Letters

Games don't kill, people do -- and guns. Readers respond to David Kushner's "Grand Death Auto."

Feb 24, 2005 | [Read the story.]

I am an avid lover of video games. I've been playing them since I was 8 (I'm 24 now) and I think that, at their most masterfully executed, video games are an art form. The "Grand Theft Auto" series, from "Grand Theft Auto III" to the most recent "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City," is a radiant demonstration of the art.

But I believe these murderous kids. I can say in all honesty that, after a long session of "Grand Theft Auto," I have driven past cars, even cop cars, and thought to myself, "Yo, let's jack that shit." No joke. The thought has crossed my mind, involuntarily, and seriously. I am smart enough and old enough to brush it off, but had that thought combined with adolescent irrationality, access to weapons, and the right set of emotional circumstances ... I don't know.

It's hard to say if you can blame video games for falling on the minds of emotionally disturbed adolescents who live in boring towns and have access to guns. These things are labeled "M" for "Mature" for a reason, but no serious video game producer believes that the 18+ crowd is its only audience. It comes down to whether or not you can blame parents for the actions and thought patterns of their children, and how you feel about the sources of violence in American culture. I'm not convinced that violence has become worse since the advent of Atari, but I'm not convinced it hasn't, either.

-- Dan Kaplan

Whenever I read one of these stories about violence and video games it hits really close to home, especially the first time. I grew up in a very nice neighborhood and went to a school that was not unlike Columbine. I was not one of the popular kids. I wore a lot of black, listened to industrial music and played a lot of video games. I ditched a lot of classes and did a lot of drugs. I remember the day that the shooting happened as well as the day the planes hit the towers. I was in a blood bank making a donation when the news broke. As days went by and people tried to figure out what had caused this horrible slaughter, everything from the video games to Marilyn Manson took the blame. As I sat there and heard pundits and parents hypothesize and rationalize, all I could think about was how much I looked and dressed like those kids and how much I understood what they were going through. If it is the superficial things about us that shape our minds and guide our actions then I guess there's something wrong with me because I never shot anyone.

Today I make video games for a living. Some of them are violent. Ever since human beings became civilized they have enjoyed danger, violence and death. From gladiatorial combat to public hangings to "Fear Factor," people have always loved to see bad things happen to other people. Freud referred to this primal aggressive desire as Thanatos. This desire is manifested in football games and NASCAR races, in addition to overt violence. In American culture, it is far more prevalent and accepted than Freud's other instinctive desire, Eros. These days if you broadcast too much Eros, you can expect a visit from Michael Powell. Video games don't make people violent, people make games violent because that is what they desire. We should be grateful that this escapist medium exists, because it is one of the few ways we have to express our primal feelings without hurting anyone.

-- David Mershon

So, two kids who have had pretty rough times get together, and go decide to shoot real guns at real trucks, killing real people. And then, they say that "GTA" made them do it?

Can we please just bury this theory once and for all? It's so monumentally ridiculous on its face that it seems almost ludicrous that anyone gives it any credibility at all.

"GTA" is a violent game. There's no question about it. Its violence is particularly effective because the world that the creators have managed to make bears a striking resemblance to reality, and the freedom afforded to the player allows them to be as sadistic as they please.

For a while, I resisted "GTA III," because it wasn't the kind of game I was interested in. Having listened to the controversy, I had no desire to shoot hookers, or kill random bystanders for fun.

But I love video games, and "GTA" is, at this point, a landmark in the medium that can't be ignored. So I played it. And I played it as nonviolently as the story line would allow, which was still pretty violent. But it's undoubtedly a compelling interactive experience, and the kind of experience that's unique to video games, due to the interactivity.

There are certainly some things that we see that affect us, and make us wish we could do things we shouldn't. After a couple hours of "Crazy Taxi," I want to drive like a maniac. After seeing Ong-Bak, my fiancie wants to run around and elbow people. But these things are not real.

These kids made a decision to steal their parents' guns, go to a particular location, load the guns, and shoot at people. Whether they really enjoyed shooting cars in "GTA III" is immaterial. There's a difference between reality and fantasy, and if they can't make that distinction, and understand the consequences of their decisions, they have no business being free to make those decisions.

-- Seppo Helava

The proximate cause of the killings on I-40 in Tennessee was not that the boys were playing a video game. It was that they had access to guns. If their father and stepfather had not bought the guns, shown them how to use them, and kept them in the house, the shootings would not have happened, no matter what ideas ran through the boys' minds. Americans are fools if they think they can lock a few doors and prevent their unhappy children from expressing their frustrations with firearms.

-- Jane Smiley

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