War's little helper

So since the 21st century, first person shooter games have become widely popular. They have also become widely hated by some for their violent, gruesome, and real portrayals of incidents. One of the major games that has drawn controversy is the Grand Theft Auto series. Many parents think the heavy violence makes kids want to preform those acts in real life toward people they dislike and other random people. I can understand where a parent does not want their kid to be hijacking cars and in one scene buying a female escort. However now I am beginning to hear that some people want to remove particular war games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and other Call of Duty titles. They say because it portrays war too realistically and we do not need our children killing all the time, that is influences us to not care about human life, to just care about winning.

I think that this is a completely absurd idea for many reasons. The first being that the video game industry is making billions of dollars per year off these games, they are also creating thousands if not millions of jobs. These games are a major role in our economy and to remove them would send this current recession into something far worse. My next point is that I think they are used as a motivational tool to get people to think about war, and militarise. This little game could get people to thinking of joining the army to help protect our freedom. I know when war has broke out in the past and we did not have enough volunteers we turned to a draft to get the men we needed. If people want to join the army because they like the atmosphere of the game then let them, I have no problem with the games in that prospective. I do think that some kids playing these game have no idea that the game is far from the real thing. These games even though they are considered mature and graphic, are still really clean when it comes to what actually happened. Now is it a bad thing that they do not know how severe things really are? I do not think it is, the kids need to know what happened in the past or why we fought in wars. So why not do it in a way where they could enjoy learning about it. For the few who decide to join the army, they will find out soon enough about the truth and they will be slightly more prepared that the kid who joined the military never having played a war game in his life.

So when asked, should we eliminate these games for existence, I think we should all say no. The games benefits far outweigh its bad parts.