note: This is The Column, a part of Apolyton where primarily Markos and Dan write whatever we want :). Well, not just the two of us. The Column is open to everyone. If you feel like writing submit your article to civ2@apolyton.net

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#49 AFTERTHOUGHTS It's time for a return to putting the customer first, DarthVeda affirms. #50 SMALL FISH, BIG FISH, APOLYTON FISH Take a look at the pond of inhabitants in our neck of the Net, MarkG observes. COLUMN ARCHIVE

Did you hear about the 9-year-old who killed his 11-year-old cousin somewhere in the woodlands of the midwestern United States with a shotgun? Yep, mistook him for a deer; this is ironic, when you consider where the murderer (yes, killers are not limited to those of the "age of majority") claimed he got the idea to act on this impulse from: the computer game Deer Hunter, by Sunstorm Interactive.

Excuse me -- did I miss the point in time when clicking a mouse that blew apart a pixelated object on a computer screen translated into a youth committing a homicide? Perhaps you haven't heard this specific case, but no doubt you have heard of something just as tragically similar. Guns have been around for hundreds of years in one form or another, so why all of a sudden do we hear so much about it?

Violence, and specifically violence caused by or against youth, has not increased as a percentage on the whole in recent years. No trend here. You can blame it on the media for all the attention and airtime they give to these crimes, but even then that's not quite getting to the heart of the matter. Rather, blame it on the public hunger that feeds off of the dirt, the trash, the smut, the can-you-see-behind-the-blinds vulgarness that can is regularly pushed and prodded into our homes and psyche 24/7 in a multitude of interactive mediums. In this ever increasing interconnected global village we call the Earth, we are as quick to pass judgement as we logon to cnn.com every morning.

In the Civilization community of the gaming industry, we are not directly under the spotlight of ultra-conservative lead groups looking for someone or something to dump yet another of the world's sicknesses upon. However as a form of entertainment that contains even "mild animated violence", a label you see and hear attached to a lot of games these days, there is always the chance that some demented lunatic with half a brain will figure out that they can save or at least curb the beating of their hide by merely pointing a finger in another direction. This can and is already being done by the descendents of those with the same perverted and twisted minds that in the Dark Ages screamed bloody witchcraft as the reason for their aggressions (they knew it was bullshit before the mainstream did even).

We're still not as gullible as our more simplistic ancestors, are we now? We have reliable scientific methods which have proven time and again that such things do not exist. Why can't we learn from this ancient oversight and apply it to this present crisis? Yes, I said crisis, and if you don't think so, what rock have you crawled and hibernated under recently?

Sure, some games, like Doom and its kin, are oriented around the maiming and slaughter or another. But are games like these meant to teach a child how to act, how to behave, how to think? NO. That's what parents are for. You know, good 'ol mom and pop? Being a responsible father or mother does not begin and end with the actual creation of a human being, but rather its nurturing is the true test of the fitting of an individual to sire a rugrat. It is up to the parents of a child to teach their offspring right from wrong, and to impose consequences for poor conduct. The older and greater the infraction, the graver the repercussions must be. This form of hierarchy has been going on for centuries. Take any troubled teen, or in a growing number of cases prepubescent, and examine the conditioning and lifestyle that they've grown up under. While circumstances do very, some disturbing trends are almost always present: drugs, alcohol, physical and sexual abuse, and abandonment.

Let me put it this way: give a kid with violent tendencies access to a CD with, say, Quake on it, you may find yourself paying and arm and a leg for that child's therapy for the next decade. But give a kid access to a gun, a knife, or any other weapon with destructive powers that they either don't know or don't care of, and you've got a problem.

The opinions expressed on this page do not necessarily reflect those of Apolyton CS or GameStats. They are just the personal opinions of the writer.