Ego Blogging

A few more of my 360 reviews and previews have popped up online:

Def Jam: Icon
Brian Lara Cricket
Superman Returns
Battlestations: Midway
Shivering Isles (preview)

Pope-ular Games

Gamasutra - Pope Benedict XVI Criticizes Violent Video Games

In his message, Pope Benedict specifically singles out "commercial competitiveness compelling communicators to lower standards", continuing: "Any trend to produce programmes and products - including animated films and video games - which in the name of entertainment exalt violence and portray anti-social behaviour or the trivialization of human sexuality is a perversion, all the more repulsive when these programmes are directed at children and adolescents."

Video-games are like the bible then, targeted at children who have no concept if it's real or not, who are subjected to stories about genocide, murder and the inferiority of women. Of course video-games justification is only hedonism, while the bible is justified arbitrarily by appeal to a rabid, jealous god. I do not like violence in video games, preferring the clean conflict of German board games like Carcassone and Settlers of Catan, but will not stand alongside a religion that is horrifyingly hierarchical, has persecuted and massacred throughout history, and in its modern form perpetrates dangerous random doctrines like no-contraception and condemns this stuff. Neither the Pope nor I have clean hands on this particular moral issue so I think he should just butt out.

I do hope he's reading.

(Angry today.)