Young boys love to play "war". Whether it`s fighting off alien invaders or attacking Colditz Castle to free Allied prisoners from the might of the German army, virtually every young man has had his time playing at being a soldier.
I do believe that constantly being bombarded with violent and misogynistic images in a medium that is supposed to be pure entertainment doesn`t help anyone who may be psychologically fragile in the first place.
Rodney Weidemann, Journalist, ITWeb
When I was young, this was done in my back garden with a few friends, some plastic guns and a whole heap of imagination.
The children of today, however, play at being soldiers in numerous "first-person shooter" video and PC games, where the enemy is a realistic-looking opponent and the violence is bloody and graphic.
Although these games are governed by a ratings system, much the same as movies and videos are, even games that are rated M (mature) are extremely popular with pre-teen and teenage boys who often report no trouble buying them.
In the US, the best selling games of the past few years seem to glorify sex and reward extreme violence, particularly towards women. This is particularly disturbing in a country like SA, where this is already a big enough issue in reality, without having games reinforcing such an attitude.
Several years ago an organisation in the US called the National Institute on Media and the Family, founded by psychologist David Walsh, alerted parents to a game called Duke Nukem, in which the player enters a room where naked women are tied to posts pleading with the gamer to kill them.
Since then, other popular games have continued this trend. In Grand Theft Auto 3, the player is rewarded if he murders a prostitute after having sex with her. In the latest version of this game, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, players are rewarded for kicking a woman to death.
Possibly the scariest part of it all is that it is well known within the industry that a very violent game can receive a T-rating (teen) simply by removing the red pixels which indicate blood. So it is not a problem showing the most violent and inhuman actions, as long as the gamer sees no blood.
The difficulty lies in the fact that most middle-class homes today have either a PC or a games console of some kind, and even if Little Johnny doesn`t have one, chances are his friend up the road does.
And how many parents really take an interest in the video games that their children are playing - after all they`re just games, aren`t they?
While I would be loathe to suggest a game could be held responsible for something like the Columbine High School massacre, I do believe that constantly being bombarded with violent and misogynistic images in a medium that is supposed to be pure entertainment doesn`t help anyone who may be psychologically fragile in the first place.
To be fair to the industry, there are many games out there that are pure fun for kids. There are even some that are blatantly anti-violence.
A recently released game called Gulf War 2 is based on the scenario that is currently hanging over all our heads, and according to its creator, winning the war is quick and easy - the hard part lies in what comes next.
The gamer has to decide on how to govern and rebuild a newly liberated Iraq, while dealing with a tension-filled Middle East, and - apparently - there are no easy answers, as the aim of the game is to make people aware of what the real consequences of war in the Gulf would be.
However, for every intelligent, anti-war game like Gulf War 2, there are two- or three-dozen Grand Theft Autos or Duke Nukems, filled with naked women and brutal violence.
There are some out there who would say these games are nothing more than a harmless reflection of typical young male fantasies, and might feel it is only, after all, a game.
My question is: once you are aware of the levels of violence and misogyny in these games, would you still let your young children play these games day in and day out? I know I certainly wouldn`t.
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