I Can Relate

From Lew Rockwell.com:

Writes Ryan Hainlen: "As a young adult, I still enjoy playing video games, but recently, I can't bring myself to play war-related video games. It seems that the articles and blogs on your website have slowly but surely steered me away from them.

"I used to play 10-15 hours per week of Battlefield 2 and now I haven't played in 2 months. I watched a trailer for an upcoming game in the Battlefield series and couldn't help but be shocked by how much war is glorified. If this is what my age group is playing, I kind of understand the mind set of enjoying the 'shock and awe' videos and the consideration to join the military. Yet, at the same time, I am now thoroughly disgusted by those things. And it just isn't my age group, I know plenty of 40-50 year olds that still enjoy the utter destruction of human life, either pixelalated or real."

There's a friend at work and we talk about Oblivion quite often. He told me he put in part 4 of some army game (can't recall which) and how awesome it is. I told him I can't play those games much any more since all I do is think about how the justification of whatever war we're fighting is probably all bullshit and we're just dying for some politician's pet project. I think the same thing during Ghost Recon too. And I love those games.

Oh well. I am having trouble playing a thief character in Oblivion too. It just feels wrong to make my elf steal.

The weirdest feeling was playing Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight and trying to max out my Dark Side points. You have to kill innocent people. It's really messed up.

I guess that's why I love Halo (1) so much. You're fighting a defensive war of survival for the human race with your back against the wall. There's not much grey area there.