Boycott 25 to Life

One of my local news channels was doing a story about violent video games. It looked like the usual news story about violent video games, covering the M rating, kids buying those games, and the other typical issues in this type of story. I liked it better the first time, when it was about GTA. But anyway, this time it was about the game 25 to Life.

Here's some backstory. First of all, there are a lot of GTA copycat games out there that can't touch GTA in quality and fun. Then, there's an obsession going on now for gangster and street video games. The kids really love them, so the video game companies are making lots of them, and they're pretty much all bad. By bad I mean, not fun to play, not well made, low quality, just bad in every way you can think of.

So here's the important part, 25 to Life is an awful game. IGN, which is a reliable video games reviews site, gave it a 2.0 out of 10. That's really really bad. I probably wouldn't buy any games that get less than a 7 unless I was really sure about it being good. So it seems really useless for local news to cover the game. The issue is so old and overdone now, and they didn't add anything new, and then they said people were boycotting the game. Seriously, what is that going to do? Yeah I boycott bad games too. Then just by covering this insignificant game on the news, probably more kids will want it now. So now they're just helping the sales of a horrible game. Don't do that. Now they'll make a hundred other games exactly like 25 to Life. Boycott the game because it's horrible, not because it isn't for kids.

And another thing, why is it that parents can allegedly figure out what the movie ratings mean, but don't understand the video game ratings? Sure, they're different letters and have some different meanings, but how hard is it really to match up the letter M with Mature? The other thing about this that annoys me is that both sides of the issue have common ground that we forget to acknowledge. The common ground is that M games shouldn't be sold to kids or played by kids. I think everyone can agree on that. But I remember back when the GTA hot coffee mod controversy was going on some people were complaining that kids shouldn't see that part, but they don't say that kids really shouldn't be playing that game at all. They shouldn't be seeing any part of the game. So if the the M rating was actually respected in the first place, then kids wouldn't have seen the hot coffee stuff.

So back to the main point, don't buy 25 to Life. And be really suspicious of any new gangster games coming out. Even 50 Cent Bulletproof only got a 4.0 out of 10, and most of that score probably comes from the good soundtrack in the game.