I’m sure you’re all aware, if you have functioning eyes and ears, that there have been riots happening all over the UK. I’ve covered the situation over on Square Lobster, but I could NOT let this go without a fight. An article from the London Evening Standard, posted up on the 08/08/11, covered the horror and uncertainty of the situation. There was a quote from a constable, which read:

The article in full can be found here: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23976535-fear-and-a-sense-of-loss-amid-high-streets-smoking-ruins.do
I’m sure that any gamers out there who read that (and many would have, seeing as the comment found its way to Kotaku) would have been incredibly offended by this. I know I was. It was a throw away comment by someone who was simply trying to make sense of something that was spiralling rapidly out of control, not meant to purposely damage the already shaky reputation of gaming. However, it is guaranteed that it will be used as fresh ammunition against the industry.
We’ve all seen what gaming does to us, according to the media. There’s the mum who killed her child for interrupting her Farmville session: http://tinyurl.com/32saold, the guy who killed his daughter because she broke his Xbox: http://tinyurl.com/ythjqj, and of course there’s the theory that the Columbine killers were heavily influenced by DOOM: http://tinyurl.com/3w2svmn. And these are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. There are thousands more identical stories, all laying the blame for society’s ills at the feet of the gaming industry.

Now, the vast majority of the readers here are going to be sensible, rational people. They’ll probably be thinking ‘Well yes, but I would never hurt someone simply because I’m into gaming. These people are the minority’. They would, of course, be right. Most gamers are normal people who have jobs and lives and relationships, and when they put down the controller or turn off the PC, they’re done. The gaming world doesn’t bleed over into the real one.
However, there will always be the minority who can’t separate the two, or disconnect themselves from their addiction to gaming. When the real world begins to intrude on their gaming, then something will give, and they will usually end up in the news. They are held up as an example of how gaming is eroding the morals of young people and killing everything from social skills to brain cells.
Video games aren’t the first form of entertainment to gain notoriety on the press. ‘Video nasties’ and rap music have both had their turn as the corrupting influences in the press. The problem is that gaming gets a worse rap than those two because of the society we live in today.

The problem is there’s a vicious cycle happening in parenting today. Some parents are afraid that their children are in danger if they are allowed to play outside with minimal supervision. With this in mind, their children are bought televisions and game consoles and laptops in order to keep them entertained indoors, where they can be watched over closely. These children then grow up with a misplaced sense of entitlement, and when they are older and realise they can’t get what they want by snapping their fingers at their parents or the government, incidents such as the recent riots occur when they decide to seize what they want by force.
Now I’m not a parent. I don’t want to make sweeping generalisations about how children are brought up this country, as it would be lazy and wrong. But I’ve worked with kids in the past, and it’s shocked me just how entitled some of them feel to be. I’ve talked to nine year old who have watched every film in the Saw franchise. I’ve had long discussions with kids over GTA. It’s very obvious that some parents are letting technology raise their children without vetting it for themselves first. It’s not exactly if it’s been made difficult for them. For all its faults, the ratings system does make it very clear what the content of every game is. If some parents aren’t interested in what their children are learning through these mediums, then I’m not surprised that their kids are picking up bad habits and gaining awful role models.

But then, I’m not saying that kids are automatically influenced by what they play. Yes, games will colour their life to a certain extent but most children won’t carry out what they see on screen. When I was younger I loved the Tekken series, but I didn’t go out looking for people to deliver flying kicks to the face to. Playing games like GTA will not automatically turn them into criminals, like many scaremongers try and claim. The human mind doesn’t work that way.
I realise I’ve started to write myself into circles here, but the issue is so dense and complicated I could talk for pages and pages about it and never be able to get at the heart of it. Those who took part in the widespread rioting and looting did it because they saw the chance to seize some power for themselves, not because they saw it in a video game. Those who killed their children or hurt others did so because they were deeply disturbed individuals, not because a game told them to. But the media will continue to claim this is the case because it’s easier to make the industry the scapegoat than address the real issues that are underlying.
At the end of the day, all we can do is continue to try and prove that most gamers are not greedy, violent sociopaths. The guys over at Penny Arcade have done a great job of this by starting Child’s Play, a charity that donates toys and games to children in hospitals. Most of us are a caring bunch who are sickened by the scenes we’ve seen in the news over the last few days. I’m going to end this with some words of wisdom from the Cyber Candy store here in Birmingham:

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