Games have become a mainstream thing. Nearly everyone plays them, talks about them, and interacts with them in some way on a semi-regular basis. But here at RPS, we have this violence in games tag that occasionally gets use, and not usually for good reasons. While I’m a strong advocate for examination of how exactly we’re affected by cultures that glorify violence, I absolutely do not believe that throwing a singular “bad” blanket over a very nuanced issue helps anyone. And yet, despite gaming’s slow ascent out of the cultural gutters, people still blame it for all of society’s ills from time-to-time. John quite frequently holds people accountable for that fear-mongering mentality, and I personally think that’s important given what can happen when people let it warp their worldview.
Case in point: the US Government’s Republican party is suggesting a tax reform that would give sizable tax breaks to companies who create new technologies and practices in their respective fields. Unless they are creators of “violent videogames.”
