Today's Gaming Rant: Little Kids Are Jerks.
Little kids are jerks. Their jerkitude seems to come out more often when faced with consumer choice, or rather, consumer pressure. With the video game industry pushing for FASTER GRAPHIC ENGINES AND REAL TIME SPLODEY EFFECTS WITH BLOOD HOOKERS all the time, little kids are faced with the pressure to look cool and seem older. We all remember wanting to act older than we really were at 10 or 12, but with all the advertising for video games targeting specifically 25+ white males, I can see how those messages can seem confusing to this current generation of little punks.
For example, the other day I was looking for the new Harvest Moon game for the Gamecube at my local mega mart electronics video game dvd cd selling section. I was quietly browsing through the (I assume) bullet-proof plexi-glas when a small child with a haircut that looked more like a lawnmowing accident than anything else came up to me and queried this: "Do you have an XBOX 360?".
"No." I said, and politely proceeded to look at the PSP selection.
"I do," spouted the small child-thing, "actually my uncle does but I play it and it has awesome graphics."
"Okay." I muttered and noticed that the PSP version of Liberty City Stories is $40, and the PS2 version was $20. Curious.
"The XBOX 360 has better graphics than the PS3." Shrimpy McSmellypants continued.
Was I going to have a discussion with this child about graphics? Was that all that really mattered to this kid? What did he even play on the XBOX 360, and why were his parents letting him play it? Whenever I am in a game store and I see a kid less than 10 years old, all I ever hear them talking about is rad graphics, violent games or sports games. The kids never want to play the cutesy platformer style games that most people would attribute to their demographic. It's always Madden or GTA, because it is what the older kids are playing. It is what the cool kids are playing. What do they get out of these experiences?
Now, I am not an anti-violent video game crazy person, but I believe that certain games aren't really appropriate for small children, even with parental supervision. The fact of the matter is that an 8 year old just can't comprehend the metaphorical and ironic elements in Grand Theft Auto. All they see is a game where you can blow stuff up and be bad and then have little to no consequence. They can't look deeper than the graphics, or what may be percieved as cool.
Go on XBOX Live and play some Halo with voice chat. You will be inundated with munchkin voices so homophobic and racist, they'd make a KKK member feel insulted and slightly intimidated. What is causing these kids to be so horrible to each other? It could be the anonymity of online gaming, you can be whoever you want to be. Does this mean that we have a whole generation of gamers who yearn to be complete dicks? You get the same thing in World of Warcraft on PvP servers, kids with way too much time on their hands exploiting the anonymity of the online world to lash out, be mean, or generally distrupt actual players actually wanting to have actual fun.
Every conversation I have had with a child around the age of 10 about video games has been like the anti-conversation I had in the game section with the kid with the bad haircut. They all seem obsessed with graphics, violence, and are intensely competitive. Is this just a generalization on my part, or does it feel like we are raising a generation of jerks to anyone else?
What say you?!