Taking Away The Doors.

So what if it's rated 18, it's a computer game!

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Buy your 8 year old a game rated 18 and you may as well give them a swear word dictionary and a gun. These things are rated that way for a reason. I remember when I was in primary school we weren't allowed to watch the Toy Story video somebody brought in at Christmas because it was rated PG and not U. Things have changed it would seem.

I first began to realise how bad it had gotten when Lee brought home a game he borrowed from his 7 year old brother about a year ago. "This game's a bit dark for a seven year old" he told me as he started playing it. "It's about drugs mostly." As I half heartedly paid attention I began to notice an awful lot of swearing, See You Next Tuesday included. Then the protagonist raped a prostitute while swearing into her face and stole her money. (this was the 'good guy' by the way) It was extremely graphic. A little too graphic for me even.

I'm not saying that kids need to be entirely sheltered, the things they hear on the playground these days are getting worse and worse, it's not uncommon for children who have only just learned to speak to be shouting fuck off and similar to their mothers - five minutes of watching Supernanny will tell you that.

Wait, Cal, why are you watching Supernanny? - There's nothing else on on a Sunday morning. Okay?

I wouldn't have liked to have played any of these games when I was younger, I remember specifically my Mum calling me sick and twisted for setting fire to The Sims. But come on, that was practically the objective of the game. Making them happy got boring after about 13 seconds. "You could at least give them a chance to escape. Taking away the doors is just sick."



Okay, maybe she was right. Maybe taking away the doors was a little sick but I've not met anyone who's played The Sims and not done exactly the same.

Then there's Grand Theft Auto, probably what started this bombardment of inappropriate material in computer games. I'm not complaining about the games themselves, I played the first few and really enjoyed them. Okay, maybe running after a granny with a chainsaw isn't a very productive use of my time, but it's fun. It just is. I probably played my first Grand Theft Auto game when I was about 14, four years below the 18 certificate. Thinking back it didn't seem bad back then, I didn't see anything or hear anything I hadn't heard or seen anywhere else but if a kid a few years younger got hold of those games you might have a problem on your hands.

There's enough teenagers who think they're gangsters around as it is without Grand Theft Auto encouraging it. I was sickened a few months back as I was scrolling down my facebook news feed. Scrolling past the usual "lol last nyt was mynt!!!!" and such and stumbled upon something a long the lines of. "I hope that woman was okay last night, I can't believe that happened in front of us." I read the long chain of comments underneath wanting to know what had happened. Turned out some woman had been run down by a speeding car outside a gig. The disturbing thing was the long chain of people (who were there) finding the whole thing hilarious. I remember one of them said "10 points to the driver for that hit! If she dies he gets another 10 points, it's a shame he didn't get out and rape her, he would have got a full 100 for that." - Not his exact words, but that's the context of what he said. It made me sick I had to say something and when I did I got a long stream of comments defending this person. I don't understand people sometimes. I really don't. They seem to have been so desensitised by life and death that they make a game out of it.

So that brings me finally onto the worst of the worst. I stopped playing console games some years back so I didn't really know what was out there anymore. After watching the video at this link http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103423-72-Percent-of-Adults-Support-California-Game-Law-UPDATED I realised how bad it was.

In one clip of a game called Postal 2 a man chases down a woman who says "Please don't kill me i'm a virgin" beats her, pisses on her, then kicks her down a flight of stairs.

Oh please Mummy, please buy me Postal 2.

You're getting Hello Kitty Island Adventure and that's that.