Monday, August 9, 2010

The Virtue of a Thug

Today, while entering the video game world of "grand theft auto 4", I lived a life of Drug dealing thug. My character is a ghetto city kid from New York and somehow I have more weapons than any normal person would ever be able to carry. When I put them away they don't weigh me down and disappear when I put them in my coat.

I walked out into the street and pulled a man out of his car and threw him out into the street. I stepped into his car and peeled away before he would have a chance to catch me. While leaving I noticed the man trying to follow me on foot, so I decided to get rid of him and eliminate enemies. I backed up, driving over the man, while listening to his boned crush.

After that, I decided to drive my new stolen car as fast as I could. I held the gas, speeding up through red lights and intersections, speeding around cars, and watching the buildings around me start to blur together into a massive mirage.

It was hard to keep control and I drive up a small set of stairs, flipped the vehicle almost sideways, smash into a support beam spinning my car into a 360 degree spin, and two massive flips landing the car straight onto the road.

I was still fine and didn't even have a scratch one me, so I kept driving. While joyriding my car, it started to smoke clouds of burning embers, so I pulled over to let it cool down. When the flames got higher, I started running, listening to the explosion behind me. It threw me forward, nearly knocking me out, but I got up and kept running.

I stopped, realizing I was fine and decided to jump into a canal near-by.

After swimming pretty far out, I tried desperately to grab onto moving boats with attempts to become a pirate and steal them. My attempts were failures, so I swam onto a big rock, and in a rage, fired at random boaters with a sniper rifle. When I had trouble hitting the people that were really far away, I used a rocket launcher to blow their boats to hell.

After a few rounds of random acts of murder, the cops started to catch on. A helicopter was sent, so I used my rocket launcher to blast it out of the sky. I jumped into the water and grabbed a random boat of someone that I had killed.

I made it and started driving as fast as I could, but it was no use, they already had cop boats out. I could hear guns firing behind me. One hit me and the screen turned dark. That was how my life ended.

This is the life that thousands of children are using as an escape. This is the alternate reality that fuel entertainment, while glorifying mass killing. Murder is already a problem in North America, what is the point of making it into a game for kids to play. Children grow up believing that drug dealing, killing, and stealing are normal appropriate acts. It is no wonder the world seems to be getting darker, consciousness is developing a persona of emulated violence.

Using simulation as an example, video games and media play a huge role in shaping our minds and beliefs. I play this game, realising what a terrible nature it had, giving drug dealing, murdering thug a heroic part in a video game. I played it with enjoyment, but something in the back of my head was in fear to what this game is doing to the minds of our future generations.

No comments:

Post a Comment