Violence, Video Games and Responsibility – Gabe of Penny Arcade

Obviously the fact that videogames are not seen as a legitimate form of
entertainment along the lines of movies or television is astounding to
me. David’s cartoon on the subject is of course ignorant but it’s
simply a visual representation of what many of our nation’s elderly
believe, and it’s par for the course as far as political cartoons go.
While in journalism class in high school I once had the opportunity to
speak with a political cartoonist from our local paper named Milt
Priggy. He told me that his job was to create cartoons that piss people
off. The majority of his cartoons that I saw in the paper though were
surprisingly bland. Then he showed me all the cartoons that his editor
wouldn’t allow him to run.

One cartoon in particular showed the grim reaper slam dunking over
Magic Johnson and was slated to run around the time we all found out he
had the Aids. Talk about a cartoon that would piss people off. Of
course his editors said no way and the cartoon got filed in a box in
the corner of his office along with all the rest of his best work that
no one would ever see. The job of political cartoons is no longer to
piss people off or get them fired up. It is to say what the majority of
the newspaper’s readership is already thinking. I find it disgusting
that as an artist David cannot appreciate the fact that the videogame
industry, like the movie industry is made up of artists just like him
who are simply trying to create work of lasting value. The fact that he
does not create work that is provocative or boundary pushing does not
mean that there are not artists out there doing just that who need the
protections that the first amendment affords them.

When your cartoons do little more then fellate the status quo it is
easy to imagine that we do not need special rules in place to protect
artists who actually choose to say something important. So why don’t
people lend the same legitimacy to videogames that they do to film?
It’s because they still think videogames are for children. Those of us
who cut our teeth on Atari games are pushing thirty at this point. Is
it so unreasonable to expect that as an adult I should be able to
purchase an M rated videogame that includes adult material in much the
same way I might see an R rated film that contains the same? The fact
that pornography exists does not mean that film as a medium is
inappropriate for children. The videogame industry has given parents a
means by which to determine if a game is appropriate for their child. I
imagine any parent would go to great lengths to make sure that their
seven year old is not watching porn or drinking gin. Yet the same
dedication to parenting is surprisingly absent when it comes time to
purchase a videogame. Do these parents expect the Playstation or the
computer to determine if a game is inappropriate for their kid and
simply shut itself off?

The fact that you are a poor parent who is unwilling or unable to show
some interest in what exactly it is that your child is doing in front
of the television set every day after school is not the fault of the
videogame industry. For a generation whose motto is responsibility you
seem to be placing it with the wrong people. When I actually become a
parent myself I guarantee that video games will be a part of that kids
life. They will be the games that I choose for them though. Just like
you don’t sit your kids in front of the T.V and slip in the Matrix my
kid won’t be playing GTA3. Games like Putt Putt and Freddy Fish will be
the first ones my child gets his or her hands on. Some parents would
say that’s naive, “You can’t watch them all the time.” They would tell
me “They will just play those violent games at a friends house.” Yeah,
and they will watch those violent movies at a friends house. Like some
kind of pornographic archeologist your 10 year old boy is probably
rummaging through a stack of poorly hidden playboys from the 1970’s at
his best friends house right now.

You cannot watch your kids all the time and you cannot ensure
they will never see a boob or a gun before they are ready. What you can
do is make sure that what they see and do in your house is appropriate
and rely on some good old fashioned parenting skills to make sure that
a quick glimpse of some blood in a videogame doesn’t send them into a
violent rage that ends with a school full of dead kids.

-Gabe out
-As reproduced with permission from Penny Arcade