The end of civilisation!!!

I realised last night, while lying awake in a state of perpetual pre-sleep, that I hadn't updated my blog for a month and that people might be worried. I'm sorry, I've been trying to write a book. But don't worry, here is a piece of writing so brilliant you could call it a tiger…

It seems that you can't go more than a month or two without a news story pillaring the video game industry for corrupting children and transforming them from innocent, doe eyed angels in to vicious, immoral, prostitute murdering beasts. The statistics might not quite back this theory up, but lets not allow facts to get in the way of our self righteous anger!

Groups like Family First NZ campaigned to have Grand Theft Auto banned because it was a "killing simulator". Bob McCoskrie, moral outrage specialist, was vociferous in his criticism of a game that (if the player wanted to) allowed them to pick up a prostitute, have sex with them and then murder them and nick their money. One can only assume he'd researched this himself to make sure. This, of course, coming without a shred of hypocrisy from the man that demands the right for parents to be able to beat their children without fear of prosecution.

Anyway, this has all been done to death. I just wanted to introduce this weeks topic "Games Through the Ages". A critical look at the evolution of popular pass times and suggestions as to why children these days seem more interested in spending their lives in front of a television than eating mud. What's the point in this? There isn't one, I'm just really, really bored.

If you were a child of the 1870s, chances are your spare time (when not up chimneys or down mines) was spent playing with a hoop and a stick. A round piece of wood, and a fucking stick. Imagine Christmas morning now, in 2009 and little William opens his last, big present. you'd see the initial excitement give way to confusion before very quickly turning to unbridled fury. Good luck shifting him out the front door and encouraging him to push his hoop along the road with a twig. "Go on William, run. Run with your hoop" you'd call enthusiastically while William contemplated parenticide.

Parents lament the old days when children would run with gay abandon in the fresh air, making do with nature instead of getting progressively obese in the sole company of pixels. But what self respecting seven year old would subsitute a realistic portrayel of space exploration for a game of Chinese Whispers with Toby, Sebastian and Lucy from next door?
"Oh you said 'I like to ride two trucks' not 'I don't give two…" There are only so many times a child can find enjoyment from such banal activities, especially as they're forced in to socialising at school.

A quick browse of wikipedia shows other popular games such as hop-skotch, knuckle bones and Cowboys and Indians. Okay, so two of those probably assist with dexterity and balance in a round about way, but the other is a simulation of the genocide of a peaceful indigenous people. And yet it's looked back on quite fondly by many. In 100 years time, I bet parents wont be telling their kids to run along and play Concentration Camps.

With every new video game that involves something like guns or fighting, people start panicking that the moral fabric of society is about to implode in to an anarchistic wasteland of murderous children. Yet the evidence simply doesn't back this up.
Kids from the 80s will have played games like Asteroid. Yet how many children do you know that have been killed after their space ship was crushed by a giant rock? Fewer than five I bet!

As a child, I played games on an old Acorn Electron called "Kissing Cousins" and "Mineshaft" yet I've never even cast a glad eye towards a member of my own family let alone been crushed by a giant anvil 500 metres below the surface of the earth.

Having said all that, there is a possible danger in the popularity and evolution of video games. Singstar!
More and more children are being given the false impression that they can sing because their XBox told them they could. This is not true. The Xbox will not be brutally honest, if it was then nobody would buy it, so it lies and fills them with false hope and promise.
Coupled with the increasingly frustrating popularity of shows like American Idol or X-Factor, these deluded Singstar fanatics are being forced on to television and in to my ears. And I'm not happy.

I will happily make my own placard and march arm in arm with Bob McCorskrie as soon as he starts his campaign to ban kareoke style entertainment.
As soon as I've finished shooting the elderly and puppies anyway.