[B]Chris Dahlen, shameless East Coast Liberal and erstwhile game journalist, [URL=http://www.edge-online.com/blogs/i-like-guns]learns a nice lesson about gun play[/URL] from his son and [I]Big Buck Hunter Pro[/I]:[/B]

[INDENT] We’re at Joe’s New York Pizza, having a slice while my wife is teaching a class. It’s a great pizzeria, except that they have a coin-op game in the restaurant, and it happens to be one of the only games I don’t want my four-year-old to play: Big Buck Hunter Pro.

“Why do you want to play that?” I said. I fumbled for a follow-up. “I’ve heard it’s not that good”...

Here’s the dilemma I faced. As a dad, do I let my kid try something he might enjoy more than I want him to? Should I let him make up his own mind, and trust his four-year-old judgement? Or do I shelter him from it, just as I’ve protected him from The Phantom Menace, jam bands, and the n-bomb?

“Come on, dad. I want to play it.”

I gave in.

My son’s aim was lousy. He was happy just to wave the rifle around and pull the trigger...

And that’s when I realized - my son understood this game better than I did. I was hung up on the form, while he went straight for the function. To him, a gun isn’t a weapon; it’s more like a magic wand with a trigger. In his imagination, it’s a tool that lets him reach out and make cool stuff happen. This is not bad, because the targets are not real, which is obvious. He doesn’t want to kill the wildlife; he just wants to make things explode.

[/INDENT] While many of us fret about the social politics behind our interactive carnage, it's good to be reminded that sometimes, to paraphrase Freud, a videogame gun is just a cool way to make things blow up.

[URL=http://www.gameculture.com/2010/03/09/game-guns-%E2%80%94-magic-wand-trigger]read more[/URL]

[url=http://www.gameculture.com/2010/03/09/game-guns-%E2%80%94-magic-wand-trigger]More...[/url]