Jack Thompson and his uneducated media cronies are at it again. Attempting to raise the country’s “awareness”, but instead finding success in raising my blood pressure instead. For months before the game’s release, Rockstar’s newest game Bully has under the mal-informed watchful eye of Jack Thompson and other foolish parent groups. All of them crying out for the government to parent their children for them.

Nevermind the fact that this game is not the “Columbine simulator” that they call it, and go ahead and disregard this game’s premise entirely. I could sit around and argue the specifics of this particular game until I was blue in the face. However, the simple fact is it has nothing to do with this game in specific. This game is just another reason for the undereducated masses and irresponsible parents to pass the buck once again.

I am still not quite sure why games like these are constantly under the gun for mature or violent content, since these games are not typically targeted at children. Let’s look up a statistic from May of this year: “The ESA reported today that the average video game player’s age is 33 years old.” Amazing discovery, most gamers are not children at all! Let’s forget for a minute that the fines are stiffer for video game stores selling mature games to minors than they are for gas stations selling minors cigarettes and pretend that children did find an unscrupulous dealer. I attempt to avoid violent action in almost all my daily routines. I don’t even kill spiders, but instead catch and release them outside. I also have been playing video games for almost 20 years. Some of my favorites as a child were Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem, Contra, Mortal Kombat, and plenty of others. Am I smarter than other people? Am I somehow magically able to see through the insanely difficult ruse that video games and life are not the same thing? The answer is no. My parents just did their jobs.

There are countless ways parents can handle these situations. They could approach it from the easiest method, and check out the ESRB rating. There is a reason that rating is there. It helps parents in the same way movie ratings, TV ratings, and parental advisory warnings help to educate in the most basic of ways. There’s a big indicator that lets you know if something is AO or M, saying to parents that it may not be suitable for children. Another way is to spend 5 minutes looking on one of the thousands of video game sites like Gamespot, IGN, or Got-Next and get a little information about the games. Another simple solution is to actually spend time with their children and help to put things in to perspective. Parents, as well as the media, need to find themselves more educated in the face of this growing media outlet. Understanding what they are dealing with and being educated on what these things mean is the only way to effectively handle any situation.

The media should have learned its lesson by now. For years it has been music influencing children. If it wasn’t the Columbine shooters being influenced by Marylin Manson, it was Charles Manson under the influence of The Beatles and their Helter Skelter song. Or perhaps the media taking a stab at movies or tv and the violence it portrays. Even further back than that, it was books that were poisoning our youth. Unfortunately for the masses, there is someone out there somewhere thinking that we are too stupid to understand what we are looking at. Although, I haven’t seen anyone taking a stab at something that DOESN’T ask people to see the difference between reality and fantasy… The news. I have found myself unable to stomach watching the news on several occasions, as I have found more objectionable material and horrifying violence there than in any fantasy-based game. I fail to see how we can ask to take the violence out of video games when we can’t take it out of our own culture.

Video games today are another scapegoat for media scrutiny just as music, movies, and television have been for decades. Educate yourselves, parents and media, and then educate your children and put everything in perspective. Video games are no more an effective scapegoat than any other artistic medium.