Monday, April 29, 2002

Going Postal
Do you remember the Post office killings? Going Postal has become a word for violently expressing frustration. This resulted in among other things, computer games such as Postal and Postal 2. (Voodoo Extreme on Postal 2.)

They call it Spree killings, and it wasn't invented with computer games, although computer games use them. Perhaps these horrors are so frustrating, so alien, so taboo, that we can't discuss and process them in any medium but that of games? They let us handle the blood and gore once removed through labeling it make-belief, and so we can play with it, work through it in a repeated release - almost cathartic in nature? Banning games won't make war, murder and irresponsible car-driving go away. I wish it was that easy.

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