Shock as Titchmarch realises violence in videogames more entertaining than gardening.

The first game I ever played was Sonic The Hedgehog. I played it when I was around about 5 or 6, and thank god the unrelenting, brutal and sadistic violence in that game did not scar me for life. I did everything to that hedgehog you can imagine. I jumped him into lava, into spikes, balls with spikes on them, cylinders with spikes on the sides, robots with cutting tools, lasers and one time I even threw him to his death from a plane.

I must have killed more foxes than the entire Tory Party in the past hundred years.

Of course, this wasn’t my only experience with videogame violence – when I was 10 I played Desert Strike, where I had to commandeer a helicopter gunship to attack a series of targets inside an unnamed IRAQ IRAQ IRAQ middle eastern country. I carried out dozens upon dozens of bombing raids, ostensibly on military targets like anti-aircraft radar, presidential palaces, scuds and tanks. But more than once I would fuck up and gun down civilians I accidentally assumed were enemy infantry – or blow up civilian houses whilst searching for more fuel. What happened? Well I would return to the frigate, my mission would be over – but I would be allowed to restart ALL OVER AGAIN. An endless cycle of violence and misery.

This only got worse when I got the sequel Jungle Strike, and consciously decided to lay waste to Washington DC – destroying  Justice Department buildings, The Washington Memorial, The Jefferson Memorial and laying waste to the suburbs, in a gross dereliction of my mission objectives. Sure I would be asked to return to The White House to retry my mission, but this threat was frankly somewhat toothless considering it would be the first building I would destroy when starting my mission.

This videogame violence is almost cartoonish compared to what you are now able to do on modern computers – buy sex from prostitutes and kill them, machine gun down civilians in a busy airport, or use a wii remote to enact a beheading. Veteran gardener Alan Titchmarsh is on the case though – watch him below attacking violent videogames – who have grossly surpassed such gritty, sadistic, and bloody 50′s dramas like The Lone Ranger.

If you look closely in the audience, you’ll be able to see pitchforks and torches at the ready.

Listening to Alan spell out the games names shows he is clearly very familiar with the industry. Sitting next to him is Mrs Helen Lovejoy and noted social commentator and cunt Kelvin McKenzie. More on him later. First things first, violent videogames may only make up 5% of the market as the pro-gaming guy says, but they make up 95% + of all decent videogames. You really can’t get as much joy out of pushing plastic buttons on a guitar in tune with shiny boxes as taking over control of a predator drone and using it to kill 20 invading Russian soldiers in a shopping malls carpark.

This isn’t because human beings or videogames players are psychotic, it’s just that violence is exciting. Violence involves pressure on individuals which heighten tension in all drama – books, films and games. Things are more thrilling if there is a chance someone could die, especially if it involves their head being ripped off by the Predator. If you don’t agree try watching the 4 hour black and white silent version of Die Hard done by Werner Herzog. The drop in quality is noticeable. Yet one of our prize rent-a-panelist chumps says she is against “all forms of violence for entertainment”. Did you hear that? “all forms of violence for entertainment”. If these nutters had their way we would not have,

* 24

* Battlestar Galactica

* Die Hard

* Aliens

* The Bourne Ultimatum

* Predator

* Where Eagles Dare

* Indiana Jones

* Terminator 2

* James Bond

* THE ENTIRE STAR WARS AND LORD OF THE RINGS SERIES.

That’s only a very small example of what would happen to society if we ceased entertainment based on (kiddy on imaginary) violence. We would be stuck in an endless nightmare of shit daytime telly, which is probably why this rent-a-gob supports ending all violence in entertainment as it would mean Loose Women would endlessly loop on TV, alongside Jeremy Kyle and Call My Bluff and she would be on telly non stop.

Kelvin proudly displays his membership of the British Wankers Charitable Trust.

She also goes on to claim that videogames “promote hatred, violence and sexism”. If she had simply looked to her right however, she could have seen noted piece of human shit Kelvin Mackenzie, who has spent an entire journalistic career promoting all 3 far more effectively than the Metal Gear series. Videogames may have all these 3, but it’s no different from most mainstream Hollywood movies. GTA may allow you to buy sex from prostitutes and kill them, but theres a whole film industry dedicated to “torture porn” which often involves women being mutilated to death.

Yes! I killed a ship going out the exclusion zone, I've won a multiplayer map!

When Kelvin attacks videogames on the potential offence they may cause he should remember that no current or previous version of Street Fighter accused Liverpool fans of pissing on their own dead and robbing them. And that when you destroy something in a game and get a high score for it, people haven’t actually died for your moment of glory – unlike the Belgrano.

Attacks on the game industry aren’t limited to daytime telly shows though – violent videogames are denied tax breaks other games get, and other games have been attacked by MP’s – such as Modern Warfare 2. Most of Modern Warfare plays as a conventional shoot em up, with the player gunning down terrorists, soldiers etc. But in one mission that provoked tabloid hysteria you play as a US Special Forces soldier undercover with terrorists attacking an airport.

Part of this mission means you have to keep your cover, which means not stopping the terrorists from slaughtering hundreds of civilians in an airport. Contrary to the press, you don’t have to shoot folk to keep your cover – but you aren’t punished for helping the terrorists massacre folk.

It’s pretty realistic to watch, with lots of chaos and screaming going around you while it happens. But the reason the level is there is to show the extremes the character has to go through to keep his cover. You get the same kind of scenarios all the time in 24 – where terrorists are allowed to carry out attacks ostensibly for the greater good.

The reality is that every now and then the press and politicians need to find some moral outrage to sell papers with, and create false panic - using tried and tested techniques. It’s not unlike the hysteria over “video nasties” in the 70′s, that were frequently banned because they supposedly corrupted people who watched them. This hysteria sometimes overlapped on to mainstream, big budget films – like Childs Play, because the killers of Jamie Bulger were alleged to have watched the films.

It’s the same kind of madness Michael Moore did Bowling for Columbine about – the idea that listening to some kind of music, watching a film, or playing a game believed to be obscene can force the user into violent acts in the real world. It’s not that dissimilar from the mephedrone hysteria – that taking mephedrone automatically leads to death, while ignoring many of the victims were also taking methadone etc. So the fact Jon Venables and Robert Thompson had no moral compass when they were brought up, and abused by violent parents would have had no impact on their horrific crime, it was watching a horror movie that warped them.  Or that it’s Marilyn Manson’s fault a school got shot up in a country with more guns than people.

It is probably only a matter of time before some violent attack is reported in the press, with the criminal having Manhunt, GTA or Modern Warfare in his videogame collection, and a demand to crack down on violent games is made.

That said, I don’t think you can be totally uncaring about a games content – not all games should be whitewashed. There are games you can buy off the internet which simulate the rape of women. The fact that you can actually beat a prostitute to death in GTA probably does fuck up a whole load of young men’s attitudes to women who work in the sex industry. And that there are now videogames being planned based on the current war in Afghanistan does desensitise people to a war that’s causing misery for thousands of Afghans and hundreds of families in the UK. It’s no coincidence the US Army has released an official videogame as a recruitment tool, they are clearly trying to sell the idea to young guys that joining the army is just like a really realistic shoot em up.

But the facts are, all these attitudes are just as much in movies, music, politics and the press as they are in videogames. The reason games are attacked is because they are played by an overwhelmingly young section of the population, who don’t vote or own houses etc. This makes them the perfect whipping boy for MP’s who want to get votes and or publicity, and also newspapers who want to increase their circulation by generating some false moral outrage.

It makes me so sick, I just wish I could pull this kind of shit on them ALL DAY,