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I'm thirty. My first system was the Atari 2600.
I was the "odd kid". Got picked on by everyone, from bullies at school to the kid that lived next door. Even the kids that got picked on and bullied, bullied and picked on me. Pretty much smaller than everyone else, uncoordinated, not into sports, etc. It wasn't fun, and I was angry and sad the whole time. I didn't really have all that many friends, and what I really liked more than anything else when it came to people my age was to just be left alone.
When I figured out I was good with music, I dove into it with everything I had. This was when I was 13 or so. I very quickly learned that even if I was ten times better than everyone else (and, actually, that was how it ended up by the time I graduated high school, and I am not tooting my own horn here; both my music directors ended up telling me separately that I had been the best student and musician to have gone through the school system in their experience), I would get not quite 1/10th the credit a "popular" kid would get for some minor achievement. The resent and bitterness I was carrying around with me by the time I graduated high school could have been delivered fresh at your doorstep in quart jars every morning for a year.
My parents booted me out of the house when I was 19 after they found out I was gay, and a year later stopped helping me pay for the music education I was getting. I had to drop out, and haven't ever been back. Music, for me, is solidly a thing of the past.
I haven't killed, or assaulted, or even spat on anyone who has done me wrong. I've been in exactly one actual fistfight in my life, and that one was with a roommate who was warned first if he did something to me again he'd get hit: he didn't like me smoking in the apartment we shared, and dumped a glass of water on me one bitterly cold winter night to 'put my fag out'- pun intended- when I literally couldn't stand outside and smoke because I'd get frostbite. I told him if he did it again, I'd get up and punch his face in. He did, and, well, so did I.
But still, I don't make threats, I don't jack people's cars, I don't grab a gun and start killing people, even taking into account the rage I hold within me. Why? Because those things are WRONG! It's a no-brainer.
I have always had a few (ha! a 'few' indeed) violent video games on hand, for those times when I just. Can't. Take it. Anymore. It helps me let off steam in a totally nonthreatening way, and always has. I do think if I had not this whole time I very well may have snapped and done something unforgivable. I'm not saying I will do anything of the kind; rather, the opposite, because I have a 'release valve' at hand.
You know what, though? I do see all these attacks on video games as the exact same kind of bullying I got when I was a kid, all grown up and wearing a suit and tie. I see it that way because of who is making the attacks and who the target is; we never hear any studies about whether contact sports tend to make athletes more aggressive, for example, or whether holding the power of an employer, one who can hire and fire at will, tends to cause people in those positions to lose their empathy and compassion over time.
Those are the 'popular kids' in the adult world. They're the 'doers', the 'movers and shakers', and they tend to look down on people who 'waste their time' playing video games. Well, guess what? That's about all I have left; hell, now, I want to make the damn things.
I have a whole lot of reasons to oppose this push against content in video games, more than just on First Amendment grounds, or because I simply happen to like many of the games on the market. You people who would try to control this had your fun with me and people like me when we were kids. If you can't live and let live, if you must insist on strictly nonviolent and nonsexual content in video games on store shelves, if you must insist on interfering with what you yourselves pushed the outcasts of society into (and look, I'm a gamer; while it's becoming a lot more mainstream the past few years, I can say from experience that video games tend to attract a whole lot more geeks and nerds than any other social group), if you just simply are incapable of living and letting live, it will bite you in the ass eventually.
The people who play these games are, by and large, the people who the 'in' groups, child and adult, reject. There are lots and lots and lots of bright, creative, smart people, people who actually make these games a social activity of their own, who are increasingly in our society being looked down upon just for what they like to do with their spare time. It's the exact same pattern of behavior I saw all through my childhood and early adult life. That destroyed me once; I'll not allow it again. I'm not going to put ten times the effort for a tenth of the gain and notice anymore
I've noticed the most heated arguments against come from people who don't play video games normally if at all. They can be summarily dismissed. Everyone else: you have your cliques, your churches, your causes. You have things you like to do. Leave us gamers alone. You already taught me a long, long time ago that we don't matter in the first place.
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I'm not sure if I was whining with that. I myself can't decide. It all looks and feels the same as the reaction I got from 'popular kids' when I was so involved in music. Now the formerly 'popular kids' want to mess with me and my interests yet again. It's sickeningly similar. I took it as a kid; I won't as an adult.
With that in mind, people against violent video games, and all you 'popular kids' of the adult world who would tamper with what I like to do in my spare time, here is my promise to you: if I ever get into that industry, and get into a position where I can make decisions about what's to happen with a game, I'll do my level best to create a game that's everything you want to regulate, times ten, and release it open source so it cannot be regulated, just to spite you.
I have had enough.
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