No, Pat Robertson, Killing Someone in a Video Game Isn’t a Sin

In the latest round of “Person Says Dumb Thing About Video Games,” Pat Robertson claimed that committing a sin like murder in a game is analogous to committing one in real life. He also admitted to never having played a video game, so he’s clearly the foremost authority on video game ethics.

Robertson said on his show, “If you’re murdering somebody in cyberspace in a sense, you’re performing the act whether you like it or not.”

Here’s the clip:

Nothing you do in video games is analogous to real life. Being great at Dr. Mario doesn’t make me a doctor, and I assure you: I am great at Dr. Mario. The fact that I stayed up late last night to kill a bunch of bandits in a dungeon in Skyrim doesn’t make me a murderer. (They attacked me first. I acted in self-defense. No jury would convict me!)

Opinions on sin aside, I’m saying this as someone who doesn’t particularly like violent video games. Not because I think it’s wrong to digitally kill digital people, but because it doesn’t seem fun to me.  There’s a difference between killing someone in a game and killing someone in real life, and any reasonably sane person can see that difference.

Pat Robertson, apparently, can not.

(via Mediaite, image via Daniel Oines)

Meanwhile in related links

• Survey finds 60% of people see correlation between video games and violence
• That doesn’t give guns a free pass to let video games take all the blame
• Obama ordered the CDC to examine the link between games and violence