I rented Resident Evil: Code Veronica this weekend. It wasn't the first time I'd rented this latest edition of the Biohazard games, as I'd rented it shortly after we got the Dreamcast, tossed the game aside in disgust and told myself I'd rent it again after I had a Gameshark. Nikki got me that particularly beloved toy for Christmas, and so here I was.

As I sat there, codes in place to give me infinite ammunition and life, I realized that I am one totally violent, even sociopathic gamer. I shot at everything and everyone. I fired countless bullets into ceilings, walls, and most especially explosive gas barrels... With great relish, I shot people who were already dead. I especially liked shooting explosive arrows out of the window of one building and into the walls of another building across the yard. I was the God of Death and Destruction come to life and loved every minute of it.

But the longer I went through the game, blowing apart all that lay in my path (I was most disappointed that you didn't get a chance to fire at the jet with your weapons from the open back of the airplane you were in on Disc 1), I got increasingly angry with the world, because playing this game just reinforced how stupid it all is. Why? Because I am not a violent person. I don't own any guns, knives or other implements of death. I don't pick fights, and I haven't struck a person in anger in almost ten years. Okay, so I'm practically a wimp, but the point ultimately is, where is all this corruption that I see society having a fit about? One could argue that it's because I'm no longer a young impressionable adult, but I've been like this with games--the harder the hit, the more spectacular the explosion, the better. It didn't turn me into a raving psychopath or make me gun down an entire street of people.

Whether or not I'm the rule or the exception to it, who knows, but I know only that I have played games for two decades through their best and worst times, seen them at their most violent, and I'm a normal, well-adjusted member of society who's never even been arrested. I think in due course, psychologists and other analysts of the time will liken video games, movies and other media targeted by violence activists to wood; harmless on its own, but liable to burn, taking houses and lives, if touched to a flame. Most people are barely a burning ember, it's the open flames of humankind we have to worry about, and when they can be set off by something on a screen, no matter how much like a "murder simulator" some might see it, then we have a lot more to worry about than video games.

(The author apologizes for flogging what is not only a dead, but buried and decomposed horse, but couldn't pass up the opportunity to share these newfound revelations. On a lighter note, did anyone else try to blow Steve apart with gunpowder arrows at every chance? ;)