The Gamer’s Quagmire: 7th Edition
- Jamison DeLorenzo

Gaming, humor, and insanity in harmony

With all of the hoopla about parents knowing what their kids are playing and recent lobbying for stricter ESRB ratings you need to would think that people would starting paying attention. Knee-jerk reactions are quite popular. Still, once again we have another documented case of parents failing to pay attention to their own kids and video games are under attack once more. Only this time we have Resident Evil 4 being the newest game of choice. This had to happen eventually with this game though. I’m honestly surprised it took this long for such a popular and successful horror game to be the victim of another lame attack in the press.

The gist of the article is that an 11 year-old kid suffered a photosensitive epileptic attack as a result of playing this game, at which point the parents, also teachers, claimed that the game did not come with enough warnings about how violent the game is. Folks, this is what really, really irritates me about society. The parents have the gall to state that the dangers of the game were not made clear despite:

The game’s classification as a horror game

1. The trigger word “Evil” in the title
2. The violent images on the game’s box (including a chainsaw)
3. The official rating of 15+ years of age
4. The manual stating the game can cause seizures or trigger an epileptic response

Before we even rehash the game warning argument for the 7 billionth time, something needs to be made clear. Violence and photosensitive seizures are not related. I know- I’m asking you to know what photosensitive means even if you can’t understand what a rating a box means. I am not claiming to be a certified medical practitioner, but there are plenty of medical websites that explain all of this in excruciating detail. These types of seizures are caused by specific patterns of colors reacting in a certain way to an individual. Epilepsy existed long before video games, or are we now altering history to attack video games again? It is possible that the violent imagery triggered some minor trauma, but it didn’t trigger epilepsy.

Far be it from the news article to do some medical research and state this fact. Attacking video games in the media is the newest fad, just in case you’ve been hiding under a rock (in a cave, on Mars, with your finger in your ears) for the past five years. Entertainment industries attacking each other is far from out of the ordinary. The movie industry when it first started out was under fire from established entertainment forums such as radio and theater. Following this notion, the article proudly states that prolonged exposure to video games increases the risk of the photosensitive epilepsy. Well, duh! Prolonged exposure to television, movies, laser shows, disco balls, flashlights, streaming confetti, lit airport runways, and sock puppet parades all do the same thing too.

What’s funny is that scientists are given money to link video games and violence… and now medical conditions too. You can administer all the studies you want that show that video games can trigger this response. Your eyes and brain don’t care what the source of all the colors they are interpreting is. Different people react to patterns of light differently than others- it is no accident that warnings use the phrasing “may cause seizure.” You can raise the volume of your speakers and blow out a patient’s eardrums to the sounds of machine gun fire and blood spatter all you want. Aside from obvious legal repercussions you cannot prove anything more than that a high volume of sound wave destroyed someone’s ability to hear.

Do you want to know how I’m such an expert in this area? Here is my startling secret- I spent 15 minutes reading about the disorder. I even had a relatively quick conversation with a friend who works as a physician. Teams of professional journalists and editors at trusted news sources, however, are far too busy to deal with such complicated tasks as research. Again, nobody is asking for a full 200 page report based on months of studying sacred scrolls locked away in a vault. At least the article manages to point out that, via an expert at the National Society for Epilepsy, that age has nothing to do with this type of epileptic response. Still, misleading readers with your version of the truth is nothing more than yellow journalism, even it may come from somewhere outside the United States.

Which reminds me- my hamster cage needs some fresh newspaper.

What’s perplexing is that game manuals do have the epileptic response warning- even for non-violent games (such as racing games). And they aren’t some hidden little message in 4-point font either. This is nowhere near being the first incident involving video games and this type of reaction. These warnings don’t find their ways into game manuals for no reason, so if people missed the warning then it is high time to actually (it needs to be said again) pay attention to what your kids are doing… even if it means reading. This makes you wonder if anybody reads anything at all. Do people have any idea what the 200 different signatures you have to give for buying a house or car are even for? You could probably slip in a clause about handing over your first-born child and nobody would even notice.

Look, I am not some unsympathetic cynic despite how this sounds. There are plenty of instances where game store employees lie about the content of a game to get a sale, such as pimping GTA to an 8 year-old kid and his father and stating that it’s about the same as Simpsons Hit & Run (no, that is not a made-up story). There is, however, a point where you need to sit down and read something. I know it’s inconvenient and it takes away from valuable TV and cellular phone conversation time but it does need to be done. These are the same people that whine about their mechanic ripping them off for years. If you don’t read once in a while your ability to comprehend basic English, whatever skill level you had when you graduated school (if you even were able to graduate) goes downhill really fast.

Nobody is asking you to read the unabridged IRS tax code and file your income tax return without a computer here. This concept of reading about a game is in no way more complicated than studying an itemized bill at a restaurant. If you can’t figure out the age rating of a game (it is written in number form in case you are confused), if you can’t read warning messages, and if you can’t decipher graphics that all point to a game being violent then you failed the genetic fitness test and it’s time to turn yourself into the local gene pool.

That’s not too harsh, is it?

Aside from parents not being able to decode the ancient hieroglyphics on the box or even being involved in the son’s life we have a math teacher that managed to state on record that the game needs to come with more warnings. For the record we have a math teacher stating that the “for ages 15+” on the box was not clear. How does a professional math teacher with an inability to decipher numbers hold a job? Does this mean that math teachers have the most secure jobs in the planet? If a math teacher can’t figure out that 11 < 15 (eleven is less than fifteen) then what, prae tell, education can a math teacher provide?

Perhaps it isn’t a matter of education or reading ability but a matter of grabbing a person’s attention. So the question is how much warning is needed? If a game with the word evil in the title, the front cover showing a man holding a gun, the 15+ age restriction label, the horror classification and the violent imagery on the back of the box all aren’t enough then what is needed? One idea is that the bottom half of the front of the box is nothing more than a giant number displaying the minimum age required to play the game. Game boxes could come with something you press which causes a speaker to state the age requirements. Perhaps we need boxes that when you pick them up, perhaps based on a fingerprint, displays on an electronic screen a creative message stating whether you are allowed to buy the game (something along the lines of “put the box down, you already tried to sue our company- you negligent monster).

Whatever happens with the warnings one thing is for certain- my patience only goes so far. This time, for the first time, we have an article that prints out the profession of the parents. When teachers fail to notice numerous warning sign, whether they knew that this has been the most successful game in the horror genre for months on end or not, then perhaps it is time for a different brand of justice- let’s call it Darwinian. All of their educational degrees need to be revoked, their right to raise children needs to be removed, and are henceforth put back into 9th grade until they are able to pass high school English.

Baseless claims like the ones these parents made are akin to claiming that the movie Saw was too scary and you had no notice before watching it on DVD. This is 31 flavors of ridiculous. Do you need neon signs flashing in front of your face to get the message? I have an important message, and despite how strongly I feel I’m still going to resist putting it in blinking HTML format (which is almost the only thing warnings on boxes do not provide)- <strong>learn how to read</strong>.

Oh yeah, and after all of this rambling I perhaps failed to mention the most important thing: Resident Evil 4 is a great game. And just like any other game, the odds that it will give you a seizure about the same as any other moving scene that you happen to, um, look at.

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