[knarf]

"I'd think about asking them if I could get the level on my own computer, and then play it against them."

Waayyy back in 1981 I took a Greyhound from WV to Ariz. to visit my parents.

We stopped at Tulsa to hose the thing down (cross country bussers know this) ... and I whiled an hour of my time away playing PacMan (the only thing in the lounge and I only paid a quarter for all those games).

When I got back on the bus, I picked up the book I was reading before I disembarked and discovered I couldn't read from left to right. My eyes had an hour's worth of up, down, right, down, right, left, down, up, right ... etc .... and I couldn't read the book.

I fell asleep and awoke a couple of hours later.

That experience taught me .... taught me ... that what you do with your eyes is connected to what your brain is telling them to do.

I'd have a hard time thinking my child was thinking about how to kill me.

Or worse ... My thinking about how I'll kill him or her first.

War games are OK, fantasy games are OK, Tetrus is OK, etc ... but not a game about killing me.

OK ... I'm not here to fight with a freeper ... just my opinion ... I'd like to know more about this article, the kid and the school.

[Strategerist]

War games are OK, fantasy games are OK, Tetrus is OK, etc ... but not a game about killing me.

The posited scenario was about a level in your house, not a level where the faces of parents were pasted on opposing figures.

Considering that between first-person shooters, board wargames, computer games (some involving nuking cities in Russia with ALCMs, etc.) I've probably killed a billion virtual people in my life, and personally in real life I've literally never even hit another person in anger, I'm a bit dubious at the freaking out that is going on.

[Xenalyte]

I'd have a hard time thinking my child was thinking about how to kill me.

If your kid has a shooter on the computer, s/he is NOT busting caps in the parents. Zombies, Nazis, zombie Nazis, pirates, terrorists . . . I have never, never seen a game staging kids versus parents, and I've been gaming a long time.

[www.saveourguns.org]

thanks for posting.

In the spirit of exchange, and not argument, I submit these thoughts from my own life for your consideration.

I have had very similar experiences.

Once with Mario Brothers. After hours of playing I had great difficulty reading because my eyes kept seeing the letters blow up.

And I've relived many a game in my sleep.

I feel very compfortable shooting life like graphic targets by the bazillion.

More important is my values.

The games have not changed my values one bit. I would turn the any weapon upon myself before using it on anyone in my family. I would not hesitate to drop an intruder. I felt this way long before Pac-Man came along.

I also maintain that such games do not provide anything approaching realistic combat training. Weilding a mouse is not a good substitute for holding a firearm, sword, club or even a bare fist. Even the games that attempt to be ultra realistic utterly fail to reproduce the physical and mental stresses of real combat.