WOW! Swedish Dad fed up with his sons' obsessions with violent Call of Duty computer game

[Regrell]

122. To all the naysayers here re: video games and detrimental effects...

Will CoD make your child a murderer? Of course not.

But here's what it will do...it will glamorize war. The very lack of visceral feedback when you get killed and resurrected instantly, or shoot the arm off of someone, is what will desensitize kids to violence and make them less likely to understand the danger of violence in the real world. They themselves may not feel motivated to hurt, but they will idolize cool war tech. They won't react the same way to stories and images of real wars. They might grow up more sympathetic to the war machine, not see any problem with dropping insane amounts of money on wars.

These are the real dangers.

I love video games, I've worked in the industry. My bottom line is that it's not violence per se, but how it's contextualized and presented. My favorite games of all time are the Oddworld stories, which can be quite gruesome and violent, but the reluctant hero tells a good story of escaping slavery and preventing the genocide of his people and the destruction of the natural world. There are many teachable moments in these games. Some FPS games have narrative missions, some don't, some contextualize violence, and in others it's wanton free-for-all.

I think it's important for parents to play these games with their kids, ask the right questions about how their children are digesting violence (and problematic depictions of women and minorities and everyone else).

I don't think bans are the answer, and I don't think unfettered access is either. I don't like authoritarian nanny-ists and I don't like kneejerk apologist fanboys either.