Will Wright, the man behind the multi-million dollar SimCity and The Sims franchises, has called for an end to the ongoing debate over whether video games are harmful to children.
He believes that a generation gap is the main cause for the fears over the negative effects of video games.
"I think there’s always been a generational divide between people who play games and people who don’t," he said when speaking with the UK Guardian. "I think the cultural acceptance of games is inevitable just because people are going to have grown up having this technology."
Mr. Wright then went on to compare the debate over video games with previous debates over literature and films. "But 50 years ago that’s exactly what you heard – ‘did they read To Kill A Mockingbird?’ or whatever it was. They would blame social ills on anything that was at hand."
The man definitely makes a good point. It seems that whenever a high school shooting takes place, one of the first questions that is always asked is "did they play video games?"
With all the graphical violence, harsh language and non-political correctness goings-on in video games, they are a pretty easy scapegoat to target, and a lot of people are taking shots at them.
Being a gamer I’ve always found the argument that video games turning children and teeangers into killers and being harmful to their social development to be a pretty weak one. I’ve been playing video games since the age of 5 and I’ve never been in a fight or punched anyony–and I think I’m a pretty normal guy.
Some people read books or go for walks; I play video games. Most of my mates in high school were the same, and games actually served as a great way to make mates as we all had a common subject that we loved and could talk about for hours on end.
With multiplayer games growing massively in popularity over the past few years one has to wonder how these nay-sayers can continue to target games as the evil force behind many of the evils in our world.
Gaming is now an extremely social event, with most gamers being part of at least one video gaming related forum and regularly playing video games such as Counter-Strike: Source and World of Warcraft where working with other people is more often than not, the key to winning. Games are becoming a key part of people’s lives.
With the popularity of video games already firmly set in place from years of people playing them, as Mr. Wright said, their move into the mainstream as a form of entertainment was indeed inevitable. Now all we need to see is video games being accepted as a form of acceptable entertainment, but then does that really matter?
There will always be pundits. Sure some games have had problems, such as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas being released on the PC with the ability to mod the game to see adult content, but this was quickly fixed by the game developer.
Video games are just unfortunate to be the current scape goat for the problems in the world that people can’t solve. It’s a lot easier to point fingers than it is to find the real causes.
In the end, as long as we are given the choice to play video games, it doesn’t really matter what anyone says about them and their supposed affect.
Just don’t try and take them away from us, or you’ll be in for one hell of a fight.
[via Guardian Unlimited]
