You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
Call of Duty, the video game.
It’s angry. It’s realistic. It’s sad. It’s engaging.
“Cover Me. Bomb active. Gotta kill.”
The game has a dark, ominous voice that narrates the action.
As soldiers move through a virtual amphitheater of death, you can see the action through the cross hairs as they lay down suppressing fire.
The video game is hectic, hard to follow, certainly aggressive.
“Dude they are sniping us,” my oldest screams to my youngest.
“He’s under you,” the little one shouts back.
The machine gun fire sounds non stop. RATTA TAT TAT
The game is full of grunting and screaming and bombs exploding.
When a player is shot his screen turns red. It should be sad, but there is not time to be sad. In 2 seconds you are reconstituted and you are back in the theater of pain.
My son calls this spawning. I’m not sure what the hell he is talking about.
“it’s pissing me off, dude,” my oldest yells as his screen turns red.
Yeah I bet getting wasted pisses ya off. Imagine if it was real.
Perhaps I am watching part of the problem with the world today. You can go on line and you can use bombs and hand grenades and automatic weapons and shoot at faceless soldiers from anywhere that the internet breathes. Is it fun? Or does it make our young people less receptive to violence?
Some would argue that games like this promote the real life atrocities that end up in our churches, our movie theaters, our schools.
I don’t know about that. Is it that much different than playing army men when I was a kid. I have a pretty active imagination.
I’m glad my sons are interacting, but I’m not sure I’m excited they are virtually killing people. Isn’t there a motorcycle racing game they could play?
I know it’s not real, but it still makes me a little uncomfortable as I watch it. Maybe the problem is I’m not a huge video game fan. I have the games here in the house for the boys. If they are not here, I never play. The only games I like to play are race car games.
Maybe my dislike for Call of Duty emanates from my days in the Atari generation. I grew up with PONG :Two white lines hitting a round white dot back and forth. Nobody died. It was like a peaceful game of tennis.
My sons are on line working as a team fighting against a global contingent of miscreants.
It’s amazing how many are playing, and for the extended amounts of time they play.
My sons are good kids, as are most of those who play. But there are those who have skewed views on the world and this may be their playground. Perhaps some of these people on for hours at a time begin to blur the line.
“be advised hunter killer drone in bound,” the ominous call of duty voice warns.
The bombs rain down, the bullets rip through cement and flesh.
No time to think, gotta take cover and lay down suppressing fire.
And that is crazy.