Violence in general, and sexual violence in particular, is also a staple of the video game industry. The current trend is for players to be the bad guys, acting out criminal fantasies and earning points for attacking and killing innocent bystanders. Although these games are rated M, for mature audiences, it's common knowledge that they are popular among pre-teens and teenaged boys.
"As easy as killing babies with axes."(Source: Advertising copy for the game Carmageddon) For example, players in Grand Theft Auto 3 (the best-selling game ever for PlayStation 2) earn points by carjacking, and stealing drugs from street people and pushers. In Carmageddon, players are rewarded for mowing down pedestrians -- sounds of cracking bones add to the realistic effect. The first-person shooter in Duke Nukem hones his skills by using pornographic posters of women for target practice, and earns bonus points for shooting naked and bound prostitutes and strippers who beg, "Kill me." In the game Postal, players act out the part of the Postal Dude, who earns points by randomly shooting everyone who appears -- including people walking out of church, and members of a high school band. Postal Dude is programmed to say, "Only my gun understands me."
The level of violence in the gaming habits of young people is disturbingly high. In MNet's 2001 study Young Canadians In A Wired World (which found that 32 per cent of kids 9 to 17 are playing video games "every day or almost every day"), 60 per cent cited action/combat as their favourite genre. Stephen Kline of Simon Fraser University reported similar findings in his 1998 study of over 600 B.C. teens. Twenty-five per cent of the teens he surveyed played between seven and 30 hours a week and when asked for their one favourite game, their choice was "overwhelmingly" in the action/adventure genre.
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