Unless you’re living under a pile of rusty, abandoned Volkswagens, you probably know that the Supreme Court shot down Schwarzenegger’s attempt to ban the sale of violent video games to minors. Countless concerned parents have taken scenes taken from “random” video games that depict the sort of violent programming to which they hope that their children will never discover themselves exposed. You’ve probably seen some of these scenes, yourself, as these same concerned parents have pasted them all over television in their efforts to keep people from ever seeing them.
One of the most upsetting scenes is from the newest sequel to the video game franchise Mortal Kombat. In this particular scene, two men (ninjas or something) each grab either of a woman’s legs before literally ripping her apart, her internal organs spilling out in a rather ghastly fashion. Some people see such a scene and think “Too much.” I look at it and think “Too little.” Wait! Allow me to explain. I don’t think “Too little gore.” I think “Too little innovation. Too little creativity.” You see, while the movie industry insists on releasing the same mindless sequels summer after summer, the video game industry is doing pretty much the same thing. And who could blame them? People are willing to pay good money to replay the same experiences over and over again. Why should any entertainment industry risk failure via a fresh idea? So rather than do something different and interesting, Mortal Komat just adds more gore to their preexisting platform. Before you judge them too harshly for this, consider that the franchise has tried new ideas. They included go-kart racing in one sequel, chess in another, heck, at one point, they even tried a real storyline. The results? No one touched those games. In fact, those games became objects of ridicule. So now we have two ninjas or something ripping a woman in half, bloody organs everywhere. The result? It’s a bestseller.
In the world of fighting-themed video games, the franchise that least resembles Mortal Komat is Dead or Alive. If Dead or Alive sets a bad example, that might be the lack of gore. The Dead or Alive series seems to suggest that violence has no consequences at all. So what makes this franchise so popular? Dead or Alive features beautiful women wearing very little. That does the trick. In fact, more than once, the franchise created a game in which these females don’t fight at all; they just bounce around while playing volleyball in their bikinis. Here’s the catch: When these girls are beating the snot out of each other, the game is rated +13, suggesting that parents should reconsider allowing a child under the age of thirteen to play the game. However, when these same girls are jumping around in swimsuits . . . the game is rated Mature, suggesting that the game is entirely inappropriate for a minor of any age to play. WTF? In the case of Dead or Alive, the same “Too little creativity” problem arises, much in the same way that it has for Mortal Komat. Where Komat just heaped on more torture and blood, Alive just gave its characters skimpier outfits and continued to increase the size of their breasts (they’re now each larger than their owner’s head).
The rating system in Alive strongly suggests that violence is acceptable over sex. Actually, a lot in the gaming world suggests this. You may recall another popular gaming franchise called Grand Theft Auto. It’s a game where you can waltz into a police station and open fire with an assault rifle, or perch atop a tall building before randomly pushing ammunition through the skulls of strangers via a sniper rifle. While Auto continues to face assault from those same concerned parents that I mentioned earlier, it wasn’t until a woman in one sequel took her top off that the game’s manufacturers had to recall it from the shelves.
In the sandbox-style games Morrowind and Fallout New Vegas, there are strippers and prostitutes, and you can murder them if you like. You can hack them apart with a sword, cleave their heads open with an ax (Morrowind), shoot them in the face with a sawed-off shotgun, or beat them to death with a lead pipe (Vegas). In Vegas, you can even eat their corpses. In both cases, you can loot their bodies, stripping them down to their underwear. You can’t take their underwear, though, because then they would be naked, and that would be offensive.
“Experts” say that American children are growing more violent every day. They claim that our children seem angry about something. They point out that these same kids play a lot of violent video games. I’m not debating today whether or not violent video games turn children violent. What I am pointing out is that these games seem to suggest that violence is fine, while sex and all the activities and emotions attached to it are wrong. Should we seem so surprised when adolescents are told that their most basic instincts and desires are evil and should be suppressed? Wouldn’t such suppression result in anger? Hmmm.
