"Killing" Time

  
     As Juan Bernal and I were wrecking kids on Killzone two, getting frustrated with the internet lag and foreigners, I started to think to dispute the ideology that “violent video games make violent children.”
    I have read a couple articles (obviously biased) where kids have been playing video games and resulted in their acts of violence. One article was about two kids who had been playing Grand Theft Auto and after they had finished, they looked for their father’s gun, took it out to the woods, which was located next to a highway, and started talking pot shots at the passing cars.
    Ever since I was a child I have been exposed to this video game violence and in no way, shape, or form do I want to do this. I do not think that “oh shit I was just playing a war game, war is awesome.” This leads me to another point but right now I digress. Violent video games do not make a child violent. They desensitize them to violence, which then can result in an act of violence. It is the way that the child perceives and processes the game, as a work of fiction, or pure reality, which then causes them to take one of two paths. One path, the one of accepting the game as a work of fiction, leads the person to understand what is being told through the story, as in Killzone 2, the main character, after killing the man that he has been searching for, is so distraught because of the violence of war. He sits down on the steps of the palace and gazes out on to the horizon while the hustle and bustle of the war machine keeps going all around him. The person who sees this as a work of fiction can receive the message that war is not always the answer and can have some terrible effects on the people involved.
    The person who sees this game as a work of reality would take this game literally, almost like that of a sociopath, and relate violence with getting things done your way. This thought could lead to acts of violence and outbursts which would not be suitable in public.
    I do not know if my views are true or not, but I hope that people could step back, or out of the game, and realize that it’s just a game. Not a guide on what to do with your life, but just a game.