Battleangel

New York Senator Charles E. Schumer claims upcoming shooter is an “all-time low” and teaches “Little Johnny” to kill cops.

Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) is embarking on a crusade against Eidos, telling the New York Daily News that the British publisher is readying a game that makes “Grand Theft Auto look like Romper Room.” The game is 25 to Life, an action title where players take on the role of a drug dealer named Freeze who gets into gunfights with police officers, uses civilians as human shields, and shoots rival gang members.

Schumer is calling on New York retailers not to stock the game or sell it. “There is nowhere that the value of the police force is felt more strongly than here in New York, and to sell a video game that denigrates their value is simply unacceptable,” Schumer said. “You certainly don’t need a degree in criminal justice to understand that when you make sport of behavior that is dangerous and destructive you reinforce it. The last thing we need here in New York is to reinforce a destructive culture of violence and disrespect for the law.”

Not only is Schumer urging retailers not to sell the game, but he is also asking that Sony and Microsoft end their licensing agreements with Eidos. “Little Johnny should be learning how to read, not how to kill cops,” Schumer said. “The bottom line is that games that are aimed and marketed at kids shouldn’t desensitize them to death and destruction.”

Source: Gamespot

And I’m sure it’ll be a great game.

No you don’t need a degree in criminal justice, but a degree in common sense would sure help. As a social psychologist I have come across this line of thinking many times before. And I can only say that it is largely hogwash being capitalized on by the Schumer camp. The scientific background is supported mainly by Dr Craig Anderson (Iowa State University of Science and Technology), or at least it was around the year 2000. The main problem being that the research focuses on video games and seldom on the context and history of the participants. Some individuals may behave erratically anyway and this behavior may in fact trigger their affinity for video games, which do provide an escape, not the other way around. In the actual cases or violent behavior that have been linked, at least by the popular media, to video games, correlation has been even more sketchy.
Take Lee Boyd Malvo and John Muhammad for instance and their supposed interest in Halo. Utter nonsense when you realize that John was a Gulf War vet. So what broke him, the system or Halo?
And what about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine shooters, they were obsessive players of “Doom” as the story goes. Or could it be that they were ostracized and ridiculed by their classmates and otherwise lacked any sort of social connection?
There was a very memorable passage from Bowling for Columbine about this phenomenon …

Marilyn Manson: The two by-products of that whole tragedy were, violence in entertainment, and gun control. And how perfect that that was the two things that we were going to talk about with the upcoming election. And also, then we forgot about Monica Lewinsky and we forgot about, uh, the President was shooting bombs overseas, yet I’m a bad guy because I, well I sing some rock-and-roll songs, and who’s a bigger influence, the President or Marilyn Manson? I’d like to think me, but I’m going to go with the President.

Michael Moore: Do you know that on the day of the Columbine massacre, the US dropped more bombs on Kosovo than any other day?

Marilyn Manson: I do know that, and I think that’s really ironic, that nobody said ‘well maybe the President had an influence on this violent behavior’ Because that’s not the way the media wants to take it and spin it, and turn it into fear, because then you’re watching television, you’re watching the news, you’re being pumped full of fear, there’s floods, there’s AIDS, there’s murder, cut to commercial, buy the Acura, buy the Colgate, if you have bad breath they’re not going to talk to you, if you have pimples, the girl’s not going to fuck you, and it’s just this campaign of fear, and consumption, and that’s what I think it’s all based on, the whole idea of ‘keep everyone afraid, and they’ll consume.’

Furthermore, I thought games had age ratings nowadays? So how is “Little Johnny” gonna get his hands on a game rated 18+? Calling on Eidos or the industry to solve the “problem” is just incredibly lax and shortsighted. And it shows that even when people attempt some sort of social explanation to events, they rarely get it right. There could be individual explanations at work here, i.e. some people just being biologically overly aggressive. And if we are to leap to the social realm, it is surely parents and society in general that fail Johnny, not Eidos.

Imo the debate over violent video games is one that doesn’t even belong within the context of US society given the militaristic culture, lax gun laws and aggressive undertones. It’s outright hypocrisy to blame game studios when the US government itself produces and distributes its own course in murder, namely “America’s Army”. A game that aims to provide ultra-realism and is as far as I know still available in recruitment offices and thru official channels. No one would raise any eyebrows if the game got shared by a recruiter or career officer visiting a US school, handing it to “Little Johnny.” Not to mention the real deal and the actual America’s army that is out killing men, women and children every day in exotic places around the world.
No this is all patriotic of course, because that kind of violence can be harnessed and turned into a foreign land grab. And if anyone playing America’s Army or actually being a member of the US military complex goes on a killing spree, it will all be blamed on Halo or GTA. Bottom line is that opposition to the system is never encouraged, while any type of vile and extreme attitudes, as long as they serve the powers that be, will get a pat on the head. Killing cops (the system) = bad. Killing dark hordes of foreign peoples = good. If American politicians really wanted to improve their society they ought to look at the number one desensitizing feature. I.e. the more or less perpetual expansion wars that the US has been involved in during the last 110 years or so and the culture it breeds. But I guess that is beyond the realm of acceptable topics in the US today.

Go ahead, blame video games. For me this remains an integral part of how power is conserved with a minority in society that thinks up spectres like “video game violence” in order to cover up their own shortcomings and failures. Failures that are sometimes even meant to be as they provide the legitimacy for a central power to exist in its current form. These “deviants” become something that serves a vital social function in that moral boundaries and a conforming population are maintained.

Update: Here is a prime example of how the debate goes these days. From Nancy Grace via Gamespot. With the always eager and conniving Jack Thompson.