The Church of England is having a conniption fit over a Playstation 3 game. The game, Resistance: Fall of Man, is set in an alternate 20th century universe. Church officials are upset that the game allows players to have a gunfight inside the Manchester Cathedral and are threatening to sue Sony if they don’t remove it from store shelves.
From a legal standpoint, the Church claims they never gave Sony permission to use the interior of the cathedral in the game. Sony claims they “sought and received all permissions necessary…” Of course, it isn’t just a legal objection the Church is making, but more of a moral one. The Dean of Manchester Cathedral, Rogers Govender, had this to say:
“We are shocked to see a place of learning, prayer and heritage being presented to the youth market as a location where guns can be fired.
“This is an important issue. For many young people these games offer a different sort of reality and seeing guns in Manchester Cathedral is not the sort of connection we want to make.
“Every year we invite hundreds of teenagers to come and see the cathedral and it is a shame to have Sony undermining our work.”
I’ll resist the urge to make fun of his title (’Very Reverend’) and get to the real problem, which is a persistent misunderstanding of the video game industry. The Very Ridiculous (oops, so much for resisting) Govender is making the common mistake of assuming that video games all target teenagers. There certainly are a great many games targeting the teen market, but games like the one in question are aimed squarely at young adults. I’ll repeat that for emphasis: young adults. A local Manchester mom suffers from the same case of ignorance:
“I believe it’s something that needs to be taken seriously first by the Church but also by parents.
“There’s a war going on - not just in Iraq, but right here on our doorstep.”
This misguided lady, Patsy McKie, is a member of Mothers Against Violence. Her son was tragically killed in Manchester. Her characterization of the situation as a ‘war’ makes it seem like video game companies are intentionally trying to corrupt children and turn them into mindless, murdering automatons. I respect what MAV aims to do, but going after video games is barking up the wrong tree.
What this problem boils down to is that the game industry hasn’t done enough to reverse the perception that video games are for kids. Games did target kids in the late ’70s and through most of the ’80s, but as those kids grew up and their tastes and expectations matured, the game industry evolved right along with them and began to provide alternative games with more mature content to fill the growing demand. People like Patsy McKie don’t understand this. Such people aren’t well-versed in the evolution and history of the game industry. For them, the equation is quite simple: video games are for young people + many video games are violent = video games turn young people into criminals.
There are a whole host of issues surrounding this controversy, from the real and imaginary effects of violent media on young people to the responsibility of parents in playing a larger role in their children’s lives. It’s ridiculous to point fingers when children kill or get killed without considering the root of the problem. Video games make great scapegoats because so many kids play them. Before video games, it was movies and rap music. Before that, it was comic books. Before that, rock-and-roll. Larger issues, such as the lifestyles of the youth involved and the influences in their environment, are largely ignored while popular teen past times become easy targets. And parents surely don’t want to take responsibility for any culpability they may have in the matter.
We live in a culture of violence. That’s our reality. It’s all over the news and it’s on our streets. It’s only natural that the media reflect that. Teenage violence has existed much, much longer than video games or any other modern entertainment media. This is not a chicken-or-egg problem. Game designers didn’t sit down one day, rubbing their hands together and laughing maniacally, and decide to corrupt the youth of the world in order to bring more chaos to the world. No, sorry. Games reflect reality, not the other way around.
By blaming video games for the actions of teenagers we are essentially saying that teens can’t think for themselves. Why is it that so many adults forget what it was like to be a teenager? I remember my teen years pretty well. I did a lot of stupid and reckless things, true. Many teenagers do have a problem considering the consequences of their actions. But I was fortunate enough to have parents who did a pretty good job of teaching me right from wrong. And I certainly understood the difference between video games and reality. It’s incredibly insulting for a parent to think their teenager is too stupid to know the difference.
Teenagers are anxious to grow up and want to be taken seriously. Parents need to understand that. They also need to assert more influence in their kids’ lives. There’s a fine line between being supportive and being invasive. Too many parents wind up as the latter, pushing their kids away. Want your kids to go astray? Then don’t take them seriously. Insult their intelligence. Let them know just how little you value their opinions, or how little confidence you have in their ability to reason. That ought to push them right into the arms of their peers. Their peers will respect them and accept them. And teenagers will do a great deal to be accepted, even when they know it is wrong. What’s sad is that too many parents don’t realize when they do push their kids away. They happily stumble along, thinking they are great parents with great kids, never realizing that they’ve been blind all along.
Even good kids go astray. Even good parents don’t know their teenagers as well as they think they do, or have less influence than they believe they do. So rather than pointing fingers at the scape-goat-of-the-day, we really ought to be getting to the root of the problem. No matter where you live there are always a great many negative influences in the immediate environment, every one of them based in reality. The solution starts at home. If more parents were more active in their teens’ lives, more attentive to their teens’ needs, and exerted more positive influence to counter all of the bad, then perhaps there would be fewer negative peers out there to take their place.
And the Church of England can stuff it. They corrupt more children than any video game ever could.
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