When Racism and Stupid Fear of Video Games Collide

I’m not much of a gamer. So when I say that the mainstream take on video games as the root of all evil in teenage American life is deluded, don’t chalk it up to bias.

Yes, too much gaming makes kids fat. But it’s not the direct cause of school shootings. That’s why it’s unbelievably stupid that a student was severely disciplined for creating a map of his school as part of an online video game project.

This kid had no history of violence or bad behavior. The only two factors against him were that he created a gaming environment that looked like his school’s layout, and that he’s Asian.

Now, I know we’re all a bit touchy in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings. But it’s not an Asian thing or a gamer thing — must I remind you that Seung Cho didn’t even play video games? Shooting up schools is a violent, delusional, crazy thing to do. And delusional craziness doesn’t discriminate by skin color.

Fundy PR Flack Crawls Out of the Woodwork, Posts Boilerplate, Doesn’t Address Real Issues

About a month ago, I got my panties in a twist about a video game called Eternal Forces that’s based on the “Left Behind” books by fundy Evangelical Tim LaHaye.

Today, I got a comment from a person who identified herself only as “SJR.” She wrote:

This statement is posted from an employee of Left Behind Games on behalf of Troy Lyndon, our Chief Executive Officer.

There has been in incredible amount of MISINFORMATION published in the media and in online blogs here and elsewhere.

Pacifist Christians and other groups are taking the game material out of context to support their own causes. There is NO “killing in the name of God” and NO “convert or die”. There are NO “negative portrayals of Muslims” and there are NO “points for killing”.

Please play the game demo for yourself (to at least level 5 of 40) to get an accurate perspective, or listen to what CREDIBLE unbiased experts are saying after reviewing the game at www.leftbehindgames.com/pages/controversy.com.

Then, we’d love to hear your feedback as an informed player.

The reality is that we’re receiving reports everyday of how this game is positively affecting lives by all who play it.

Thank you for taking the time to be a responsible blogger.

The problem is, my post was mostly about my own reaction to a game that promotes a condescending, judgmental attitude toward people who refuse to subscribe to a militant, frighteningly cultlike version of Evangelical Christianity that bears almost no resemblance to the original teachings of Jesus. I wrote that, as a Jewish person, this attitude makes me feel unwelcome in my own country.

If SJR had chosen to relate to me on those terms, I might still disagree with her, but at least we could have parted ways respectfully. Now I’m all pissed off again! She seems to think that her boilerplate about misinformation by “Pacifist Christians” — are there any other kind? — will pacify me. She’s wrong.

SJR, I have a challenge for you. Come back here and post a comment that addresses the real issue. Your game promotes an “us against them” mentality. It promotes condescention to Jews and Muslims who won’t convert. It also happens to put heavy weaponry in the hands of the people who are doing the condescending. If you have any understanding of history or human nature, you know what happens when one group (”us”) looks down their noses at another group (”them”). You also might be able to guess what happens when the “us” group has weapons.

Whether or not your game actively promotes violence in the name of God, you can’t blame people for drawing that conclusion. Why? Because the encouragement of violence is implicit in the very ideology you espouse.

Come back here. Address that. Then we can talk.

Nintendo Exec’s Get Annoyed With Fat, Lazy Americans, Invent “Wii”

So I played the new Wii last night. Originally I had thought that it was just another console, but I was wrong. While the only game I got to play was the relatively crappy game that comes with Wii, it was very clear that this is something new.

Rather than sitting around for two hours playing video games and getting fat while my muscles dissolve and my thumbs get calluses, I actually got a workout in from Wii. I good one. Thanks to its special motion-sensitive controllers, the Wii gets you up and moving around. The result is both a fun, calorie-burning workout, and the most addictive video game console ever.

Leave it to the executives at Nintendo, whose addictive video games helped jump start our childhood obesity epidemic to come up with a solution.