If this recent episode of Canadian “news” show The Fifth Estate is to be believed, this is what M-rated game boxes need to look like in order for parents to know that they shouldn’t buy them for their kid.   Apparently, the problem with ESRB ratings is that they don’t come in the form of complete sentences.  Never mind the fact that these same parents presumably don’t have a problem with the ratings on DVD boxes, which come in tiny fonts on the back of the package, usually with no descriptors.  But the most egregious fault of this episode is probably its convenient ommision of one the most important facts in the case of Brandon Crisp’s death.

Now, before I go any further, I would like to say that I think the mainstream media has been giving gamers an pretty fair shake for well over a year now, especially in print and on the web.  Most of the “negative press” that videogame blogs link to centres around fairly innocuous comments and research that game “journalists” blow completely out of proportion.  However, I will admit that magazine-style news shows like 20/20 and 60 minutes seem to represent an exception to this rule in that they insist on continuing the fear-mongering, FUD-slinging approach to covering videogames that most mainstream journalists have moved past.  I like to think that my fellow Canadians are a bit more sensible and resistant to these kinds of tactics that our American neighbors, but this episode of The Fifth Estate give me ample reason to lose faith.

After implying, for the entire episode, that Brandon Crisp was somehow killed by videogames, Findlay makes only passing mention of the fact that he had been found “at the bottom of a tree” with “severe trauma to his chest” that “suggested he died from a fall” but absolutely refuse to come out and plainly state the obvious, ironic conclusion: that he died while climbing a tree - presumably the exact sort of physical activity that his parents were encouraging him to engage in rather than playing on his XBox.

The irony of this fact might have been a great jumping off point for a discussion on the prickly nature of causality, risk and blame.  Sure, we could say that he wouldn’t have tried to climb that tree if he hadn’t run away, and that he might not have tried to run away if his parents hadn’t taken his Xbox away, and they wouldn’t have had to take it away if he never had the Xbox in the first place.  The causal chain being proposed here is fairly clear.  But what if, hypothetically, Brandon had run away because his parents were getting a divorce (a common reason) and the same thing had happened.  I don’t think anyone would seriously use that as an argument against divorce or suggest that the boy had been killed by divorce.

We could also wonder that if Brandon’s parents had succeeded in getting him to spend more time outdoors, might he not have tried to climb the tree sooner and more often, thus increasing the chances of him falling out of it and dying, or getting into any number of accidents commonly associated with vigorous physical activities.  At the very least, we can say that as long as Brandon was playing videogames all the time, there was no way that he could die from falling out of a tree.  Does that mean that his parents were irresponsible for trying to get him to go outside?  Of course not.  The fact is that the series of events leading up to Brandon’s tragic death (or any of the possible deaths that I’ve suggested) were highly unlikely and impossible to predict.  As far as I know, nothing remotely similar has ever happened as a result of so-called “gaming addiction”.  To suggest that it is somehow something that parents need to watch out for is beyond absurd.

Of course, people don’t tune in to these magazine-style news shows to  contemplate these thorny ethical questions.  They tune in to get reassuringly simple answers about scary occurrences.  One can hardly blame them.  Brandon Crisp’s death was tragic and arbitrary, and I certainly don’t mean to trivialise it, but we do his memory no favors by exploiting his death for the sake of villifying something that didn’t cause it just to give ourselves a comfortingly simple answer.

Other errors: I’m pretty sure only 3 provinces (out of 13 provinces/territories) have laws against selling inapproriate games (or movies) to minors, not “most of Canada” as the show states, and law enforcement officials say that enforcing the laws is rarely a problem.  I think the interview with David Walsh must be a little dated or heavily edited.  He has been championing the ESRB, and calling for parents to educate themselves on it, for months now.  Also, the show constantly slips in sinister lines like “[videogames are] turning every violent teen male fantasy into reality”, which sound reasonable as long as you don’t think about them very hard.  Games, after all, are not reality.

Unfortunately, on this show, the truth once again took a back seat to sad piano music and scary camera angles that tell people how they should feel about the people they’re seeing, even when they seem healthy, happy and well adjusted.  One thing is certain: there will be no episode devoted to the dangers of climbing trees.

via GamePolitics

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 8th, 2009 at 11:47 pm and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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