| HappySqurriel said: I saw Glen Beck last night (when he did this story) and what I can say is that his portion of the argument was one-sided but generally fair ... The unfortunate problem was he brought Jack Tompson on and let him make wild claims without backing them up. The truth is that videogames have been used by the military to increase their soldiers willingness to kill other soldiers, it has been amazingly successful; but at the same time it has not eliminated the morality of the soldiers, and many soldiers suffer far worse PTSD because (after the fact) it occurs to them what they have done. In general, the show was not calling for a banning of videogames (or of people buying GTA) but did question whether GTA should have received an Adult Only rating which is a fair question given the content of GTA. |
Uh, it's not fair at all. GTA is not used by the government as a simulator for anything. Beck did not describe the mission-based software that the government uses. What did they use after WW2? Pong? Give me a break. GTA is no worse than a lot of R-rated movies. It does not deserve an NC-17 rating (which is the equivalent of Adult). The only thing Beck got right is that videogames are no different than other forms of pop culture. GTA is not a murder simulator. There is no research to back up that playing any kind of videogame leads to more violent behavior. In fact, there is evidence showing the opposite to be true.
