Video games have come a long way in the past few decades – from the early years where the games were dull but extremely challenging (almost impossible), to the present day where at times you can’t tell the difference from Madden ’09 to the actual game on television. 

With the huge increase in home-gaming consoles, arcades and pinball machines have become a thing of the past. 

But the one aspect that has stayed the same has been the inevitable urge to kill what ever is in front of you. 

What makes this act of sitting in front of the TV for hours and virtually killing anything that moves, fun to a huge portion of America and the world? 

The answer is unknown. A 2001 survey on Safeyouth.org found that of the top 70 games sold, 89 percent contained some sort of violence.  Almost half of all games contain some sort of serious violence. 

In 41 percent of games it was crucial to conquering the game that you must perform a violent act, and in 17 percent of games, violence was the main focus of the game play (although Nintendo seems to try and keep its games family oriented).

“The violent games are the best ones,” says Troy S., a long-time gamer and senior at De Pere High. 

The video game industry made $1.23 billion dollars last year.  Most new games range up to about $60.  With that rather large percentage of games containing violence, that’s a lot of death, destruction, and mayhem that people are paying good money to experience.

Most of the gamers today are under the age recommended to even be playing the games they’re playing.  Some parents might over look the fact that their kids are playing games that are sick and disturbed, and are focusing more on the violence and crime they see on TV and in movies. 

There is an official game rating system which includes EC for early childhood, E for everyone, T for teen, and M for mature and AO adults only.  Most stores only carry up to M. 

It seems violence, sex, and crime are around every corner. In the music we hear on the radio to the images we see on TV, the world just can’t get enough of it.

Happy gaming. 

Keep up the mayhem.