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How much do you know about the computer games that teenage boys will be asking for this Christmas?

If you were lucky enough to own a ZX80 games console in the late 70s then you were probably the envy of all your friends. Oh the excitement of the downhill skiing game! The joy of avoiding huge white square pixels with your cursor as they hurtled towards you at increasing speeds! Perhaps you even had a brilliant top score in the game of ‘pong’, the table tennis game with the rewarding ‘beep’ as the ball was successfully batted back over the electronic net. What satisfaction on a rainy afternoon!

Just in case you hadn’t noticed, computer games are a little different today. Processors are faster, computer memory is now enormous. Whereas it only took 17 bytes of memory to get the Apollo missions to the moon and back, the new releases are requiring upwards of 2,000,000 bytes to give you the opportunity to kill all the baddies.

Getting into the mind

However, it’s not just the baddies who are being targeted in the latest wave of games to hit the shelves. The current trend in role-playing games is to get into the mind of the criminal, or as the publicity for ‘City of Villains’ puts it, ‘indulge in all manner of evil deeds’. The quest is for the thrill of realism. For example, one review of ‘Crime Life: Gang Wars’ boasts that players get to participate in ‘violence, backstabbing, (and) gang warfare — it’s all in a day’s work for gang members out on the streets of Grand Central City…no other videogame has dared to present inner city gang culture in such unflinching detail.’ Yet another, ‘Hitman: Blood Money’, lets you ‘dispose of bodies’ and ‘use enemies as a human shield… assassinations have never looked so good!’

Between 1995 and 2003, 25 million dedicated gaming devices were sold in the UK, enough for every household in the country to own one. The global market for games alone is worth over $18 billion a year, predicted to rise above $21 billion by 2007. Games such as ‘Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas’ sell up to 12 million copies and bring multinational corporations huge profits. Even Estelle Morris, Minister for Culture and Arts, claims that the UK games industry is one of Britain’s major success stories.

So how should we respond when the teenagers we know spend hours on end playing games that encourage them to participate in ungodly activities in the privacy of their own rooms? What controls are in operation to ensure that young people are protected?

Games and crime
The issue was brought to the fore in a parliamentary debate back in January when Keith Vaz, MP for Leicester, raised several fears about the link between violent computer games and the behaviour of young people. A 14-year-old member of his constituency had been horrifically murdered by a 19-year-old whose actions closely resembled the manoeuvres of a character in a computer game called ‘Manhunt’ which scores points for brutal killings. Vaz pointed out that although the video standards council claims that 97% of games are suitable for everyone, over 66% of 11-14-year-olds have played a game classified as over-18 on the cover.

Active involvement

Parents may well support their children’s gaming because it is fun and makes use of problem solving, logic and strategising. Yet they need to be aware of the content of the games that their children may move onto. Unlike TV, games require active rather than passive involvement and the actions taken by players are entirely without consequence in the real world.

Many studies have been carried out to try to identify the long-term effects of gaming on young people. They have been largely inconclusive to date. More research is being done, but, in the meantime, we have the responsibility as parents, teachers and older friends to educate ourselves about the content of the games that our young teenagers are playing. The internet is a ready source of information, with many screen shots and game profiles to help us review and consider games that come to our notice. We need to be on the ball when shopping for Christmas presents to make sure that we are providing teenagers with activities that honour God rather than drawing them further into fantasies that distort the difference between good and evil.

Just playing games?

Getting into the mind

Active involvement

Eleanor Margesson

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