It seems every other day there's a concerned mother off on a tangent about how this or that game is corrupting todays youth. As long as games have been made for someone other than two year olds, someone's been around to complain. These days there's even more to complain about. If it isn't Stubbs the Zombie endorsing canibalism, then it's Grand Theft Auto teaching twelve year olds how to steal cars ("Hey timmy, how do we turn it on? I can't find the Y button!"). More recently, minorities have decided that video games are offensive to them, with such titles as Resident Evil 5 and Left 4 Dead 2 daring to show black people living in Africa and Louisiana, respectively. Even worse, the new Call of Juarez has the sheer audacity to cast the player as an indivdual from the civil war era south who just happens to have been a CONFEDERATE SOLDIER (*gasp), because we all know that people living in that area at that time had a choice about fighting for the south.

But I digress. We're here to talk about the loose morality of video games, not their blatant racism. One of the big hot button issues is sex in video games, and no game has taken more hits in that regard than the wildly popular grand theft auto series. In particular, San Andreas has taken a lot of flak for the "hot coffee" minigame that allowed players to control sexual encounters with their various "girlfriends" in rather graphic detail. Of course, that one was bad, but there are arguably worse sexual encounters to be had in the series. Chief among them is the ability to use hookers as Health Packs and then, if you're a frugal player, beat them over the head and steal your money back. I mean, wow, what kind of message is that to send to our kids? "Women are tools to make you feel good and nothing more. Well, actually, they are also piggy banks, so make sure after they make you feel good that you crack them open and take out the money." Seriously, any kid who can't differentiate between fantasy and reality is gonna get messed up over that one. Of course, GTA isn't the only game to feature sexual content.

One game in particular that was a source of much controversy recently was Bioware's Sci-Fi opus Mass Effect, a game that was described as featuring "the ability for players to engage in full graphic sex" by certain newscasters who will go unnamed here. Let me tell you, I spent hours looking for that particular piece of content for, umm... journalistic reasons, and nowhere did I find a full featured sex simulator. The closest I found to that was a single, somewhat less than graphic sex scene that comes as the culmination of a slowly developing romantic subplot. You can only engage in the "act" with a character after you have gotten to know them very well and have developed a close, affectionate relationship with them. Wow, I can only imagine what kind of message that sends to kids. "You should only engage in the act of intercourse with someone you really care for, and when you find someone you love you shouldn't rush things."

Wait a minute.

I'm pretty sure I've heard that somewhere before. It sounds like the kind of thing a concerned mother would say. GASP! Does that mean that Mass Effect is trying to impart a good moral lesson about sexual relations? Could it be that playing Mass Effect could give kids an accurate and realistic view of this touchy subject? DOUBLE GASP! Could it be that video games can tackle mature subject matter without trivializing it?! I'll need to double check. Quick, what's another M rated game? Oh, here's one, Fallout 3!

I remember this one, some concerned mothers in Australia made a big stink over it's depictions of drug use. Apparently they almost got it banned until Bethesda decided to remove the animations showing the drug's use and just have it take immediate effect, a decision that affected every single version of the game around the world. If I remember correctly, the drugs in the game give you temporary stat bonuses, but if you use them too often you can develop an addiction that has a negative impact on your stats when you aren't high. Now what could that teach our kids? "Drugs make you feel good, but they can be addictive and using them can have serious long term effects on your overall health."

What a terrible thing to tea- oh wait.

I guess that's kind of reasonable. In fact, that's probably a more accurate portrayal of narcotics than any I've seen on TV. Especially PSAs that are expressly designed to teach kids about drugs. (POT KILLS. THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON DRUGS! *frying pan to egg) I'd go so far as to say that's pretty much the ideal thing to tell kids. You inform them of the negative effects without sounding like you're trying to use scare tactics and hyperbole to trick them. Kid's don't like being treated like idiots. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that a video game is the ideal place to teach these kinds of things, because it displays some real penalties, both physical and monetary, for drug abuse. If I see a realistic situation where drug use could put me in danger ("OH GOD I CAN'T OUTRUN THESE SUPER MUTANTS BECAUSE I'M OUT OF JET AND IN WITHDRAWL I'M GONNA DIE") or cost me money (for instance, I had to drop, like, ten pounds of loot in order to fast travel from DC to Megaton when I became a buffout addict, and then the doc charged me a whole crapton of caps to cure my addiction), I'll probably be more wary of drugs in the future.

Taking that into account, it's actually kind of morally reprehensible that Bethesda was forced to remove all references to real drugs from the game, using meth and speed instead of jet and buffout would have helped develop a one to one connection in the kids' minds between those drugs and the negative side effects.

So what am I saying here? Basically, concerned mothers need to do some research into things before becoming concerned about things. Just because a game contains sex, drugs or violence does not mean that it is automatically trying to corrupt our youth and turn them into deviants. The fact of the matter is that media can't just pretend that these things don't exist. These are subjects that need to be adressed, after all, it's better for a kid to learn about drugs from tv than it is for him to learn about them from the school dealer. Since kids are going to learn about this stuff anyway, we may as well tell them in the most responsible way possible, and certain video games provide that responsible teaching method possible. So the next time you hear about a game that deals with sex, or drugs, or other mature content, take a look to see what it's actually saying about those mature themes. Because if you automatically assume that every mature game is GTA, you'll end up denying your kids the proper moral lessons contained in the next Mass Effect.

When I have kids, I'd much rather play through Mass Effect with them than just bore them with "the talk" straight up. You know what? I think I will.