Play Meter

- JHE LAST WORD Are the games too violent? F rom Tom McAuliffe and Frank Ash, co-proprietors of Champions Amusement Centers, in a letter to Play Meter: "We feel compelled to protest the new levels of graphic violence, fighting, and gore that the latest video games have featured. It is time to develop non-violent games. We are now seeing entire families in our game rooms , and many family members do not wish to play video games with such aggressive themes. "Although sex and violence are pervasive in the entertainment industry, it does not have to be that way in our industry, where children are still our mainstream customer. It's time to do our own policing before others do it for us." From Mort Ansky of U.S. Games in a December interview: "The violence in today 's videos is ridiculous. I think all this violence will, very shortly, destroy whatever is left of the video game market." Well, there's at least one member of the coin-op industry who's tired of video games catching such flak. Choosing to remain anonymous, he says that instead of condemning the manufacturers for incorporating too much violence into their games , we should recognize that society's mores have changed and that different parts of the country make different value judgments. " If you go to the South, I guarantee you that some libraries won't have Tom Sawyer on the shelf," he said. "Is that right or wrong? According to the standards of some communities , it may be right. Other urban areas would decry a lack of freedom of speech, the First Amendment, and all that, and maybe they would be correct. But who's to say? Who's going to set the standards? We have to realize that the times are always changing. The youth of today are much more aware, at a much earlier age, of what's going on around them. " To this day , I don 't think anybody can make a correlation between entertainment and violent behavior. If a crowd of people who 've just seen Malcolm X decide to walk into the street and bang some heads, the feelings were already there. All the movie did was bring them up to the surface. " Just because games with destruction, shootings- even decapitation- sell , is it any reason to keep giving players more of it? Isn't there an ideal of the socially responsible manufacturer? "Is the coin-op industry supposed to be this shining oasis over here in the corner?" he said. "The kids want action games- look at the earnings! Are we supposed to give them more puzzle games , which historically haven't been PLAY METER 150 JANUARY 1993 supported nearly as well as action games? All action games have a certain amount of anti-social behavior. Does that mean the kids are going to act out what they see in the games? Come on; give them a little credit for being able to distinguish escapist, fantasy entertainment- which we provide-from everyday life. ''I'll put it this way: the m inute we believe that we are so critical and so vital that we're responsible for changing society's attitudes or behavior, look out. That's when things get scary. Hey, we 're not performing brain surgery; we 're providing a fantasy outlet . To think that we can stick our heads in the sand and go back to an age of innocence, when the world is no longer innocent, is crazy. " How true. At a time when thousands are starving in Somalia and "ethnic cleansing" is taking place in the splintered Yugoslavia, ask yourself this question: where would you like your 10-year-old child to be at 6 p .m .? In front of a TV set, watching the evening news, or playing a game of Street Fighter II with his pals? I thought so. D Christopher Caire Features Editor