Grand Theft Auto V is out, so every right-wing politician with votes to secure and every overwhelmingly idiotic journalist who believes video games “train your nervous system to be more efficient at killing” inevitably come out of the woodwork to stand on their soapboxes once again.
Yesterday, a news report was being circulated that a young man was stabbed for his copy of the game. “Grand Theft Auto V fan stabbed and robbed hours after buying new game in north-west London”, reads the headline from the Metro. This is true, the man was robbed of the game, but he was also robbed of a number of items he had purchased from the Asda supermarket he was exiting when he was stabbed. The headline didn’t read “Man stabbed for food shopping in north-west London”, or “Man stabbed for mobile phone in north-west London” because neither would have attracted the same kind of attention. The ‘do video games cause violence?’ continues to rage on because there will always be people to argue for either side of the fence, and there will always be media outlets to capitalize on this by baiting them into arguing.
For me, reading these headlines doesn’t provoke the same kind of frustration I felt when the GTA series first found itself being blamed for the world’s ills. I’m no longer angered when a tabloid newspaper claims that Call of Duty inspired a mass-murder. This is because I know that we, and by “we” I mean those of us sensible enough to realize that a madman will always be a madman regardless of whether or not he owns an Xbox, have won this debate. Video games are no longer the dirty little secret of teenage males, they’re now played by a wide and diverse range of people. There’s no real reason for us to engage with these attention-seeking conspirators anymore, because it’s now widely acknowledged that they don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.
I would bet that the journalists for the tabloid newspapers who write stories condemning violent video games don’t even believe the drivel they’re spouting anymore, but as print media continues to struggle and they need to generate hits on their website to stay relevant, angering the gaming community is a logical, if dishonest, solution to this problem.
But who does their dishonest reporting harm? Gaming continues to be the most lucrative entertainment medium, and every game that’s ever been the unfortunate focus of a misguided campaign has only ever gone on to sell bucket-loads. Ultimately, the only people who will find themselves agreeing with these reports are the people who made up their minds years ago about video games, and who have likely never played one. Ill-informed news stories slamming Grand Theft Auto V for its violent content despite it being an 18+ rated game are redundant, and only exist in order to attract us into defending it in the comments section of the Mail Online and the like.
The lies that the tabloids spin regarding video games may be rage-inducing, but if we do not give them the attention they crave, they will also be fruitless.
