There's been a lot of talk in the
news again over concerns about violent video games. As we try to come to terms with spiralling social issues like gun crime, yob culture and the resurrection of Noel Edmonds' career, it's almost inevitable that a vociferous minority – perhaps even a vociferous
majority - will point an accusing finger and be quick to find an instant scapegoat for all of society's problems. As a social libertarian who believes in free speech and the inalienable right to read, watch and enjoy anything I damn well like so long as it doesn't hurt or harm another living soul, I don't tend to agree with much that the Moral Panic Brigade has to say. On this occasion, though, I think they may have a point.
When I hear about video games like
Bad Habit – the latest instalment in the controversial "Nun-With-A-Gun" series - I have to ask myself:
"Have we gone too far?" This game, in which players assume the role of Sister T - a heavily-armed homicidal nun on a murderous rampage at a Dan Brown book-signing event - recently came under flak from Church leaders and media watchdogs for its unprecedented levels of gory hi-res violence and its insensitive use of the Chichester branch of Waterstones as a backdrop. The media went into a feeding frenzy. The Daily Mail called on the Government to 'Ban This Sick Filth', the Guardian claimed that the 'PM Urges Tighter Nun Control' while the FT coolly observed that 'Games Firm Profits Soar Amidst Growing Hack and Slash the Hack Controversy.' The Sun approached the story from a different angle, however, running with the headline: 'Sister T & Lara in PS3-Some Shocker!"
While the game's publishers were quick to defend
Bad Habit - claiming it "encouraged young people to develop a passion for literature and perhaps even join a religious order" – I'm less optimistic. I'm inclined to think that games like this could desensitize a generation to the consequences of their violent actions. I strongly believe that it's highly irresponsible to glamorise and glorify violent acts against a best-selling author and his readership, irrespective of how clunky his prose is. Just because you're dressed like a nun doesn't make it any more acceptable.
Video games, of course, are no strangers to controversy. I haven't really played them very much since my childhood in the 1980s, but even then - with the medium in its infancy – moral guardians were concerned about their dangers. I for one have heard many anecdotal accounts of "Athlete's Finger", a localised but debilitating form of repetitive strain injury brought about by prolonged sessions on 'Track & Field' and 'Daley Thompson's Decathlon'. And if that's the kind of physiological damage those vintage computer games could cause, I shudder to think of their long-term psychological consequences…
"A thousand, thousand slimy things lived on, and so did I"
- Samuel Tayler Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
For years I'd be haunted by the same terrible dream. It would always start in a similar manner: I would wake up on a cold, hard surface in a dark stygian place consumed by the most wretched hunger. The darkness was absolute and impenetrable, as though both moon and starlight had been extinguished from the night-black sky and some vast cloak of pure obsidian had been draped over the inky black firmament and painted black with several coats of black emulsion. The hunger, too, was quite unprecedented. I yearned – oh, how I yearned! - for some scant morsel of sustenance from the unforgiving gloom. It was as though each molecule, each cell and each atom within me had let out a desperate, mournful, harmonised cry for urgent food aid to the accompaniment of the lengthy, improvised drum solo that was emanating from the hollow chambers of my belly. I thought of Thomas de Quincey and his infamous
Diary of an English Opium-Eater in which he described, in one deleted passage, a grub-craving so profound that he could "steal a cream bun from the pocket of a tramp."
I thought of my sweetheart and fiancé P_____ - what had become of her? Would I ever have the chance to gaze lovingly at her pretty round face or touch those golden locks of hair held in place by that enormous red bow? Unhappy fate! Had I been blinded by some vicious assailant and left here to die of starvation? Was this Hell? Or – more prosaic yet more terrifying in its aspect – had I been stitched-up once again by those vile scoundrels from the Miskatonic Polytechnic Rugby Union Club?
Before I could find an answer to these desperate yet unspoken questions, I heard a faint electric buzz that seemed to surround me. Suddenly, a flickering spark of light tore a slice of incandescent brilliance through the hitherto relentless gloom. Dazzled momentarily – with phosphorescent dots erupting before my eyes – I gasped as the spark ignited and blue light cascaded all around me. I could see that I now stood between two shimmering walls of the most gaudy and vulgar electric-blue neon. They seemed to form a corridor of sorts, and something about the scene reminded me of a strange and disturbing secret passage from the dreaded
Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred, in which he gave a vivid account of an unspeakably lurid and regrettable stag weekend in Amsterdam.
Though most of the dazzle-induced phosphorescent dots had by now receded from my field of vision, a few stubbornly remained. I blinked and blinked and blinked once again, but still they refused to budge, like uninvited housepests who can't take a hint. They seemed to be arranged in a regimented single-file along the polished black floor of this neon-framed passageway. Alas, this was no mirage! Cautiously, I lifted one of these strange anomalies from the floor and found – much to my surprise - that it was no larger than a peanut butter and banana sandwich. But that was where any similarity to traditional lunchtime snacks ceased abruptly. It was off-white in colour, roughly spheroid in shape and had a distinctly tacky texture, as though it had been dipped in some blasphemous vat of chipgrease and ectoplasm. Perhaps my sway of reason had been irrefutably shaken by circumstance, but in spite of its strange and eldritch appearance it looked quite tasty – not unlike a donner kebab late on a Friday night. Desperate with hunger and with scant care for self preservation or gentlemanly conduct, I greedily wolfed it down. Needless to say, it tasted like chicken.
As I gingerly chomped my way along the now-illuminated corridor, I soon discovered that it formed part of a maze. My first impression was of a vast, neon-lit Cyclopean labyrinth of unimaginable scope and scale that embodied monstrous perversions of geometric laws. Upon closer inspection, however, it was actually quite small.
And then, I heard it. Something shuffled and slithered in the distance, unseen as yet, but unmistakably ancient and terrible in nature. It seemed to come from an antechamber at the centre of this somewhat uncomplicated labyrinth. I was gripped in that moment by a most primitive sense of dread and foreboding. The hackles rose at the back of my neck, icy beads of sweat erupted across my ample forehead and I felt a most terrible sinking sensation at the pit of my spherical stomach. I may even have let off a fart.
Of my first glimpse of these vile abominations I have this to say. There seemed to be four of them, formless, slime-spewing protoplasmic monstrosities draped in membranous cloaks of red, orange, lilac and powder blue. Their very presence was a ghastly affront to every known law of nature: it was as though Michael Winner had arrived at a fancy-dress party in the guise of Shirley Temple. They were, without doubt, the fiendish "Shoggoths" described in the ghastly, grisly and gruesome
Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred [which later spawned the hit Broadway musical, 'Lulu and Cthulhu Go Wild in Honolulu'].
And their eyes – egad, their eyes! – what can be said of them? Each of these foul slithering monstrosities had two orbs apiece that were arranged along a horizontal axis, but that's where any similarity to traditional anatomy ended. Their eyes were giant, bulbous, demented protrusions that seemed to stretch from their sockets, twitching with impatient and atavistic fury as they scoured their surrounding landscape for something to devour, or, at the very least, to glare at with menace. They put me in mind of the famously mad-eyed comedy actor Marty Feldman, or of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Half paralyzed with terror I tried to suppress another fart, but failed.
And now, all eight of those hideous eyes were glaring menacingly at me!They advanced towards me with preternatural haste as I fled with all the speed my tiny legs could muster. I ran like hell down those eerie blue-lit corridors, eating clumps of pseudo-food without slackening my pace and pausing only to lick the occasional dropped crumb from the polished floor (through terror-stricken beyond my wildest imaginings, I was still feeling quite peckish). Left I turned, then right and left again and all the while my relentless pursuers pursued me relentlessly. My recollection of what happened next is somewhat blurry on account of the fact I was running at the time. At one stage I chanced upon a tunnel I thought might offer me some means of escape, but it only led me to the opposite end of the maze; at another, I encountered a somewhat incongruous giant cherry that frustratingly blocked my path but was, I must admit, rather tasty.
But still, those ferocious miscreants continued to gain precious ground on me. I was running out of steam, running out of space and running out of things to eat when I chanced upon a clump of pseudo-food that was somewhat larger that its counterparts now working their way through my intestinal tract. It seemed to shimmer, generating a halo of otherworldly radiance that seemed quite beatific in nature. I paused – gazing at this glorious thing, transfixed by its celestial beauty - then gobbled it down with tremendous gusto.
In an instant my entire body was filled with the most tremendous surge of energy. It was as though every muscle, every vein, every sinew had been pumped full of a most potent and vibrant elixir. I felt renewed! I felt euphoric! I felt better than James Brown, who – by his own earnest admission - felt
good.
My vile tormentors, however, did not fare so well. In the very same instant of my euphoric epiphany, they all turned a most sickly shade of blue and their malevolent demeanour was replaced by a fearful countenance. Instinctively, I lurched towards the first. Before my very eyes his membranous cloak and corporeal form dissolved into nothingness, leaving only his ghastly eyes which dropped to the ground and scuttled off towards the central antechamber.
O, sweet respite! The hunter had become the hunted, the farmer had become the harvest and the chef had become the hors d'oeuvres! I could not say what was the more delicious: the sweet irony of this turnabout in fortune, or the joy I found in snacking on my foes!
I gave sudden chase to the remaining three, taunting them with barbed jests, blasphemous curses and obscure Norwegian sea shanties that I had prepared for just such an occasion. I would not normally indulge in such wanton savagery and un-gentlemanly belligerence, but there is something in being chased through a neon-lit maze by four vicious ghosts that brings the worst out in a fellow.
It was not to last, however. After catching hold of my second quarry – who also dissolved in my grip like a big, blue Alka Seltzer – I noticed his first companion return to the fray, restored now to its original colour, form and ferocity and making haste towards me. Worse yet, the remaining two were losing their cowardly blue taint and were being restored to their fearsome shades of orange and lilac. It was clear the effect of my starry banquet – which I now believe to be a certain alkaloidal herb popular amongst mystics, mountain dwellers and touring funk bands – was wearing off.
O woeful turn of circumstance - the hunted who had become the hunter was being hunted by his former hunters once again! My spirits sank and I became afflicted with a sudden and most overwhelming sense of melancholia. I believe this is known in popular parlance as
"coming down".I ran again, gripped with terror and a desperate craving for some more pseudo-food and another hit of what I'd now affectionately thought of as the
"good shit". Once again I tried to outmanoeuvre the ghastly abominations, but their pursuit was now more swift and relentless. Either that, or my retreat was becoming more clumsy and languid. In any case, I scrambled awkwardly down a passageway with a beast so close behind I could smell the acrid stench of its breath on my nostrils, then took a sharp left only to find two of its loathsome comrades approaching from the opposite direction. Instinctively, I came to a sudden halt and felt a sudden, hot stab of pain across my back and something explode inside. I assumed that this was not indigestion.
I fell to the floor as a savage blur of colours - red, orange, lilac and powder blue – spun around my pain-wracked body like some barbed and spectral whirlwind. It would be the last thing I'd see before my world once again turned to darkness.
And then, I awoke. In that blissful state of hypnogogic reverie – between the receding nightmare and emerging waking world – I squinted in the sunlight, filled my lungs with clean air and thanked my God it was all just a vile and terrible fantasy. It was then I noticed something quite strange. I was not lying upon my usual bunk at the Miskatonic Polytechnic Halls of Residence but upon a cold, hard metal surface. It was a large steel girder posited on a steep incline that formed part of a vast and crooked construction site some seven storeys or so in height. But before I could consider the Health and Safety implications of such shoddy workmanship, I heard the scream.
I leapt to my feet - it was the anguished voice of my sweetheart and fiancé P_____, and her cries originated from directly above me, at the very summit of this ill-aligned structure! She was in a tawdry, dishevelled state the likes of which I had not seen before (with the possible exception of those photographs I found from that raucous Hen Party she'd attended last semester). And next to her, eclipsing the midday sun and casting a shadow all around me, was a gigantic and most terrible beast. It seemed to defy anthropological classification: at first glance it resembled a giant ape, albeit of monstrous height and girth, and yet – from my vantage point below - it was quite evident that he was equipped with certain physical attributes more commonly associated with a donkey. Let's just leave it at that. It was, without doubt, one of the beastly "Old Ones" described in the harrowing, hideous, horrendous, horrible, horrid and horrifying
Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred.
And for some inexplicable reason it seemed to be throwing giant barrels at me...COMING SOON: J.R.R TOLKEIN'S 'SONIC THE HEDGEHOG' and HUNTER S. THOMPSON'S 'DECATHLON'
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