[Prestidigitweeze]

Years ago, when I read attacks against gaming by critics who misunderstood the medium, I used to look at their most transgressive examples and play the games myself. I tried Manhunt and Rule of Rose as soon as they were released because I wanted to see why they were being maligned by conservative critics in every country. My sense was that the games were not only easy targets but, superficially, offered imaginative possibilities that authorities didn't want players to contemplate.

Of the two games, Manhunt was easily the most offensive, but I enjoyed it for that very reason: Getting murdered viciously left you with the amusing aftertaste of irony. Rule of Rose, on the other hand, is still my favorite game -- not for the combat mechanics, which are unnecessarily frustrating, but for the aesthetic, soundtrack and style, all of which are the closest to fine art of any game I've played, including Ico. Rule of Rose bears a closer resemblance to *Lord of the Flies* and Edward Gorey's *The Gashlycrumb Tinies* than to any of the prurient sources then offered by game-phobic critics. Critics were completely ignorant in their attacks.

Critics had similar misconceptions about Persona 3: The "transformer" that allowed the player to conjure one of their personae looked like a revolver, which one placed next to one's head. Endless critics then asserted that the game promoted teen suicide, but anyone who actually played the game will know that it promoted empathy for other people (including the elderly), a sense of personal worth and fair conduct in battle. And since the game was rated for mature audiences, no one was likely to be confused by the symbolism any more than they would have been by the pantheon of gods and mythical beings from nearly every religion who comprised one's available personae.

Here's what I think:

Violent content in games is only a threat for the brief period in which a user is new to the medium. For a few weeks, the first-person camera and controls can make the player feel almost unbearable tension, as if the events in a game were real. But then the controls and camera take their rightful place in the reflexes and the imagination, and the player experiences games with necessary detachment.

That's why gamers will say things like, "I loved that game. I had to die forty-two times to get to the dead nun's staff, but after that, I had unlimited ammo to electrocute anyone who stood in the way of the church." The person who says that is no more interested in killing themselves than they are in killing anyone else. Like any other medium, gaming has become compartmentalized for them.

The first time I played a survival horror game for several hours, I remember taking a shower the next morning and feeling as if I were pressing control buttons that led my hands to grasp the soap. I was conscious of making my body turn to face the "items" hanging from the shower head.

But after a week, the experience of playing found its place in my mind's conditioning, and the real world and gaming no longer intersected. The experience and perception of each thing had nothing to do with the other, let alone creating correlations in my conduct.

Call it the brain adapting to a different kind of experience.