Within hours of the horrible tragedy at Virginia Tech, USA many so called experts were jumping in front of the camera and blaming video games. They used the old catch line “He probably trained for this on shooter video games!” I have noticed something, the people who make these wild and in this most recent case completely unfounded accusations have almost always never played video games.
With living in Minnesota I have done a fair amount of hunting in my life. And I can tell you from my experience that no amount of playing Halo, or Resistance Fall of Man, or Metroid is going to train a person on how to shoot a firearm.
So I played the Nintendo DS Trauma Center, and the Nintendo Wii Trauma Center: Second Opinion. Now to also elaborate on my personal background, until last year I was a nationally registered Paramedic. I was an EMT for four years, and a Paramedic after that. So I actually do have a little bit of a medical background. After playing Trauma Center on Nintendo DS, and then playing Trauma Center on the Nintendo Wii I called on a couple of Hospital Human Resource departments. I asked if they were actively recruiting Surgeons at this time. And then explained my credentials, and as you expected there was a real long pause and then the question “You did attend Medical School correct?” When I explained the situation that I had not graduated or attended medical school nor did I even have a pre-med degree, but I had trained very hard on these two medical based games, and then sited several industry sources like Jack Thompson, Dr. Phil, and Lt. Col. Dave Grossman that playing shooter games can train you to be a killer. So I reasoned that I should be able to be a Surgeon based on playing Trauma Center. I got a mixed set of reactions, one just hung up the phone on me, another started to laugh but then caught herself, and the other just simply stated that I could send them a resume (I bet they were just dying to see that resume so they could post it on the wall!).
I have decided to pick several games and turn this into a weekly column. I think it should be good for a few good laughs. Think of it as The Around the Controller version of JackAss, only without the pain or eating nasty stuff! Look for next week’s article on Training with Splinter Cell. And feel free to add comments about ideas for proposed video game training.
