It's happened before. Guy snaps under pressure, picks up a gun, opens fire in a crowd, and the media sees it as a prime opportunity to incite some controversy over the topic of violence in video games. And when these situations arise, rarely does the general public get to hear arguments from both sides of the issue, rather than simply from the censorship advocates. In that sense, I applaud CBS for deciding to hear from a variety of people in their latest video game-related experiment.
Previously they interviewed
Jack Thompson, notable for being an outspoken censor, a tactless attorney, and, well,
a self-serving
douchebag. Thankfully, this time they hear the opinions of someone who's actually, you know, played video games
before. That person is Tim Buckley, writer and animator of the online comic strip
Ctrl+Alt+Del. Just to be fair, he answers all the same questions as
Jackass Thompson before him, only with fewer prophecies of doom and/or pseudo-religious egomaniacal rants.
Fortunately, CBS isn't stopping there. Next week they'll be interviewing Scott Ramsoomair of VG Cats, followed by
Claude Errera of halo.bungie.org, and finally by Jeff McAllister, site director of PlanetDoom. What's this? A major
news source attempting to be impartial? Please, please let this be the start of a trend.
