All's fair

This is interesting. I found a link on Kotaku to boingboing.com, which touts itself as a "directory of wonderful things."

And indeed, it is.

A blog entry details an interesting relationship between a man named Hugh Spencer and his son Evan, who is a (shudder) "gamer", and loves shooting at things in Call of Duty.

Hugh is, based on the snippet I read, a pretty insightful person. He understands the need of balancing his desires versus his sons, and he's realistic about them as well. In order to reach some kind of balance, Hugh had his son read about the Geneva Conventions prior to playing the game. Afterwards, Hugh and Evan discussed it and reached an agreement that when Evan plays Call of Duty online, he and his teammates should play accordingly to the laws and bylaws of the Geneva Conventions. Should Evan fail to meet this requirement, the game has to be taken away for a while.

Naturally, any medium that allows a person to essentially point at and unload virtual bullets into a living, breathing (for the sake of the argument) organism, with realistic portrayals of exit wounds and gore causes all sorts of alarms to go off in a person's head.

I have no doubt in my mind that when my son is about 13 years of age, first person perspective-based shooters or adventures will still be a relevant and no doubt fun genre of gaming. But even as an enthusiastic fan of all things first-person, and obviously a lover of video games since Mega Man 2, I've debated as to whether or not I'd allow my son or maybe daughter to play these games before he reaches the intended age of 17+, as stated on the box.

Sheltering a child is one thing, but completely immersing a child, inundating his senses in an act of forced recognition... that's something completely different. Another fact that I have no doubt of is the difficulty of reconciling these kinds of situations as a parent, as someone who has faced similar forms of censorship and protection from their parents, later understood why, but has continued to grasp at the fine line between, as I stated above, full-on sheltering a child and presenting a child with the cold, hard reality of this violence we've all come to relative terms with.

I do believe games are, for the right person, a therapeutic outlet in many ways. Although many critics and parental watchdog groups vilify video games as a form of "murder simulator," I think there's a difference between someone who loves games and someone who plays games for specific reasons. There's a difference between someone who will play Katamari Damacy as a goofy way to waste time, then switch to Prince of Persia to lose themselves in an epic yarn, and then play the "Don't Call Me Shirley" stage in Call of Duty 4:MW on Veteran difficulty as a test of their reflex and skill, and someone who plays first-person shooters as a way to curb their innate desire to shoot at living things with families and aspirations. The latter is what we call mentally unbalanced.

As therapeutic as they are, however, I do believe video games are a distortion of reality. In order for that first hypothetical someone to fully enjoy these virtual worlds so painstakingly crafted to exude some semblance of reality, a person should first be well-grounded, or as well-grounded as possible at their age and emotional maturity, in the truths about their world and the society they live in. I don't mean "truths" as in a full-on 300+ years worth of socially just education on the class struggle or anything like that. I mean "truths" as in action versus consequence.

There is something about the FPS genre, something profoundly visceral about the empowering ability to soak up as many bullets as humanly possible in a short span of time and issue out ten times the amount of pain and damage. FPSes, then, are perhaps the greatest distortion of reality available in game form, because of the way the games are played out. In Monolith's latest F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, the entire game, from cutscenes to major events, play out in the eyes of the protagonist, namely, the person playing the game. As Monolith's effort is a supernatural / horror-based game, perspective and total possible immersion is important, and an FPS is an ideal genre to express the scares and shocks Monolith hopes to attain from the gamer. FPSes will always remain violent, because there's that perspective and that crucial presentation of reality that makes a good FPS just that.

Games will attempt to morally justify the gamer's slaying of potentially hundreds of thousands of virtual enemies. Maybe the enemy is part of an imperialistic army. Maybe the enemy torched your home to the ground twenty years ago. Or, the enemy's an alien. Fuck it. Go wild. This happens sometimes, but most of the time, the justification for slaughter boils down to "kill or be killed." This is the case with on-line competitive FPSes, where the sole reason for violence is violence itself. This is also where that distinction between reality and entertainment needs to be drawn. To go back to my opening example, Hugh Spencer hasn't exactly nailed that proverbial head, but he's engaged his son with an intelligent proposition. His son may have learned something useful about the Geneva Conventions, which may help him in his cultural geography class someday, but most importantly, Hugh is actively involved in fostering the idea of principles, moral guidance in his son.

Any parent who either has not educated their child to be a socially responsible individual or actively shelters their child from any form of violent video game is, I think, missing something in the big picture. I won't go as far as to say they're bad parents, as that's way too presumptuous, even for my tastes. Parents, amidst their busy schedules, try to do the best job possible in raising their child and educating them according to their own morals and values. But sometimes, realistic measures need to take place. It's interesting how Hugh's method of educating his son on the values of principle, even in something like an on-line shooting game, as pragmatic and realistic as it is, is labelled as "fresh", or perhaps "innovative." This either means, long story short, that many parents are missing the mark on that happy little divide, or we're not doing enough coverage on parents that are doing their jobs.

To go back to the previous examples, we are not defined by the games we play. Rather, our likes and dislikes define the games we play. More importantly, our personalities define the ways we play our games. Chances are, if you're a decently grounded person, a round of Call of Duty will not make you want to hunt down Russian ultranationalists in the dead calm of a snowy plain. As someone who has yet to even come to grips with the concept of potentially one day perhaps, maybe, possibly raising a child, Hugh Spencer's method is somewhat of an inspiration, and an important reminder to myself as to, when I'm that theoretical parent, what's really important when educating my kid.