“25 to Life”
August 8th, 2005 10:19 am

I just read an article about another video game that has politicians stepping in and trying to prevent it from being released. The New York Senator, Charles Schumer, wants to ban the upcoming game “25 to Life�.

For those not familiar with this game you have the ability to choose either a gang and recruit people, or you could choose to be the police. When you are with the gang you go around doing whatever it is that gangs do. Namely robbing, looting, and killing police officers that stand in your way. On the police officer side you defend the city and stop the gangs from doing their evil deeds, arresting them, using excessive force, killing if necessary.
So what is the problem? Sounds like it could be a fun game. Well apparently the Senator doesn’t like the idea of people being able to kill cops in a video game. He says that if the game is released people are going to just start killing cops in real life because they saw it in the game. He goes on to say that the cop killing gameplay is “sickening� and “offends all sensibilities�

Two things, one, doesn’t the Senator have more important matters to attend to? Two, if the Senator did his homework the game just isn’t about killing cops. You can be the cops to stop the gangs. Why aren’t police stations everywhere worried about their job enrollment going up? We all know that everyone who plays the game from the viewpoint of the cops is going to go out and join the local police force and start taking the law into their own hands (that last part was sarcasm, incase you missed it).

I can’t even get into how many games there are where you play as the good guy upholding the law and bad guys try to kill you. That is the element in every game. Good versus evil. Someone has to win. Maybe the Senator would like a game where the two sides could sit down together and talk and negotiate. If they came out with that Senator Charles Schumer would be the first in line at midnight waiting for his copy of the game.

Posted in Gaming, Great Game by MadMarc
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Diablo
August 8th, 2005 10:32 am

Once again, on the curtails of Mr. Caulder, I would not mind a government study to help dissuade any more arguments like these. The drawback are people like Devon Moore who, after stealing a car and shooting 3 cops, refer to the a game as the motive behind the act. Eventually it starts to make enough noise that a politician sees it as a viable angle to enhance his/her persona as “caring”, and then it hits the fan. Of course, Rockstar didn’t help by leaving that “hot coffee” crap in their game either, slander for the gaming community.

Anyway, expect more stuff like this in the future, until someone can nail down just how influential video games are, and whether they contribute to voilent behavior. If anything, people who perpetuate violence (and I trust no one is suing 25 to Life at this point) see gaming as a perpetrator and themselves as a victim. Quite frankly, I would use it too, if it kept me from being “Bubba’s” cell mate.

But, even if we did get a government inquiry to state that there was no relation, I am sure the battle would rage on.

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