Grumpygamer

I'm all for strict control of who plays violent videogames - but we feel that sometimes the message about protecting children is somewhat ruined by nutters like Anglican Synod lay member Tom Benyon.

Benyon has been frothing at the mouth about games - so much so he's had to actually invent game content to get upset about, a bit like those preachers adding their own backwards messages to rock and roll in the sixties.

"There is a bubbling sewer of gratuitously violent and sexual pornography and games all around us. I have seen its pernicious effect. A family member saw a so-called ‘game’ and he had nightmares. The images remained with him for months," he most probably lied.

The comments came in a church Synod debate calling on the government to introduce stricter controls on games. Benyon then went on to focus on some imagined games - we have no idea where he saw some of this stuff...

"Why is it acceptable, indeed lawful, to portray the killing and burning of a woman in Fatality, [or] the sawing up of a woman in Mortal Kombat, or playing football with severed heads; the chainsaw killing of a man in Saw III, rape, torture and so on?”

Rape sir? Rape? We challenge you to tell us which game you saw this in?

In the interest of balance I should point out my wife is an Anglican priest. She was horrified by this story too. But horrified that yet again various nutters seem to be doing their best to show the church in the very worst light.

I've just set up a new Twitter feed for this particular blog.

You'll find it at - http://twitter.com/thegrumpygamer

According to Christopher Ferguson of Texas A&M International University a decade's worth of data has failed to find a link between violent games and violent crimes.

"School shootings, although exceedingly rare, are an important issue worthy of serious consideration," says the report by Professor Ferguson in the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling. "However, for our understanding of this phenomenon to progress, we must move past the moral panic on video games and other media and take a hard look at the real causes of serious aggression and violence...the wealth of evidence...fails to establish a link between violent video games and violent crimes, including school shootings. The link has not merely been unproven; I argue that the wealth of available data simply weighs against any causal relationship."

Read more »

Go and read this piece of nonense at the Daily Mail.

Read it?

Good.

Do you know what that image actually is? No it's not created by Al Qaeda.

It's promotional artwork from a Role Playing Game called Fallout 3.

Yes the Daily Mail should be ground into dust.

Well this is a first. I'm actually blogging by phone. Why? Well because I'm waiting at St Pancras station for a train to Paris. No I'm not on holiday, this is actually a work thing. It's rather exciting but I miss my gorgeous wifey loads already.

I'm not one to blow my own trumpet¹ but I thought it worth mentioning that you can read my review of Grand Theft Auto IV over at Boomtown.net.

There's been an awful lot of guff written about the game by journalists that seem to have been on the receiving end of illicit sexual favours from Rockstar Games. That's the only explanation I can see for the astonishing hyperbole that has greeted the launch of what is a very good videogame.

I think there are many games journalists who are going to feel rather embarrassed about their GTA reviews in a few months' time. The game is good, very good, but way too many problems with the game have been ignored in favour of sycophantic praise.

I make no claims to have written the best review of the game, but I think my take on it is a little more honest than the spurious nonsense sent forth by many a games website².

The other star of the game is Liberty City itself. It's beautiful, it's shabby, it's a real living and breathing place. People live out there lives, answer phones, read papers, eat hot dogs, get hit by cars, have shoot outs with the cops – they live. It's fascinating just walking the streets and watching the world go by.

Liberty isn't as big as San Andreas and thank goodness for that. There was an awful lot of fat on that title and with that trimmed away GTAIV feels a lot lighter, trimmer and fitter. Little space is wasted, it's a packed city of of cars and people. There's so much detail to admire, such as seeing garbage trucks routinely roam the streets in the early hours or even smaller things like the design of the umbrella on the hot-dog stands.

If we had to reward just one part of the team behind the game it would be those that built this world. It is a work of art.

See what you think, here's my review of Grand Theft Auto IV on Xbox 360.

_{¹Steady now.
²It goes without saying that we're ignoring magazines as on the whole games magazine writing isn't even fit for toilet paper.}

Away from the nonsense spouted by concerned "experts" like Keith Vaz¹ there's been some interesting commentary following the release of Grand Theft Auto IV in the mainstream media.

I've particularly enjoyed the following piece from Catherine Bennett published in today's Observer newspaper. She's by her own admission not a gamer and her initial attempts at the game's supposed ultraviolence were rather thwarted.

Were it not for its fearsome lewdness, many parents might prefer to help their children, too, to explore GTA's satirical universe, rather than waste time on CBBC's ever more dismaying offerings, from the dystopic filth that is Tracy Beaker to those twin triumphs of moronic nihilism, Prank Patrol and Hider in the House

In fact, if a new book on gaming, Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth about Violent Video Games, is to be believed, there may exist hardly anyone in sound mind who might not, from time to stressful time, benefit from an hour or two of moderately violent gaming. The authors, two Harvard psychiatrists, Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K Olson, were told by many young players that they played violent games to 'relax' or to 'get my anger out'. Should we not, as a matter of urgency, implore Gordon Brown to escape into GTA IV over the bank holiday? Or would the experience make an already vulnerable and solitary Prime Minister more likely to aim his car, à la Niko, at cyclists such as David Cameron?

You can read the whole of Catherine's editorial at The Guardian website.

_{¹Vaz doesn't even know what a PSP is, which was demonstrated when he was being an "expert" in a House of Common committee.}