Responding to the White House's violent games reel with similarly out-of-context scenes makes a weak and reductive argument in more ways than one.
But there’s more harm in fighting out-of-context clips with out-of-context clips than just legitimizing the anti-video game crowd’s reductive tactics — it also lends credence to the idea that depictions of fictional violence are inherently bad and that the gaming community should minimize them to retain a good public image.
Violence exists in every art form on the planet — from movies to books to ancient pottery — because it can be an interesting and valuable subject to explore. Violence does have a place in video games. The way to defend that isn’t to shy away from it. Allen Ginsberg’s Howl didn’t survive its obscenity trial in the ‘50s off the existence of its less lewd images, but off the merit of its vulgarity. But if our gut reaction is to keep on insisting that games are more than the x-ray killcams, headshots, and stylish executions the White House reel depicts, maybe it’s because we’re afraid to admit that video games’ “exploration” of violence kind of sucks.
On violence in video games, in the wake of a White House video on the issue.