In The Brain Workout, Brian Anderson, senior editor of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal and the author of South Park Conservatives, speaks out “in praise of video games”:
Most video games aren’t violent or racy. A recent survey from the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a free-market think tank, found that more than 80% of the top-selling titles for the past five years came with the video-game industry’s “Everyone” or “Teen” ratings, meaning that parents can assume reasonably inoffensive game content. About 15% of 2005′s games received “Mature” or “Adults Only” ratings — surprisingly few, given that 65% of gamers are 18- to 34-year-olds. [...] And with many titles selling for $50 or $60 a pop, how many children can get a hold of games without mom’s or dad’s consent in the first place?
As he notes, “critics are often ignorant of the moral universe of video games”:
Yes, the wildly popular Grand Theft Auto series, in which the gamer plays a criminal on the make in the big city, is pretty amoral. But most violent games put the player in a familiar hero’s role, notes Judge Richard Posner in a 2001 Seventh Circuit appeals-court decision overturning an Indianapolis anti-video-game ordinance. “Self-defense, protection of others, dread of the ‘undead,’ fighting against overwhelming odds — these are the age-old themes of literature, and ones particularly appealing to the young,” Mr. Posner observes.