I'm allowed to have my rebellion, but you're not

Well, video games are bad for the youth of America. So says a bunch of people in Congress and "experts" in the field. It seems playing a game as a Italian-American who jumps around a lot, eats mushrooms to gain power, and fights evil turtles encourages you to commit violence.

Yes, good ol' Congress, who would rather denounce video games and hold hearings on steroids in professional sports than solve problems like health care.

Take the biggest story of the last few weeks, involving the game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Apparently hidden deep in the game's code is a minigame in which you can have virtual whoopie with women. The developers locked the code away, but with a downloadable mod, you can play the minigame. The controversy was so great that last week the game's rating was changed to "Adults Only" and several stores yanked the game.

Now comes a story about a controversy, which according to one person, is bigger than Grand Theft Auto. Click here to see a story which is quite interesting. This man has a beef against The Sims 2 because you can apparently get a patch to remove the blur that covers your sims when they are without apparrel. And he thinks that the game will be used as "training" for pedophiles.
Now, I play video games for fun, and sometimes as a stress reliever. I have a rough day, I can come home and beat up some supervillians in City of Heroes, play the dark side in Knights of the Old Republic, and yes, go on a rampage in Grand Theft Auto. Does that make me want to go out and commit violence? No! It actually calms me down since I can get stress out virtually. I'm smart enough to realize that it's not real. I sure as hell can't go put myself in "god mode," find a way to get every weapon imaginable, and go blow stuff up.

It's the old standard. The parents and government blame the media instead of themselves. Your kid just went out and carjacked someone to emulate Grand Theft Auto? Guess what, you're more to blame than the game. Because you let your kid play the game unsupervised, and were too dumb to point out, "Now honey, you do know you can't do that in real life, right?"

It's funny because I seem to recall reading about similar incidents like when say, Rock n' Roll first became big. Rock n' Roll was devil music and made children do terrible things. I say it's funny because the same kids who were rebelling back then and defending the medium are now probably the same people who are denouncing video games. Circle of life, indeed.

Do video games need a better ratings system? Maybe. The one now seems to be very close to movie ratings, telling you what the game is rated and why. Do places that sell these games need to do better when it comes to selling mature-rated games to kids? Definitely.

But for once, I would really like to see the blame shifted internally rather than externally. And as much as I hate to quote something, I'm going to quote South Park and its character Kyle, who is trying to plead with his crusading mother, "Want to blame someone? Blame me. Want to deal with someone? Deal with me."