After washing my hands and cracking my back, making a noise that can only mean bad things for me later, I decided to take a breather from the strenuous task of saving the world and see what was on television, and maybe fix myself a sandwich. A hero's gotta eat, right?
The first thing to flicker onto the dark glass was CNN. They were re-running a story from earlier in the day. It was about violence in gaming, and its effect on children. A stock interview clip appeared, revealing a gray-haired man, talking with Matt Lauer about the D.C.-area sniper, opining that the then-unidentified person was a videogamer, who trained videogames to learn how to kill.
I frowned.
"Sure," I commented to the empty house. "I mean, I grew up with Super Mario Bros., and one day, out of the blue, I just started jumping up and down on people's heads, waiting for coins to pop out their ass."
I was probably being unfair. After all, the aging gentleman seemed to be dedicated to this idea: If only videogames with such content were placed under lock and key, the world would be all sunshine and rainbows. Problems with family, with school, with feeling isolated, with thoughts of revenge fantasies - none of it mattered. Videogames, they were the real culprits.
Yes, obsession manifests itself in very strange ways.
More recently, Hillary Clinton, no doubt gearing up to be the first party-nominated female presidential candidate, decided to attach herself to videogame violence as her latest cause célèbre.
She said she was drafting legislation that would impose a $5,000 penalty on retailers who sell adult-rated videogames to underage children. She also, skirting the idea that a non-governmental body rates videogames, asked the Federal Trade Commission to see whether the rating of the game that garnered her ire - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - should be changed from "M" (Mature 17+) to the mostly pornographic "AO" (Adults Only).
A few other states are gearing up to pass legislation like hers. Some already have, though none has stood through federal courts.
There is a bit of a theory in regard to history, and how things progress. They seem to work like pendulums. An issue boils over - the pendulum swings down - and becomes center focus; and then, public interest wanes and it is forgotten - the pendulum swings up.
In the late 1940's, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (more famously known as the House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC) led a witch hunt to root out communists in the entertainment industry, eventually leading to the infamous blacklist of anywhere between 300 and 500 people.
Then the pendulum swung up, and there was no big entertainment industry controversy for a while. Then came the late '60s and '70s, arguably one of film's best eras in its short history. Violence was explicit and splashed across the screen in such master works as Scarface, A Clockwork Orange and Taxi Driver. Would these films adversely affect the youth of America? Or the spirit and soul of the country as a whole? Shouldn't we do something?
But that hysteria, too, passed.
So here we are, 40 years later, and a new focus has emerged: videogames. No longer a fun, if distracting, form of entertainment, they are now violent trainers for future Columbine shooters and snipers and suicides. There's even discussions as to whether they deserve the full First Amendment protections we ascribe to books, films and music. The pendulum has again reached the nadir of its eternal rhythm.
I settled back in the black, wheeled desk chair in front of my computer and prepared myself to explore the mysterious island I had washed up on. I used a flute from my inventory to call for my friend, Crow, a talking bird that I had befriended the previous night.
