“Welcome!” and “GTA IV Madness”
Welcome to A Twitchy Mind, WordPress blog of myself, shay88. Here at Twitchy Mind I’ll be publishing my thoughts on the world (specifically focused on things such as video games, the internet, movies, T.V., and such, with intermittent rants on the various parts of reality) and some of my own work. I’m a fiction writer, and I tend towards science fiction and fantasy, but you’ll see some literary fiction stuff as well. Maybe even a poem or two, if I’m in the mood. I hope the things I have to say are interesting.
Now for the meat of the first post, I figured that I should address something to with the present, and with the aforementioned video games. Yes, you’re going to hear another rant about GTA IV. I apologize if you’re sick of hearing about it, but it’s news.
Grand Theft Auto. Say those three words and chances are people won’t think of the actual crime. Instead, they’ll think of paying a hooker and then beating her to death with a baseball bat to get a refund. Maybe shooting some cops along the way, hopefully not getting too many stars, or else the army shows up. Maybe they’ll just think of porn.
Some people would have you believe that playing a GTA game will turn you into a violent, cop-killing, drug-dealing, rapist. I’m sorry, but I don’t buy that. I’ve played some of the games for a fair amount of time. I don’t own them or really like them that much (they get boring after a while, if you ask me), but I’ve played them. And I don’t have the tiniest criminal record. I’ve never killed anyone. And I’ve only gotten in maybe 2-3 ‘fights’ in my life, all consisting of one or two punches tossed before both parties cool down and realize the stress of finals week is getting to them. Plenty of my friends have played the GTA games, as well as other violent games, i.e. the Halo series. Not a cop-killer among them.
I just don’t believe video games can warp someone as badly as the media watchdogs would like us to believe. A recent study, published in Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do, actually says that violent games “help get [a player's] anger out.” That’s right, stress relief. I can attest to that trait of video games myself; it’s not really right to go slugging people who annoy me, so off I go to beat the data out of some pixels to burn off steam.
However, the people ranting against GTA IV do have one valid point: it’s not for kids. It’s an M-Rated game, intended for people 17+, and that’s who it should go to. What I think needs to be done is that parents need to be better educated on the rating system. Once they know how it works, they can make an informed decision as to what their kids should be seeing. Should there be some law that says the kids can’t EVER touch an M-Rated game? I don’t think so. If the parents think the kid can handle it, let the parents make that call. It’s their right as parents, isn’t it?
