Picture pretty much unrelated. I couldn't resist.
My faith in games is pretty strong in places. As much as I don't think they are a fine art, anyone who plays them a lot (or at least as much as I do) and has played a decent range of games, especially more recent ones, should realise there is a huge amount of storyline (COUGH METAL FUCKING GEAR SOLID) cinematics and voice acting talent in the game industry. Look at Fallout's dark satire of human futility and the American dream, or Gears of War's story of love and loss on Dom's part - though you will have to look past his damn poor voice acting; 'Oh Maria, Maria, why didn't EPIC games just sign me up to be some COG grunt who gets shot in the first five minutes?'. In some cases, such as my harshly-coughed Metal Gear series, games can be much deeper and hold many more moral messages than most films can offer. Despite this, and my passion for gaming/games in general, there's a point where I stop and think, 'this is not reality.' And it's not, it's no more reality than a film or book.
So this brings me to my question of not why intellectual elitists treat games as if they are inferior to all other 'art' forms, but why they think they affect us so deeply. Yes, young adults, teenagers and kids like games. LIKE is the operative word. They're not drugs, we're not addicted, we just find them fun, is that so hard to believe? Yes, some kids play too much, but that's the parents to blame. What do you want to do, blame games for being too much fun?
People like Barawwwk Obama and the rage-of-the-apocalypse-inducing Bill O'Reilly (or as he tells his producer minions to call him, Lucifer) have said on numerous occasions that video games are killing the youth. By this, they're referring to games like GTA where you're given the freedom to pointlessly exact your revenge on innocents, or just violent games in general. So... they think that we're morally influenced by games? That we see Niko Bellic screwing a hooker then running her over and taking her money as... something we should do? Fair enough for thinking kids are idiots, but there are a tiny few who actually see things in games and think 'WOW, THIS IS OBVIOUSLY A GOOD IDEA.' For goodness' sake, pretty much all games even penalise you in some way for actions like this. The opening cutscene isn't Niko getting off a boat, and screaming 'EVERYTHING I WILL DO IN AMERICA IS RIGHTEOUS. YAY ME.' The kids in America who performed drive-bys because of playing too much San Andreas didn't do it because of the game telling them to do it, it's because they're fucking dumbasses. It's that simple.
Naturally there are exceptions where things seem pointlessly harsh like Manhunt, The Punisher and Modern Warfare 2 which I'm literally twitching to not start another argument on. Yeah I don't like them a great deal because taken out of context they give games a terrible name, but hello? They're 18s! As in, if your kid is playing an 18, he's gonna see some nasty stuff. If he/she is too young/stupid to take it, then once again, THE PARENTS' FAULT. It's not as if we have to censor films for disturbing content, unless it reaches Evil Dead standards. Why should games be any different?
I can't think of an outro paragraph, you'll just have to put up with it.
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