MURDERING
BY VIDEO

Topics: Addiction; Confession; Death; Entertainment; Guilt; Hypocrisy; Media; Murder; Parenting; Play; Stumbling Blocks; Violence

References: Exodus 20:13; Ezekiel 8:17; 1 Timothy 3:2–3; 2 Timothy 3:1–5; 2 Peter 2:19

I have used swords and shotguns, handguns and grenades. I have shot, stabbed, and bludgeoned. I have crushed skulls with golf clubs and hammers and baseball bats. I have slaughtered men and women, drug dealers and crime bosses, soldiers and secret agents, mad scientists and aliens, zombies and the pizza guy. I have killed hundreds, even thousands—so many that I lost count long ago. I have taken up machine guns, plasma rifles, and chain saws. I have learned to aim for the head.

I have killed with Xbox and GameCube, PlayStation, and PC. I have killed with joystick, mouse, and keyboard. I have killed for hours at a time on screens big and small, on laptops and high-resolution monitors. I have killed in my basement, in my living room, at the local arcade, at a neighbor’s house, with a coworker’s teenage son. I have killed late into the night, until 3:00 a.m., because my adrenaline was surging, because my kids were safely in bed, because I was simply on a roll. Because I was winning and they were dying.…

Every weeknight I play, most nights later than the one before. And every night I slink up the stairs and ease my weary frame into bed, trying not to disturb my wife, who went to sleep hours ago. My body is spent, yet I cannot sleep. The bedroom is silent, yet I can still hear those ominous refrains. I close my eyes, yet I can still picture the endless corridors, each one leading to another door or outcropping, another blind corner, another enemy, another target.…

Come Saturday morning I’m at the computer again. That’s when I hear it: the muted thud of feet on the stairs. And there, standing to my right, eyes fixed on the screen, is my little boy. I tell him to go back upstairs, but he doesn’t budge. In his mind there is a cartoon on the computer, the likes of which he’s never seen before. He somehow knows this is forbidden fruit that he must possess or at least observe. I call for my wife, asking her to please come get her son.

Later on, this boy who has never operated a joystick in his life asks me a question I never saw coming: “Daddy, can I watch you play the bad game?”

Forgive me, Father, for I have killed.

—Jeff Hooten, “Point. Click. Kill,” Citizen (February 2006)