The Joystick Jockey’s Militant Minute #3: “Videogames Don’t Kill People; Murderous Idiots Do”

Lock and load, boys and girls; it’s yet another issue of my series of entirely random ramblings, and if it doesn’t end up eating your face with its good-natured, highly opinionated goodness, it might just make you think, or at the very least, reaffirm your life by making you wonder aloud, followed by several glasses of Maker’s Mark and a long crying jag. Anyhow, you know the drill. Sit back, grab a snack and prepare yourself, for it’s just about time to kick your mind’s ass. (Editor’s Note: We apologize for the maladroit mess you, our treasured reader, just had to read.)

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The Internet, like bloodhounds or random beating-trained children, is excellent at bringing you things you ask it for. You throw some terms into a search engine, and you almost invariably get just what you’re looking for. You Google the word “fishnet”, and you’ll instantly get fishing websites, stories about hookers, robots, hooker robots, and countless funny stories about bad things happening to fish… or nets. It’s a marvel of modern technology, and it wasn’t even made by Al Gore or George Foreman – which makes it all the more mint. (Editor’s Note: We apologize for the very old and very lame Gore-centric humor that got old in 1998.) If you can’t find what you’re looking for on the Internet, chances are it either doesn’t exist outside of the dreams you find in the Colt 45 tall can, or it doesn’t have a Japanese cosplay component. Luckily for you and I, those two restrictions mean nothing to the pastime of videogames. Of course, I wouldn’t be rambling here if something interesting didn’t come from all of this Google action, right? (Editor’s Note: We apologize to you for this very non-interesting, pointless rambling.) So, here’s the good part. In between downloads of “Planet of The Apes” ‘adult’ spoofs (“Playmate of The Apes” – believe it!) and nighttime postings of messages here at Gamenikki’s messageboard, I put “videogames” into the Google search field and hit the “I’m feeling lucky” button. Google did its thing, and thanks to the magic of supercomputing, metasearches and elf dances, I landed on some news page. The news was about Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and how it, along with most games in general nowadays, causes violence and violent tendencies in minors. If there is one thing in this world that isn’t reality TV, cold Chinese food, or built-in restaurant tips that pisses me off, it’s this whole “videogames make kids go crazy and kill people” stuff. (Editor’s Note: We apologize for an editorial topic rehashed to death post-Columbine. Just work with us, please.) It’s not new or anything; earlier this year, those "Beltway Snipers” who forcibly ventilated 11 or so people were making their deadly waves, inducing even the bigwigs in Washington to wet themselves over the prospect of these guys giving them an unwanted extra orifice. You’d think that whole "wasting people mercilessly from yards away totally unseen" or the “how they can be put to justice for their crime” bit would be the only important aspect of the coverage back then, but the idiocy in this deal lies in the tarot card the killer left at the scene of one of his attacks. On said card, the killer left the message, "Dear Policeman, I am God." The message itself wasn't funny at all—but the media reports were. Somewhere out there in TV land, a foolass MSNBC reporter drew an interesting link between the message's "God" reference...and the common first-person videogame power-up of "God Mode". Yes, that's right; the media made the obligatory "Videogames made him a killer" excuse.

YOU IDIOTS.

Are you joking me? Videogames didn't kill people; the sniper bullets did, dumbass. What the hell are people thinking, even trying to link videogames this time, or any time for that matter! I mean, think about it; if videogames desensitized kids and taught them to kill, America would have this totally awesome, completely free army of AMERICAN DEATHKID SOLDIERS. Right here, right now. You think we'd be having issues with finding those ‘weapons of mass destruction’ or justifying war in Iraq if say, Counter-Strike made us gamers freakishly accurate with rifles? I guarantee you, if games made the militaristic skill of children rise to meteoric heights, there'd have been some kid on a building roof in my New York City on that fateful September 11th, sniping terrorists right through the cockpit windows, and then—using the combat skills he learned from years of Tribes—rescue the people in the planes aerial skill. Of course, such rationale wouldn't be considered "logical" by the omniscient media, because they’re all about getting viewers to get into a simplistic, happy mob mentality. If videogames had such incredible developmental power, there'd be legions of gangsters running about in my NYC neighborhood, thinking they'd respawn when they got perforated in a "deathmatch", affectionately known to the rest of society as "violent gang shoot-outs". If videogames made cold-blooded killers out of people, something like 40% of religious evangelists would be victims of TimeSplitters 2-style proximity mine killings; a lot of those dudes would get blown to bits the second they so much as breathed on a front door in the morning. If videogames made efficient assassins out of children, all guns would have multicolored buttons and Control Sticks, and come in a limited edition “platinum” (those editions would be very popular with P. Diddy). They’d also fire death rays uncontrollably if you held a Control Stick up before pulling the trigger, or crash to a blue screen of death and not fire at all if you used non-Microsoft bullets. On top of that, Nintendo would be the leading arms producer in the world (Editor’s Note: If you’re still here, you got farther than I did. JON FORGOT TO EVEN MAKE THE MOST OBVIOUS DUCK HUNT JOKE.)

You know what makes killers? Terrible parenting does. Horrible TV programming does. Puddle of Mudd videos do. No sex in the champagne room does. Overexposure to Vin Diesel does. The click of a mouse or tap of the "X" button doesn't craft snipers. Mario, Sonic, Grand Theft Auto, Metroid and friends; they don't craft gangsters, killer robots, ninjas, vampires, ruthless sky pirates, elven warlords, Goomba-crushing plumbers or anything like that. If anything, they make us mellower because we have a virtual sandbox to let our aggressions out in! In fact, I demand a congressional Medal of Honor, because my youthful years of dumping quarters into the Bad Dudes arcade machine made me a “bad enough dude to save the President”, and for just a cheeseburger, no less. Instead of gunning for us average, game-loving citizens who do nothing wrong, or the hard-working developers at outfits like Rockstar, Midway, Sega, Konami, Nintendo and many others that develop the games we love, maybe Joe Lieberman should go after the people that allow really bad “game-related” stuff to happen, like in Jacksonville, Florida, where a 13 year-old kid traded a handgun to another kid for a GameBoy Advance. Now you’re playing with power.
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(Editor’s Note: I am really, truly sorry. We had nothing else to run today. Josh had ‘computer problems’, and I’m not yet done with R.C. Cars. There were other reviews to run, but this was getting old and I just pulled it off the top of the stack. So sorry.)