Editorial for Thursday — December 09, 2004

• Violent video games : Consumer drugs

Violent video games : Consumer drugs

By the Buffalo (N.Y.) News – December 6, 2004

The Buffalo (N.Y.) News, on violent video games:

Americans have been fascinated by video games ever since someone figured out a way to play a simple game of pingpong on a television screen. Thirty years later, video games have reached a level of sophistication that rivals the best military battlefield simulation.

Too bad good taste hasn’t kept pace.

The game has gone too far in a computer simulation titled, “JFK Reloaded,” in which players re-create the 1963 assassination of a U.S. president. Gamers “fire” three shots at President John F. Kennedy’s car from Lee Harvey Oswald’s re-created sixth-floor perch in the Texas School Book Depository. There’s a possible prize for exact replication of the real shots, and points are deducted for mistakes, such as hitting the first lady. The game, if it can be termed as such, was released on Nov. 22, the 41st anniversary of the shooting in Dallas.

Family members have described it as “despicable.” This may not go far enough in describing just how low the Glasgow-based firm Traffic, designer of the game, sank in marketing what it inexcusably calls an educational “docu-game” intended to refute the theory that a conspiracy was behind the assassination.

This isn’t about free speech, it’s about decency. “JFK Reloaded” trivializes an awful point in this nation’s history. Even though speech is protected under the Constitution, there are limits to such abuses as threat-making, especially against a president. And even if this game doesn’t involve a “real” president, encouraging even the play-acting of such violence isn’t in the best interest of anyone, from the gamers involved to the presidency as an institution. …

On the Net: www.buffalonews.com.