And in today’s roundup of games being blamed for everything, Australian police commissioner Andrew Scipione points the big game blame-finger at the rising incidence of knife crimes in New Soutth Wales.
“How can it not affect you if you’re a young adolescent growing up in an era where to be violent is almost praiseworthy, where you engage in virtual crime on a daily basis and many of these young people (do) for hours and hours on end,” he told the Telegraph Australia.
“You get rewarded for killing people, raping women, stealing money from prostitutes, driving cars crashing and killing people,” he said. “That’s not going to affect the vast majority, but it’s only got to affect one or two and what have you got? You’ve got some potentially really disturbed young person out there who’s got access to weapons like knives or is good with the fist, can go out there and almost live that life now in the streets of modern Australia. That’s concerning.”
He makes some thought-provoking points, perhaps, but it’s also probably worth remembering that games rated for adults are not currently allowed to be sold anywhere in Australia. Unless he means kids are going out on stabbing sprees after a few games of Tiger Woods Golf. Actually, I’d probably go out on a stabbing spree after a few games of Tiger Woods Golf.
This is how I handle annoying commuters during rush hour.
No! You can’t borrow my bike to go to the shops!
Source: VG247
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Reading these posts makes me sad. No one is denying that most of the crime we struggle with on a day to day basis does not have is roots elsewhere, with poverty probably being the biggest culprit. Having said that, the focus of the story was on violent games and our youths exposure to it. Parents that just want to shut their kids up and blindly get them whatever game they want are equally to blame, but no one can deny that the prolonged exposure to these sorts of games to under aged kids will in the long term desensitize them to the realities of violence. It’s conditioning 101, people. Age restrictions are there for a reason. Please don’t turn this into a “oh, so obviously drinking, gangs and poverty have nothing to do with modern day violence” debate, no one here was born yesterday, we are well aware of the existence of these issues. But as a parent, you cannot deny the merit in watching what your kids play, and governing it accordingly. You may not have control of the above mentioned causes of GBH, but at least you can control and educate your own kids, and give them a fighting (yes, I see the irony there) chance of developing a well balanced moral compass.