Hello my name is scrumpmonkey and today i killed a man. I also made some delightful toast. The thing is both actions were relatively the same. Ok, ok I'll back up. I didn't really kill someone i was playing me some TF2 but i did kill a representation of a person without any hesitation, thought or ambiguity.
The thing is with most modern games the act of digital murder is indistinguishable from the act of say, truing on a digital microwave to ruin a scientist's lunch. They are both game mechanics and they both require identical button presses for the player. If you own a modern system or are into any variant of FPS, TPS, Action games, military RTS, Tactical shooters etc etc. you will likely kill many people at a time without a single thought.
This of course troubles your mum. Not your mum obviously because she's too busy with me (we'll talk later, maybe get some ice-cream, play some catch.) but thousands of self-proclaimed moral voices. The idea that someone could be slaughtering an entire legion of digital people deeply troubles them. But why should you feel uncomfortable? You could replace the people with toast and the bullets with jam and you have pretty much the same experience .Moral panic about games shows first and foremost a total misunderstanding of game mechanics.
If yo mama took a break from being so fat and actually got into some video games she would realise that the thought-process involved has more to do with applying yourself to the rules of a game world than the conscious act of killing, we have an urge to beat the game not to beat in real-live heads. For long-time players the guns and soldiers are just a mask to identifying and best exploiting the underlying game mechanics. It can feel as simply as making toast. Because it is not killing a man, it is pushing a button.
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