Why I Don't Like Computer "Games"

I have always had a problem with the trend of online and computer games in which the player is encouraged to make as many cyber "kills" as possible. When our kids were young it sickened me that the coarsening and dulling effect on a young mind was so readily available and popular. We eventually capitulated to our young son's pleas for games he found and first played at his friend's homes, and then gritted our teeth and prayed through the years until he left home. Now he loves to "conquer Europe" in his spare time, his current favorite game.

I work with a person who writes for a very violent online game, a SciFi fanfic game, in their spare time. This person's demeanor is always vaguely overbearing, even threatening, and their language is often littered with references to "kills" and "evil overlords" and so forth, all of which is nerdy and geeky in a person of decided middle age, but also really unsettling. Today I found this article - The Culture Of Cyber Death - which resonates. This stuff is sick, and so are people who are entrenched in it.

From The Distributist Review.

QUOTE Indeed. Though marketing considerations may prevent virtual rape, the logic of the game permits, or even encourages it. Of course, these games have the power to form our minds--and our souls--in ways that real life could not. The virtual replaces the real in the formation of habits. After all, a real murder might sicken us and present us with unpleasant consequences; but we can practice a virtual murder an infinite number of times. One can get into the habit of murder without even exercising the courage that a real murderer might have to exercise. Reality at least imposes some limits, even on the murderer or the rapist. But in virtual (non)reality, our avatars do our killing for us, and can do so infinitely. UNQUOTE
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