Recently, there has been much debate, on both sides of the Atlantic, about the content of video games. Cooper Lawrence's totally misinformed attack on Mass Effect on Fox News, Kevin McCullough being equally misinformed on Townhall.com, Janice Turner of The Times thinks that games are "crack cocaine of the brain" and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has blamed them for knife crime. Even Hillary Clinton has had a go.
What all these critics have in common is that they do not play video games so they don't have the faintest idea what they are talking about, they are as relevant as blind cinema critics.
Now Bruce Everiss, author of the respected and widely read game industry blog Bruceongames.com, has written an article that puts the whole issue into perspective. Entitled The Bible Vs Video Games it compares the content of the Bible, a book which children are encouraged to read, with the content of video games. Would you want your child playing a video game that featured harlots 48 times? Because that is exactly what the Bible does.
Bruce Everiss explains: "Video games are just another form of media like books, film and music. It is the content that matters and it is irrefutable that games have far less sex and violence than books or television. Yet, amazingly, books and television have no age ratings whilst video games do".