The most idiotic thing about the furor over Rockstar's upcoming school-based game Bully is that it's fueled by one of the scantiest PR campaigns I've ever seen. A single trailer (or two?), some fantastic concept art, and a few sentences make up the entirety of the information released by Rockstar proper.

It may be that the company is so adept at handling controversy by now that they know the crowing of the Insane Jackasses will save them tens of thousands in advertising expense. The antigamers only need to be fed a single pallid shaving with the Rockstar logo attached and they're off and running, foaming at the mouth with ignorant distemper. Whatever it is, they're against it.

We even got a comment from the head of an anti-bullying advocacy group a few weeks ago, condemning us for mentioning the game and calling us to arms against it. The email was tl;dr, going on and on about the hideous content and horrible demon influence it would have on innocent human-larva. I wrote back: "Ma'am, have you actually played the game? Because we sure as hell haven't." I got no reply.

In this Crecente piece over on ScrippsNews, we finally hear from the intelligentsia, and they tell us what we already know: only non-gamers fear games, and this is simply a continuation of our proud cultural traditions of marginalizing and demonizing our children.

Clive Thompson, video game critic for Wired News and contributing writer for The New York Times, calls video games this generation's rock 'n' roll.

"Video games are as divisive as rock 'n' roll was and they have created an experiential generation gap."

It's that gap, Thompson thinks, that is sparking much of the outcry against video games:

"There are a number of reasons why games are more disturbing to people than movies or music. It is demographics; the people who are worried about them, don't play them and don't understand them. It's a perfect storm of misunderstanding."

What's most vexing about this war is that many of our opponents are of an age that they should remember the hate and fear from their own parents towards long hair, free love, and rock n' roll. It's saddening that revolution is so quickly forgotten, but I suppose when you got your wild oats sewn so widely in your youth, you're content to become a hateful old bastard in your dotage. Eliza Gauger

More here [ScrippsNews, via GamePolitics]

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