So I got a twitter from tinymantis (aka Tommy) while I was teaching my weekly game design class at Mercy College.   Apparently, Utah just passed another law banning sales of M rated games to minors.  Score one for the busy bodies.  I guess it’s nothing I’ve not heard before, you see I live close enough to Park Slope to feel the runoff of neurotic, over-mothering liberalism.  The kind that suffocates you, the kind that’s just as crazy and soul crushing as social conservatism.

While having lunch in the Slope, a friend  introduced my wife and me to some friends,  a couple with children.  Upon finding out what I do for a living, the wife’s face turned white as she told me that I was “The Enemy”.  Apparently, it was a constant battle to keep her kids from playing video games.  I did my best to exasperate this lady (why is it always a lady?) All the while, I had to endure listening to her 10 year old boy whine and complain about how he wanted a Game Boy, poor thing didn’t realize DS had been out for years.

Another time, I got a similar dressing down from some lady at a lesbian party in the Slope.  This one claimed that she loved video games, translation, she played Centipede back in the day.  Nonetheless, according to this woman those old games were OK.  However, these new games, they’re BAAAAAAD. She was making the same old argument about how  games are more “realistic” and therefore had some evil magical power over the minds of our zombie like children.

Hell, I even get it from the kids in this crazy neighborhood.  One child told me that she goes to her friend’s house to play Wii but that she treats it like a “book” and then kept telling me how much she loved books. Guess what? I love books too! yay! reading is awesome…  this kid had been made to feel so guilty about playing Nintendogs or whatever  for an hour that she felt the overwhelming desire to cover it up with some nonsense that she felt would appease a grown up, which she sadly mistook me for.

The prejudice even invades the industry internally.  When making games for big media giants, like Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network or even Adult Swim, there is a double standard.  You can say and do things on TV that just will not pass in a game funded by the same organization.  We are self hating that way, or maybe its just our lawyers.

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