News Hound: This Week In Gaming Issue 31

The 'writer' that pretends to know a flying racoon about gaming and its workings in an article found on the 'New York Post: Online Edition' and whilst everyone is entitled to a view I always like them to back it up with perhaps some reasonable facts, that do not shout out to anyone who spends time playing games 'plain and misinformed lies'. Gaming is a developing media; there is no question about it. People didn't take too well to rap when it first appeared back in the depths of music, but on the whole it is accepted now. Nobody flutters an eye-lid at some irate black American waving his hands about and talking about when he 'shot da bitch' or something along those lines. Indeed, people were shocked when Eminem first minced onto the scene, but people soon realised what a total idiot the chain-saw-wielding man was and got about their everyday lives. This is the attitude that gaming deserves. Those who think that entertainment directly affects the reality of a person within a stable mind is a fool stuck in the backend of the thinking spectrum of society.

If violence is to come from anywhere it will be from the TV. Here in the United Kingdom we have a 9 o'clock pm watershed for certain content that might be considered offensive, like movies that contain violence and scenes of a sexual nature. But do the people who set down these guidelines think that every person, shall we say under the age of 16, goes to bed at 08:59pm without fail. They don't and thus are exposed to all sort of content that could lead them to be violent and run riot and spray innocent claret over the media headlines.

When an art-piece expresses a scene of rape or death people call it 'emotive' or 'shocking' but it is in awe to the educated eye, not in disgust. The winner of the British Turner Prize was a vase that showed scenes of child molestation and the like, surely this only goes to reinforce the point that art can show us the shocking side of the world, so why not gaming? Yes it can be greatly exaggerated, but it is a way of expressing something. Of course, gaming is an entertainment form as well, but does that prevent companies like Take-Two from dealing in risqu