One time I thought a great videogame would be called "Future Sociopath" and you'd start out as a toddler pulling wings off flies and progress from there. You know how one of the common childhood backgrounds to violent sociopaths is torturing and killing helpless creatures? Lack of empathy? Etc.? It would be like that. Perhaps you could even boost sales piggybacking off the success of Grand Theft Auto by implying it could easily be a prequel.
Yes, we all know that the link between childhood sadism towards animals and violent, dissociative adult behavior has been questioned, some say discredited, and that there's little hard diagnostic correlation to support the claim, but the idea is pretty well imbedded in our web of pop culture pop psychology notions - and isn't that half the whole fun of videogames to have some fun with our collective myths?
Also, if we can get young people to play the game it could keep them from doing it for real. Sometimes, you really don't want Johnny to go play outside.
4 comments:
Hollywood would argue that maybe it would have the opposite effect - kids do it in the game and then progress to doing it in real life. And we all know that Hollywood is always right, right?
Right.
I thought Hollywood argued against that. Isn't it generally their position that entertainments don't create criminals and deviants?
But either way I figure we're covered. We've already got Grand Theft Auto after all! If video games can turn people into violent criminal misfits, GTA's got us covered on that side, education-wise. Future Sociopath won't do any more damage than the next sequel to GTA is already going to do.
But if people are wrong, and video games do not turn people into criminals and deviants, then my game would be a great way to educate people about how to go about it the old-fashioned way.
You are, as always, correct! I meant movie FANS but I was too busy being retarded to realize I was typing something entirely different. :)
Well my theory is, of course anything and everything can give people (or kids) ideas. But you don't protect people by policing entertainments to block ideas you think are bad. You protect people by giving them a better idea.
The only people who will watch a movie and decide to kill people like the person in the movie did are people who have no better ideas in them of what life can be about.
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