The Insane Asylum

Oops I swore and in the title no doubt but that's how I feel at this moment in time. I just want to get into every person's face that complains about the taboo things found in games, sues companies and generally ruins everything for everyone in the world. I want to grab them by the throat and roar in their selfish faces "*bleep* OFF!"

So why is that? Could be because I'm tired? Because I'm stressed and it's near Xmas? Because I realised my dad is never coming back from the 6ft grave he now resides in?

Believe me when I say this, no, it is not because of them although they are affecting me just recently but this blog isn't about that. No this blog is to rant about those idiots in the media that are currently degrading the games industry and forcing them to tread carefully.

So today's world, what has that got something to do with it? Well it is because of today's world that this is happening. Well to be fair it's not just the games industry that are getting these idiots, it is life in general. For example, back in the olden days you could smack a kid into place without the worry of child line or social services tearing a chunk out of you for child abuse, as long as of course you weren't taking "smack them into place" literally.

These days, if you so much as touch a hair on their head you are thrown into jail and never heard from again. Now I'm not condoning smacking your child but as a kid of the 90's, I have had my legs and bum whacked quite a few times yet I am fine, I am bright and I currently do not reside on the corner street like a chav with no qualifications, job and not wasting my life. My point is parents don't dare to discipline their children anymore as they are afraid of being reported and so they let their kids run wild.

Accident help lines! These are the only things to be advertised these days, been hurt in the last 3 months and it wasn't your fault? *bleep* and get on with life! My god these guys came out in full force and with the "no win, no fee" that's a load of BS...yeah that means if they win for you, they will take 75% of whatever you get. Point is, they open the door to sueing people.

And now the gaming part, over the last few weeks I have read many stories about people killing other people and games like GTA being the influence for this. I'm sorry but if I was a policeman or lawyer hearing this, I wouldn't be pointing the finger at video games, I would be digging into the suspects family, activities and past. I would turn his or her life upside down and I would make sure he or she was put away under a new charge of lying.

Don't get me wrong, there are games out there that are violent but that is why they warrant an 18 certificate, then again I have been playing 16+ games since I was 11 but the key factor here is I played them UNDER SUPERVISION OF PARENTS

I dare you, no I challenge you, to go through most of these cases resulting in video games being blamed and find out where the parents were when all of this happened. Example, the case with the 6 and 7 year olds stoning and hanging a kitten after playing GTA IV, where were they? Why were these kids not supervised and why weren't they given rertrictions like only 1 hour a day or week on it?

I would also be looking for family illness, mental illness, domestic violence and generally any problems or any situations that would cause stress to an environment.

Torture in games...this one makes me laugh, in fact it all makes me laugh because if it didn't I would ironically enough go round and kill people (that's a joke by the way :P) Now fair enough I do believe that if you are willing to put torture into a game then the gamer should have a choice as in torture, rescue or convince without torture. In otherwords an alternative but I also believe that torture or in fact any other taboo shouldn't be thrown out of a game just because someone would rather do the opposite...main thing here though is, as long as there are two options generally watch it or don't watch it.

For example, I do honestly believe sex should be in games, why? At the end of the day they are just pixels on the screen but why not? Games such as GTA and Fallout 3 have already hit offensive lists while being VERY TAME so why not go for glory and do it all at once. A piece of virtual flesh isn't going to hurt anyone and if someone didn't want to watch it then an option to skip to the next day can be easily implemented with a screenover that currently happens in GTA IV.

My point is (yes I say that alot) books have ultimate freedom but that's because they give the initial idea but the reader's mind fills in the blanks and it isn't shared worldwide, basically everyone will see "that" scene quite differently. Movies however are a visual aid and fair enough, 25 years ago, Exorcist and Evil Dead were banned for such things yet here's the funny part. 1983 Evil Dead had a scene where a woman was raped by a tree branch. 2006/7 Silent Hill had a scene where a woman was raped by barbed wire to which she then is split apart into many pieces.

Now you might be thinking "hang on a second, isn't that evidence to say that in today's world things like that are permitted?" yes and no really but that isn't my point, the point I am getting across is that it is fine in movies yet games can't show pixelated breasts even though they are classed as an 18 but an 18 movie has women raped by various things and a lot of sex scenes in and that's not even getting to the point of violence, gore or curse words.

Now some people will say "yeah but putting in all that would be pointless and would ruin a game, it would put me off the game completely" yeah if that's all it centred around or didn't offer you a different choice.

This is why I ultimately feel for console owners, they can't have problems like this changed in their games yet if I wanted a torture quest in a game, I could literally make one and put it in tomorrow and be happy.

In fact I would love a quest in Fallout 3 where you have to get information out of someone but have the good, neutral and evil variations of it.

I would love to just have someone tied up and use a low damage gun or weapon to manually shoot a limb, for example...shoot the left arm...they aren't talking, shoot the arm again, it becomes unusable...they are becoming worn down and so you shoot their limbs again until they do talk.

Whereas a good guy who isn't into that could charm the information out of them.

That to me would benefit both interests within gamers without upsetting anyone unless they chose to be evil. I just think it is so pathetic and selfish to complain about certain features of a game, Fair enough Japan had a legitimate reason for wanting the quest of detonating the Megaton bomb as they have suffered two real life nuclear bombings themselves.

Though on saying that, shouldn't germany cause a ruckus for all the WWI and WWII games out there? Should I being english cause an uproar because of Hollywood always pitting an American actor as the hero and saviour of the world in movies...infact should the english cause an uproar because Hollywood mess with history, period?

Sometimes we moan about it but if it is someone like Will Smith then we don't mind...he can act :P

I feel so much better now and I am sorry to those that actually read this but I would rather live back in the olden days, hell I would actually want to live in the dark ages, with no technology, no sanitation, no tv, no internet...just basically what we haven't got by today's standards.

Sounds silly as I know there were a lot of problems back then but at least the only celebrities back then were knights that killed people and royalty. The entertainment would be executions and torture sessions and more importantly there wouldn't be much competition if I were to be a scholar back in them days :P