Glenn Beck on Video Games

Already known for his extreme right wing views (even by American Standards), Glenn Beck added to his infamy by stating that pop culture in general, including video games, television and music were all responsible for the "general downfall of American society".

Beck brings up two primary points in order to justify his desire to control/ban violent video games: The level of violence and sexuality in video games, and that video games can be used to train murderers.

While violence and sexual content are common in popular video games to today (GTA, Metal Gear, Halo), none of these games contain content that could not been seen in an R rated movie. The movie Braveheart for example contains sex scenes and lots of gory violence. In addition, much of the violence in R rated movies is more realistic than violence in M rated video games. (For international readers: An M rating for a video game is essentially the equivalent of an R rating for a movie in the US. In both cases the product is intended for audiences 17 or older)However, almost nobody ever complains about R rated movies being shown in cinema. Even the idea of a child watching these movies is not enough to create any significant movement to support their being banned. Beck seems to realize this and thus moves on to his next argument in an attempt to salvage this one.

Video games are different than R rated movies because of the interaction associated with video games. This interaction allows people to train on video games...or so Beck would have you believe. While it is true that the military uses video game-like software to train soldiers, the software is significantly different than civilian video games. Games like GTA could obviously never realistically be used as a "murder simulator" or trainer due to their lack of realism. In many games the main character can take half a clip or more to even be brought to his knees.

Many of my readers probably agree with my points, but find them obvious. So why do I bother to write this blog? Primarily because there are conservative gamers, even if they are a minority. While I do not aim to influence their views of political issues, I do care enough to try to make sure they are not deluded into agreeing with Glenn Beck. Even if you tend to agree with his politics, his positions on gaming are extreme enough and vehement enough that I feel no gamer could support him.

There are many other points I could bring up, however, I think it will be more enjoyable for the reader if I simply embed a Youtube video I have made about Beck that addresses these points and more. This way you can see clips of what he said about video games rather than having me tell you about it.
Here is the video: