Perhaps it’s a low blow on the part of the New York Daily News to bring out the mother of a slain police officer to talk about the important social issue that is Grand Theft Auto Four. Perhaps her perspective and testimony might be a smidge biased. Perhaps it’s even totally irrelevant as the evil murdering bastards who killed her son never even played a video game in their lives (not that we know either way, of course), but ever in the pursuit of a decent sound bite, they trotted out bereaved mother Tatyana Timoshenko to spew the quote:

For some people, it’s a game. But for me, it’s not funny. It was for real. It was my son. This game teaches children to kill, then they wonder where criminals come from.

Which is, of course, true in only a very very limited number of cases, but joining in the take-advantage-of-a-grieving-mother-fest was Mayor Michael Bloomberg (”The kids are playing these violent games that don’t exactly teach the kind of things that you’d want to teach your kids.” Really, Your Honor? Perhaps then parents should actually TEACH kids the kind of thing they’d want teaching the kids and then us childless folk can get back to the game.) and Pat Lynch of the NYPD Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (”Being involved in a shootout in a video game has no consequences and that is the wrong message to send to young people.” Okay…one, young people should not be receiving this message at all–the game has been RATED by an independent board as not being fit for young people. Now it’s up to PARENTS to keep their young people away from it. Two, I’m pretty sure everyone’s aware–that isn’t under the age of ten or otherwise mentally deficent–that getting in a real-life shootout has consequences. If they haven’t, then once again, their PARENTS screwed up.)

Which at the end of the day is what it comes down to. Parents. Get involved, and keep the games that are too mature for them to handle away from them. You may not be able to completely stop them from playing but you can at least keep it out of your house. And you can also teach them the difference between fantasy and reality, which is ALWAYS a useful lesson, not just any time Rockstar releases a game.

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Categories: Video games //