This is a reply to the Moral Kombat as posted by Jim Sterling, it was getting a bit long so I decided to turn it into a blog post.

Regardless of the film's true intentions, the trailer makes gaming look bad, it alienates those of us who play games understand them, we understand that games have evolved past collection coins and stompting on goombas(not to say those games don't have their place), videogames can now be used as a storytelling medium and can do much more.

The ignorant never get it and don't care understand it, the same crop of people who where angry at their parents and the establishment as it where, have no become that old fogey in the street corner complaining about the younguns and their rock and roll.

The people that call and Xbox 360 a nintendo, a small portion of these people simply don't know much about different machines, but a huge portion of them are just a bunch of ignorant fools who still view gaming as a kids hobby, polls have shown the average age of gamers in the 20's to late 30's, those kids who grew with a Nintendo? They're adults with jobs now and they never put that controller down, they've evolved with the times.

As the years pass, something is always blamed, lack of responsibility is ignored in favor of a scapegoat, comic books, jazz, rock and roll, television, books and now video games. Its a sad thing when video games are more closely monitored and censored than any other entertainment medium.

To use an example, even if the game was terrible, compared Manhunt 1's killing to Manhunt's 2 killings, notice how much blurred and censored they are now, Rockstar fought the power allright, they took away the only reason most people played the original game for, the over the top killing(although Manhunt did have a decent stealth engine).

If it where to up to these people, we would only be playing educational games(much like they ruined tv by forcing educational programming into cartoons and beating you over the head with the lesson of the day), there's millions of gamers out there, we need to do something before continues down this path, if they ignore you, at least you tried, at least you told someone "hey, games are more than just kids toys now", at this rate I find video games more interesting and creative than the movie industry, mostly because video games give the director more free reign. There are less limitations in the video game world.

One hopes things will get better, comics and every other thing blamed for society's ills came out ok, I'm sure video games will as well, we simply hear about this more because of the net, its a lot easier to spread a particular message through this medium.

Kids shooting up a school? Where are the real questions? How did he get a gun? Does he have a history of mental illness? Was he bullied?, no, all people look for is "Did he watch violent movies? Does own a copy of GTA?"

Not to mention, that lately when kids starting acting like kids and doing all the stupid shit we all took for granted back then, parents answer to this is send them to shrink to get them medicated, these medicines stun the kid, he can't grow as a person, he has trouble dealing with things or is simply to apathetic to everything around him and you end with someone with all these emotions inside them, inevitably they break free and you end with someone who's just waiting for a reason to snap and do something terrible.

Some kids are strong enough to break free, most are not, I was one who broke free, for 10 year I shut myself off the world, never caring about anything, never expressing an emotion, I played things like Doom, Counterstrike, the PS1 GTA and other things as years passed, I had feelings sometimes of wanting to hurt those who bullied me and turned me into this, at 24 now I've managed to mostly break free, I never took a gun to anyone and even though I wanted to hurt those who hurt me, I never wanted to kill them, I just wanted them to feel like I did, having been through hell, I can see why some kids do what they do, to hit rock bottom in such way is very difficult and even harder to get out of if you don't have a good family or a friend that cares about you. In my story, games didn't have any blame for how I felt, it was people and the fact they are cruel sons of bitches, always have been and always will be.

In a counterargument to myself in regards to the parents thing, some people are just fucked in the head, I'm not sure when it happened but Gabe of Penny Arcade once reported on an 18 year old who killed someone, when interviewed the kid said that it reminded him of playing game, naturally that's all the media focused on.

The mother sent Gabe a message afterwards explaining how the kid was always a lunatic and how her other son was doing well for himself.

Some people are just nuts right out of the womb, I myself know at least 4 people who have never touched a video game in their life but are complete scum and more in common with a turd than an actual human being. Some people will use games as something to drive them but if they didn't have games they would turn to other things, animal abuse, abusing those around them, anything they can do to be violent and generally act like a psycho.

Far as I know, God didn't create the Atari alongside Adam and Eve, murder, rape, spousal abuse and other unheard of crimes have existed well before the age of christ, for society to always pin the blame on something just shows how we have never evolved and sad as it is, those of us who have evolved past that are few in numbers are generally silenced or drowned by the cries of the ignorant.

The old farts can ignore some of us but not all of us, I just hope we never reach the point where millions of gamers have to unite in some way to stop train of ignorance.