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.

This just boils my blood. I, for one, do not own GTA or any of it’s sequals. I’ve never even played one. Why? Because I know what the games are about! I don’t want to play that kind of game…not my taste. My first friggin’ clue was the fact that the name of the game is Grand Theft Auto!

So here comes innocent little Florence, buying the game for her grandson and then appalled because of the content. It’s not like the game came in a black box with no labelling!

This is exactly the kind of ignorant behavior from parents that I was talking about in the post about Senator Clinton’s actions. Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.

In the words of Einstein: “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”

Wow.

Steven Johnson, writing an editorial for the L.A. Times, really hit the nail on the head when he wrote this article. The way the government is pursuing this video game controversy is parodied quite nicely by this quick witted fellow. Gotta love that last line!