With the release of Grand Theft Auto IV, (even though technically it should be 6 since you have Vice City and San Andreas, and no the 'spinoffs' don't count! XD) I naturally knew that this was gonna be a big event in more ways than one. Midnight releases, celebrating the true sequel in the series... and of course, the controversy. Yeah, this game series still takes a lot of heat from many people, and it always will, I'm sure. But there's a lot more to this controversy than what most people probably see on the surface.

Actually, let's start there, shall we? Yeah, you're a criminal who's trying to make a living in New Y-- *ahem* I mean _Liberty City._ Yeah, you gotta commit crimes to get money and get ahead. And yes, it's a free roaming environment where you're rewarded for stealing cars, killing people, and other things like that. So naturally, when a parent sees their thirteen year old playing it, they're like, 'How can they make games like this?!'

Um, hello? Did you try looking at the rating on the box? I mean, there are many ads that promote the ratings system. And if you look closely, you'll see that it's rated 'M' for Mature, indicating it's only appropriate for players who are seventeen years or older. Odds are, the parent didn't see it or just didn't care, but when they speak out like this, it's obviously hiding the fact that they didn't do their job as a parent well enough, and rather own up to that fact, they decide to place the blame on the video games instead.

Even though I wasn't alive for those eras, there's always been controversy for things like this. Like back in the 1940s and 1950s (or something like that) people were attacking comic books because of the things they portrayed. Then came movies and television, and then certain kinds of music, and now video games. There's always going to be types of entertainment which will draw negative comments from the crowds. Sad but true.

While a lot of people who follow this stuff would know it first became evident in 1993 with Mortal Kombat and Night Trap, it wasn't the first time that controversy like this occurred. Back in 1976, Exidy released a game called Death Race, where you had to run over gremlins to score points. The gremlins looked and sounded a bit too human, which resulted in the game being pulled after the public complained. And this was back around the time the Atari 2600 would've been state of the art!

In the early 1980s, there was controversy about the game Custer's Revenge for the Atari 2600, which I'm not going to go into detail about. Google it or look on AtariAge for more information. Simply put, the game drew negative publicity from Native Americans and women alike because of the content. Ironically, I actually agree with this game and the controversy surrounding it, since it was just plain offensive and insulting to begin with.

But anyway, back to the point. First off, what are video games? They're not real, even though they make look it. They sound real, but they're not. In fact, what you see, hear, and do is just countless billions of lines of computer programming code being processed at a speed faster than light (or something like that) in a way that causes everything to appear on the video screen the way you see it. Read, COMPUTER CODE. All the realistic figures, all the sounds you hear: They were recorded and built into the game. But there's NOTHING real about it.

I guess you could say I was raised well, since even though as a child (about three or four mind you) I always imagined that the game characters were real, I pretty much knew for the most part that they were fantasy. I never tried to go outside and eat mushrooms to grow big, or beat someone untill they were unconscious and take their money, or anything like that. Even when the Mortal Kombat controversy occurred, when I was only 13, my parents never had a problem with me playing those games, since I was able to distinguish reality from fantasy.

Which brings me back to the point about the parents: The parents don't pay enough attention to the content of the games, which is what leads to some of (read, SOME OF, but not all of) the controversy surrounding these games. The parents don't want to admit that they didn't do their jobs right. And to think some parents use these games as babysitters, sheesh.

In closing, I'm just going to say that Resident Evil, Metal Gear, Silent Hill, Hitman, and other 'Mature' rated games will always be here to stay, and there will always be controversy over them. But you just gotta remember that it's because these people think that nobody knows the difference between fake and real. And I know all of you who read my journals know it well.

Thank you for reading this, and if you got the game or plan to get it, enjoy it!

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