GameCore Mailbag Freak Out

Readers Respond To Interview Series On Violence And Gaming

(CBS) 
Mr. Vitka,

As an avid gamer and one of the co-founders of a site that dedicated to statistics for online Halo 2 gaming (CarnageStats.com), I wanted to applaud you for approaching this subject from a direction that is not typical for the media. Claude Errera seemed the ideal candidate for his interview. He is obviously well informed and being a parent/gamer, he has a useful insight into how violence in games would affect children.

I too am a father. The games I typically play, like Halo, are not the ones that I let my daughter (10 yrs) play unsupervised.

I especially find Jack Thompson's quote, "I submit that the video game generation is coming of age." particularly amusing. I have owned a console since I was 4 and was playing games prior to that in the arcade.

I am the video game generation, and yes I am coming of age. That age being 27 this year. An age group very common to gamers. The majority of the "violent" games that are out right now are targeted towards my demographic. The 18-34 year old males seem to be just a little older than the 15-16 year olds that make such big news (such as Columbine).

There wasn't such rampant school shootings in the early to mid nineties when my "video game" generation was in school. Are video games more violent? I don't see that they could be.

Take Mortal Kombat for example. This game was extremely popular when I was in school in the early nineties and this franchise has always been known for its explicit gore. Back then, the media blamed everything on music. I think you will see the media's attention move elsewhere as more and more gamers get to the age where the nightly news caters to them.

Again, great article. This was the first time I had seen your column, but I will now be anxiously awaiting to see what other topics you cover.

-Kelly Merrell
www.CarnageStats.com

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This set of articles is really interesting to follow. Violence has always been a hot topic in the gaming industry for as long as I have been a gamer. (Which is going on, oh, more than thirteen years.) Having seen a myriad of opinions on this, from the hardlining people that believe that any child who plays violent video games can be directly linked to violent behaviors to those who believe that the violent nature is inherent in the kids to begin with and that the games are just a catalyst to start of the reaction that will lead them down the road to destructive behavior, its interesting to see it revived again full force and that the opinions haven’t changed all that much.

What I would like to see somewhere along the line of these interviews is the correlation this has to girl gamers. Most of the violent crimes that are attributed to video games seem to be committed by boys. Never do you see that the violent games cause girls to go berserk and kill people. While girl gamers that are hardcore enough to play the games touted as violent are few and far between, they do exist. Which poses the question as to the truth of placing the blame on the games. One would think that the games would have the same effect on either of the sexes that play them, yet strangely you never hear of girl gamers going psycho and killing people at school because they played too much GTA. Is this still the standard belief that girls don’t play video games so that people don’t apply video games as an excuse for the violence, or is this more of a proof that the blame isn’t exactly where its supposed to be?

I’m far from knowledgeable on these facts, except for the fact that I am a girl gamer, and the other girl gamers that I know have never demonstrated any tendencies towards violence, or if they had, it was prior to when they began gaming anyway, so that the games were more of an outlet for the violence instead of actually committing acts. I’d be very interested if you found a girl gamer to speak out about this and its impact on us as a minority in the industry, as well as any information correlating the violence committed by guy gamers vs. violence committed by girl gamers.

Thanks for the time, and the intent of the articles you’ve been compiling. New perspectives on an age-old argument are always nice, and if the gender gap manages to get closed this time around as well, hell, I’ll be pleased as punch.

~Analise Bradford, girl gamer since 1992

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Hey William.

Nice interview with Jack Thompson. I tried interviewing him for an article I was writing last month but he wasn't nearly as helpful or gracious with me. Vague threats and insults were all I got out of him, but I told him my story was for Gamershell.com, so go figure.

Shaun McCormack

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Messrs. Vitka and Chamberlain:

My name is Frankie Griffen, and I am a student at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. On March 4th, after reading your article about Jack Thompson, I visited his site http://www.stopkill.com, which you linked to in your article. After reading what the site had to say, I sent Mr. Thompson an e-mail, and asked for his thoughts and insight. He responded with "because you're an idiot." WTF? This man is leading some sort of insane crusade against video games, and this is how he treats someone who asks legitimate questions about what he is doing?

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