It's the same old story

Once again, recent events have turfed video games into the media spotlight and for all the wrong reasons. I am, of course, referring to the horrible day in Finland, where a single person killed and injured innocent people at a school. The fact that he played video games, particularly "shooters", has made various big-wigs foam at the mouth, once again.

Which is, naturally, of no surprise whatsoever. But here's the rub, as far as I'm concerned: it's just the same old story. When I started playing video games 26 years ago, my "ilk" were seen as harmless nerds that were more interested in pixels than girls. But now, despite the fact that such activities are thoroughly commonplace, anyone who likes that type of game is seen as potential nut-job. Anyone with a reasonable amount of intelligence will appreciate that the aforementioned Finnish killer's actions were driven by his mental issues, not his gaming hobby.

For the most part, games in general have been "shooters" for as long as there have been games. Young boys have always played at being soldiers or cowboys; the first video games were about destroying wave after wave of aliens and asteroids too. In fact, one only has to look at current TV adverts for the pre-Christmas run-up to appreciate just how much "violence" and "aggression" drives recreational activities for boys. There's never been an Action Man Political Negotiator or the Nelson Mandela Transformer, that converts between a Nobel Peace Prize winner and a hybrid-fuel, low-emission car. It's all about enemies and destroying them... with the moral side of things handled by the fact that you're playing the side of the hero. And all heroes have enemies, which must be defeated through ACTION!!!

What I'm getting at is that if video games didn't exist, the loudmouths in politics would rant about Action Man instead of CounterStrike when it comes to tragic events, like those in Finland. Unfortunately, it'll only get worse: shooter games are still the most commonly enjoyed by boys, and it's also the genre that technology geeks like to show off their latest coding skillzzz. In other words, those particular games are becoming more and more realistic (Valve must have realised this when they made TF2 all cartoony!).

It's not the gaming industry's fault either, although they can shoulder some of the blame. Shooting things in games is fun and many of them just simply wouldn't work if the solution to a task was "huge them and tell them that you love them, in a manly way". But with the spiralling costs of game development, many of the titles on the shelves are shooters purely because it's a safe bet financially. However, consoles (the Wii in particular) have shown that boy-friendly games can still be fun without the need to knee-cap or head-shot everything in sight.

The sounds horrible but the sooner we have a Wii Sports player go bok in a shopping mall, the better...