Killed a floating fetus alien with a crowbar to stop an invasion only to cause an even bigger invasion that I am currently in the process of re-stopping
• Stopped a Soviet terrorist from prostituting the US and probably the rest of the world, after his country’s leaders prostituted it to the West, while also seeing what it’s like to be shot in the head on prime-time, or die of fatal radiation in a fallout zone that recently „fell out”
• Acrobatically across rooftops trying to not kill anyone in order to save my sister from being convicted of a crime she didn’t commit
• Saved the galaxy and my babysitter from stupid aliens using a spaceship built by myself, a raygun powered by potatoes and a pogo stick
• Stopped the Triad from rising, occasionally being either high, a dog, or a God
• Have been the cause for the extincion of pretty much all prehistoric life with the help of a club and a mallet, and just to prove how badass I could be, I also had a REFRIGERATOR in the STONE age where I gathered all the stuff collected through my journey
And the list could go on forever.......... and it still goes.
and so I can only say that although there are more important things that video games in my life, it would certainly be a lot more dry without them. to quote an elderly lady still playing:
GAME ON FUCKERS
next up: will I get the collector's edition of Street Fighter IV?
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