GameCore Mailbag Freak Out

Readers Respond To Interview Series On Violence And Gaming

(CBS)  GameCore is a weekly column by CBSNews.com's William Vitka, Chad Chamberlain and Joey Arak that focuses on gamers and gaming.

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Well, what a pleasant surprise! Instead of being flooded with emails calling us jerks and other colorful unmentionables, it appears the tide has turned!

We've gotten a massive response to the GameSpeak series, and we wish we could publish all of them, but we can't, at least not all at once. We promise another Mailbag Freak Out.

This space is here so that readers can share their thoughts, we urge people to email.

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GameSpeak

…Recently on the Ctrl Alt Delete forums a thread began where Jack Thompson was sent an e-mail, invited to join on a frank and civilized debate, as these board members were hoping to hear more concrete and conclusive evidence from his side. Their request was well written, and very polite, these people clearly wanted to have an intelligent discussion with this guy, or at the very least in some cases be provided with a link of some sort where they could find information pertaining to his point of view.

In response these board members either received an automated message saying "your favorite industry is going to be exposed on 60 minutes sunday night". However some replies that appeared later in the forums that apparently occurred before the automated messages were quite disturbing. Such as the following relies:

"My website and email are for people who have been harmed by the games, not for people who have nothing better to do than rant at me. Stop playing the games and get a life." or "My website and email are for people harmed by these games, not for people the moral equivalent of Saddam Hussein. If you want to rant about this, go to a GTAVC chat room. Either stop sending me emails like this or pay the consequences. jesuslovesyou, dude, Ps: No you're beyond help, so bugger off" and "I asked you to stop hassling me. You have not. You were warned. You don't think you need help, so ---- off".

These people honestly wanted to hear the "details" of what this guy had to say, and instead he fought back with childish name-calling. Saying that video gamers have morals equivalent to that of Saddam is sick, and slander I might add. He's a lawyer (or so he claims) he should no better. At the very least if he didn't want to accept their invitation he could have just declined in a peaceful manner rather than calling everyone a fascist. Mr. Thompson obviously does not really care about his quest, and is only in it for the money. If he did have any passion for this matter he would have shown the gamers the same courtesy they showed him, even though they dislike him. I think because of this forum, we now have a clear understanding of just how bad video games are if the gamers are more responsible than the accuser.

Thank you for reading this letter, I'm sorry if it was fairly long winded but his despicable responses need to be known to the public before he tries to pollute their minds further.

PS: If you want you can view the entire thread here

-Sacraptor

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First off, Jack Thompson is the typical out of touch right-wing ass that they use to fight video games.

The man that went off and killed several people at his church got me thinking. It is said one reason that he did it was that he was upset by a sermon, will religion be blamed? Of course not. (Although it is one of the biggest killers in history) But if the police so much as find a game boy in his house someone will blame video games.

I am a teenager and I own an Xbox, if I went and killed someone in a dark alley with a plastic bag they would say that I have Manhunt before even looking at my game collection.

Games are just the current scapegoat if anyone does anything wrong.

-Toby Wallace

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Dear Mr. Vitka,

I recently happened upon your article about video game violence with Tim Buckley. The subject of video game violence and its effect on our young people is something near and dear to my heart, for 2 reasons. Reason 1 is that I am an avid gamer. I have been gaming for 30+ years now. Reason 2 is because I'm a parent and now a grandparent.

Once a person knows that I'm a gamer and a grandmother, one of the first questions asked is "Are you going to let your grandson play video games?" Without hesitation I can say "Yes of course!". But that's not to say I didn't monitor what my children played, I certainly did! And this is one of the issues with parents today that needs to be addressed.

Parents today are so busy in their lives that they look for shortcuts. When you come home exhausted from work and know that there is housework waiting for you, isn't it easier to just say yes to your child when they ask to play a video game. Out of sight, out of mind?

Without going into a diatribe, I think that parents are a lot more to blame for the action of their children than a game. Parents allow them to play it, don't watch what they are playing, and at times even buy the games. If a child asked to watch a movie a parent would probably say yes. Then the next question would be to ask what the movie is. If it wasn't something they were familiar they would either want to watch a part of it or at least read the package. If they saw that it was inappropriate for that age, they wouldn't let them watch it nor would they buy it. Can't parents apply this same logic to games?

So yes my rant is about parents and not the actual games. Do I think some games could tone it down and still be great works? Yes absolutely. But as long as there is a mature audience that wants that type of game, it will always be there. So the next step is for the parents to do their job. It's the job they signed on for the minute they decided to bring a life into this world. So if your not doing your job, stop pointing the finger at someone else.

Sincerely,
Cheryl Webster (TheMom)