This is what a friend recently wrote to me about taking his sons to play video games – names have been changed to protect the (not-so) innocent kids:
When the family got home from church, my son Barry reminded me that I had promised to take him to “Friendlly Fire” the video game parlor down the street. I agreed, and Larry, Barry and I walked down there. It was very clean and neat inside with a late teen running the counter. $5 for one hour was the minimum. I got Larry and Barry both an hour. The only thing appropriate for Barry was Spiderman and Ratotuille. All the rest of the games, and there were many, were shoot em ups, also know as “fantasy violence”. This is what the dozen or so other kids were playing with headphones on and all sitting in recliners that react to the game with shaking and vibrating! I sat at a table in the middle and watched over my boys’ shoulders. Barry was soon leaping and swinging down the canyons of a city while Larry was splattering blood all over the place including on the screen from his fantasy violence. I looked around and all the other teenagers were doing the same thing. I called up one of my friends and was describing it to him and he told me to relax, remember when we did real violence with rock fights!! I wasn’t feeling any better about it. At least with rock fights we felt the consequences. This fantasy violence has none of the repercussions like the misery that real violence begats. I really am concerned what this is doing to our young peoples minds. God help us.
Seems as though he has a point there. I’ve always wondered how you could play those games, especially as they become more and more realistic, yet still remember that in real life, real people die.