An Attack on "Mature" Subject Matter in Games

by John Michel 

Many editorial articles before this one have tackled the difficult issues of racism, sex, violence, and religion in video games. What I am writing here is not more of the same, but rather, quite possibly the first real defense of morality in our society.

I don't pretend to know how many parents will read this, but just for a moment, suppose that you have a ten year old child. How many of you out there would purchase a gun for that child and teach him how to shoot and kill his classmates at school? How many of you would shout racial slurs around him and encourage him to do the same? How many of you would teach him to go out and sleep with any consenting individual he feels like? I pray to God that your answers to all of the above would be "of course not!" If you truthfully answered yes to any of them, or if you don't care, please stop reading now. You certainly won't like what I have to say. Most people, I'm sure, would never dream of doing any of the things I mentioned above, and yet, probably don't mind loading the media with representations of it.

We talk about "mature" content in movies and games. How are they mature? What makes us mature by feeding our minds with such garbage? There is a reason why we don't want to expose our children to these things: Because they are bad things. What we call "maturity" is really a tolerance for this behavior which is the unfortunate side effect of living in a world where we are bombarded by such imagery. Why must we surrender to the misconception that "that's just the way things are" and "we can't do anything about it"? Just as we would protect our children from these issues, we should take the same care to protect ourselves from them.

I am one of the original American fans of the Final Fantasy series, and have played games 1 through 7. FF 1 through 6 showed to us that you can have great, solid stories without bad language, gang rape, and bloody murder scenes. Others have said before that those games were geared towards pre-teens because of their "mild" subject matter. I speak for myself and several of my friends when I say that I enjoyed the older games of the series more because of that subject matter. I could always count on the FF series to deliver a fantastic game without the questionable content. And, as I have gotten older with the series, I find more than ever that I enjoy games that I can sit down with my younger sister and play. I regret to say that the Final Fantasy series is no longer one of those. I want to see more RPGs get rid of their "mature" content in favor of strong, moral stories that can be shown to any audience.

You are probably wondering now whether or not I'm going to get to religion (or hoping that I'll just shut up here). Anyway, now I tackle possibly the most controversial of the four subjects. I am wholly in favor of religion in videogames as long as it is dealt with in a moral, christian light. This is a logical statement considering the fact that I am christian. I do not long to see certain denominations exhaulted or insulted, however, just the good moral behavior that is the very basis of christianity. As far as I am concerned, if this sort of atmosphere cannot be portrayed without offending people, then religion can be left out entirely. I mainly wish for an environment within all video games that doesn't promote indecent activity and can be viewed by all audiences, moving these games from something we'd better do on our own to something we don't mind doing with our families. Without moral religion, there is nothing. Ben Bleything said in a previous editorial "some people need faith, and others don't." This is just wrong. Under the assumption that God created everything (and those who don't believe that -- just explain how the universe began, using only our laws of physics), everything we do in this world pertains to Him. We can no more deny His exsistance than our own. We all need faith in something, and better it be a good and moral God than money, sex, violence, or other finite material idols.

With all of that said, don't think that I condemn all video games for not giving due praise to God. I still by Final Fantasy games, waiting for them to improve, and I wait for the day that I can make games like those that I want to see. I still enjoy playing any game which has more plot than "kill everyone" and where good wins out over evil, but I cannot and will not rest easy until the industry I love can clean up it's act a little.