Parental guidance recommended for bedroom warriors

Video games fly under the radar whenever reform of the internet is mentioned.

No one likes a wowser or an old scowl and, overwhelmingly, new inventions, progress and young people provide a ray of hope for a better future. Sometimes, though, they sorely disappoint and a line is crossed. When this happens, one must speak up.

Technological advances have changed our lives, especially for the young, and the impact is not always positive. Take smartphone-addicted millennials, widely ­derided as snowflakes who melt easily and suffer from failure-to-launch syndrome — an inability to leave home and start a life.

Recent tragic events have brought to front of mind how ­social media can be used to shelter and spread evil. Even our federal government is talking about how to ensure certain types of content cannot be passed around.

Regulating the internet is a lofty ideal. Would the Prime Minister like to control the wind and the rain while he is at it? If the ­internet is in focus, then the video game industry continues to fly under the radar. Yet these products can create virtual black holes of time that suck people in and cause them to waste their lives.

US research reveals a swath of sweaty mouth-breathers in their 20s who hardly ever leave their bedrooms (in their parents’ homes) and so suffer significant amounts of declining workforce participation, along with other problems.

Around the world, the parents of gamers report frustration — coaxing their children out into the daylight, getting them to eat and even shower is an uphill battle. Many of the games are violent. The central character is often a warrior of some form collecting weapons to kill the enemy.

Debates have occurred for years about whether violent video games encourage violent behaviour. But boys will be boys, and one thing some boys love to do is play war. So we have looked the other way and waited for the phase to pass. Until now.

A new game has just been invented, by a person calling himself “Jake”. The game is called Rape Day. The purpose of it is to ­inhabit the body of a serial rapist and killer and, using weapons, notch up the victims.

Jake is reported as saying on his website that the game is a ­“visual novel” where the gamer plays a central character, Boss. Boss is a sociopath who travels the Earth during an apocalypse of zombies. The gamer controls the choices of the sociopath: “You can verbally harass, kill people and rape women as you choose to progress the story.”

Lining up to buy Rape Day, no doubt, will be a long list of “incels” — a self-named group of “involuntarily celibate” men, who gather on the internet to rage against all of the women on the planet who refuse to have sex with them. Incels appear to hate women for their rejection and feel that sex has been denied them.

Rape Day had been earmarked for sale next month by Valve Software on a distribution channel called Steam Direct. However, an online petition, signed by almost 8000 people, caused Steam Direct to reconsider. Its blog post said “after significant fact-finding and discussion” it wouldn’t facilitate distribution.

We can safely assume the game would never be approved for sale in Australia. However, with enough determination, savvy young men might be able to get it directly from the creator.

Jake confessed to an internet publication that he “might agree” that the game was not “the right fit” for “the general masses and children”, but he intends to sell it on his own site for about $15. Jake says he doesn’t see a link between role-playing violence and committing violence. “If we ever come to the scientific conclusion that committing crimes in video games significantly increases the chances of committing crimes in real life, then at that point we as a society will have to decide if we want to ban committing some or all crimes in fiction.”

All of this comes in the week a young female footballer has been subject to vile abuse by online creeps, as a result of a photograph showcasing her athletic talent.

Who knows what the solution is to games such as Rape Day, as well as other disturbing and violent material. One thing is for sure though: in this day and age, governments can do only so much. Everyone already has so much to do, and not enough time to do it in, but parental care, supervision and responsibility have never been so crucial. Where are Jake’s parents and what do they think about their son’s invention?