as a guest author on Acting Balanced today as part of her virtual book tour; Please also stop by tomorrow when I post my review of her book!
Do Game Developers Have Kids?
The game
developer DICE has released a war game that allows players to take on the role
of the Taliban and kill American troops. I’m not making this up:
Disturbing
isn’t it? What will our young people learn from this?
My generation
has very little tolerance for allowing kids to play games that dehumanize them
any more than they already are from watching violence on TV. I know, I sound
like my grandmother already; but why don’t these computer smart-ass wizards
create something that contributes to a child’s sense of loyalty, creativity,
self-respect and well being?
Just the
other day, I walked past my grandson’s bedroom as his mother was confiscating
the Xbox. Its fate was a sledge hammer. Apparently, the game got intense and
his loud cussing was drowning out her evening ritual of listening to Jack
Canfield, Deepak Chopra, and Loretta LaRoche in the living room to lighten up
and relax. So, she marched upstairs where the loud unholy echoing vibes were
coming from, pulled a Lizzy Borden, and gave it 40 whacks. At the same time,
she began Googling an exorcist in the hopes of saving her son because he was
having convulsive fits with an Xbox monkey on his back.
This is what
happens to our children after they outgrow Barney, Blues Clues, and playing
Fish.
I guess the
game developers don’t have kids. They should be forced to understand the havoc
these games cause outside the lab and test facility. A robot playing the game
is one thing, a young adult does not respond the same way. Where the robot
might politely say “game-over-my-avatar-lost,” the human child says “What the
^&*!?” and throws a wild temper tantrum.
I could also elaborate on a few television programs that add those words
to their vocabularies, but that would take me forever.
As most of us
know, this offensive behavior does not contribute to the health and well being
of other family members, especially seniors, even if you do take the batteries
out of their hearing aids. The white noise can literally turn their nervous
systems into jello.
Two nights
ago, while Junior was playing Manhunt on his Nintendo and sending out demon
vibes that bellowed down the staircase, Aunt Ida, who is 86 years old, thought
it was the end of the world, said an Act of Contrition, and loudly proclaimed her
innocence before she passed out. The fact that Uncle Harry was watching Glenn
Beck on the TV in the next room at the same time, might have contributed to it
as well, I’m not sure.
Poetic
justice would be for a game developer to actually give birth to Rosemary’s baby
and deal with the little monster while working from home.▪
Rose A. Valenta is a nationally syndicated humor
columnist. Her 
irreverent columns have been published in Senior Wire, Associated
Content, Courier Post Online, NPR, Newsday, USA TODAY, the WSJ Online, and many other local news
and radio websites. She is the author of Rosie’s
Renegade Humor Blog, http://www.rosevalenta.com;
and the humor book, Sitting on Cold
Porcelain.