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Jan. 25 2010 - 1:39 pm | 4,624 views | 1 recommendation | 14 comments

Breaking News: Reuters Learns Video Games Not Just for Children

By PAUL TASSI

grandpa-games

It’s articles like these that make me wonder how the mainstream media still exists at all. In this Reuters piece, which very well could be an Onion article, the news organization has stumbled upon the puzzling fact that these “video games” might be for people over twelve years old. Say whaaat?

Coming to a video game console near you, an onslaught of new military-themed shooter games — and they’re not all for children as game publishers target a more mature audience.

“Parents and those buying games for kids should realise that video games are no longer toys for children,” said Mike Snider, videogame reporter for USA Today.

Well, video games ARE toys for children, it’s just that they’re not JUST toys for children, they’re also toys for adults these days.

The article goes on to talk about how there are a slate of military shooters coming out recently, like MAG and the Army of Two sequel, and how games like Modern Warfare and Halo are aimed at more “mature” audiences. The article presents the fact that the average gamer is 35 like they just discovered that chocolate cures cancer, or some other equally mindblowing fact.

It ends the piece with this tangential bit of info:

Kamy Akhavan, managing editor at ProCon.org, said while sales of video games have quadrupled from 1995-2008, the arrest rate for juvenile murders fell 71.9 percent and the arrest rate for all juvenile violent crimes declined 49.3 percent in that period.

“It seems fair for parents to argue that their kids shouldn’t play those games, but it also seems fair to argue that those games have not caused our society to become more violent,” said Akhavan.

What? Were we even talking about video game violence? Though I suppose any mainstream article about games has to mention it at least once. I maintain that kids sitting indoors killing people in Call of Duty makes them a lot less like to be roaming around the streets, killing them in real life. Besides, you get cooler weapons in Call of Duty.

All in all, this is one of the most useless gaming articles I’ve ever read, and it happens to be written by one of the world’s largest news organizations. To sum up: Adults play games. Companies are making games for adults. Video game violence exists. The end.

It’s pieces like these that at least assure me my job is safe.

[Reuters via Aeropause]

 
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  1. collapse expand
    9:54 pm on 01/26/10
    antiironical
    antiironical

    Haaa-like chocolate cures cancer. Well put. Maybe the people at Reuters are too high on their horse to see the layman down there, in their mini-vans and Toyotas (an unknown brand to them), going to Wal-mart and playing these games of video. No point really for posting other than to say that the last system I had prior to my Xbox360 was a Playstation 1 for Christ’s sake. I just got CoD last week and cannot put it down. I LOVE KILLING!! peace

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    After rising to blogging fame as the University of Michigan's answer to Gossip Girl, I took the EIC job at a student blog network spreading my wealth of college experience across the nation. My passion project is a movie/tv/gaming site called Unreality and I'm a movie news editor at JoBlo.com. I'm new to this business, and I think I'm a part of the first generation of journalists to skip print media entirely. When I started out, I had zero idea blogging could be a career, but I've learned more in the last ten months than I did in four years of college. What exactly did I major in again?

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