Twenty-six year-old gamer Guido Núñez-Mujica lives in Venezula, where the government has passed a new law that in effect criminalizes video games.
"These games are a cherished part of my life," Núñez-Mujica writes over at website Boing Boing, "they helped to shape my young mind, they gave me challenges and vastly improved my English, opening the door to a whole new world of literature, music and people from all around the world. What I have achieved, all my research, how I have been able to travel even though I'm always broke, the hard work I've done to convince people to fund a start up for cheap biotech for developing countries and regular folks, none of that would have been possible hadn't I learned English through video games.
"Now, thanks to the tiny horizons of the cast of morons who govern me, thanks to the stupidity and ham-fisted authoritarianism of the local authorities, so beloved of so many liberals, my 7 year old brother's chances to do the same could be greatly impacted."
The essay in full is yours to read in the link below and it touches on more than video games. It's brave stuf: "If I get fined for writing this (Article 13, promoting the use of violent videogames), so be it. If I go to jail because I carry rooms in my hard drive or in an R4 card for my brother, next time I return to the country, so be it. But I'd rather go to jail than betray the gamer culture, partially responsible for making me the person I am today." Read it.
Venezuela bans violent video games: a first-person guest essay [Boing Boing]