I have never killed anyone in real life, but I’ve slaughtered millions upon millions in video games. Somehow I have managed to make it through 23 years without beating another human being senseless with any type of malice, yet I shot, blew up and bludgeoned hundreds of men this morning before work in the guise of an Army lieutenant during World War II. I would wager that for many young men video games played at least some role in our rites of passage. I began playing them when I was about four. I went from my father’s Atari, to my Nintendo, a Gameboy, a Super Nintendo, a Game Gear and tried my hand at everything from a Sega CD to “Ms. Pac-Man” at the Pizza Hut in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. They did not warp me, nor did they have much of an effect on the way I chose to live my life. In fact, I rarely play them today. Reading Wednesday’s Tiger Weekly, which usually serves up belly-laughs when they call the late William H. Rehnquist a “liberal judge,” I actually read an interesting, if disturbing article. Apparently some folks out there have become so dependent upon video games that they are going into rehabilitation clinics in order to deal with their demons. Coupling this with the new law to ban minors from purchasing certain video games, I briefly wondered whether or not proponents of these measures had the right idea. After all, perhaps more people were being warped by video games than I first realized. Then I slapped myself and lit a cigarette. Don’t be an idiot, I thought. People who are supposedly addicted to video games may enjoy evading reality and may get a release in endorphins, but they’re not shooting heroin, they’re playing “Halo.” I mean, come on, rehab? Will a so-called Higher Power liberate these poor souls from the debilitating desire to sit in front of a flickering screen and a diet of RC Cola and Funyons, or perhaps all it will take is someone giving them a swift kick in the ass and telling them to go and do something better with their lives. It’s the same with kids. Frankly, I don’t think I was warped despite the fact that when playing “Civilization II,” I led the triumph of Germany in World War I on Emperor mode, or while playing my favorite video game of all time, “Liberty or Death,” an American Revolution simulator, I defeated George Washington and reclaimed the colonies for Britain. I’m only one man, though. Certainly Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold played video games. They might well have even been pushed down a dark path toward Columbine by playing them. Then again the most deadly attack on a school in the United States was committed in 1927 where a man blew up a school with dynamite, so what does that prove? I don’t believe video games derange you, nor do I believe that they are terrible enough that someone who spends all their time playing them needs rehab. What people need are to move away from our industrialized disease of spending time working on beeping screens and loud noises. For God’s sakes, read a book for a change, or take a walk in the woods. Act like a human being for a change, instead of an automaton. That’s just my advice, and since I oppose government regulation on the issue, I don’t want people being told to do these things. I simply would like those who think they have a problem with video games, or the concern that the legislature pretended to show with this issue devoted to issues that really matter for ourselves and our world. After all, video games don’t kill people, people kill people. Take it from a guy who used to get beaten up in gym class, didn’t kill anyone and decided to lift weights instead.
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