Grand Theft Auto San Andreas

Still, there’s something a little off in our society, when I can say “I like Goodfellas” or “I read Elmore Leonard novels” and few would bat an eye, but “I like Grand Theft Auto” garners the all-too-frequent response: “You play that game?”

Chalk it up to the age of video games as a medium — in the greater scheme of things, they’re still pretty young. Once any medium has been around for a while, individual works tend to be judged on individual merits: “That was a great film!” “That book sucked.” You’ll be hard pressed to find someone nowadays who would make a sweeping statement like “novels are bad for you,” but of course that’s exactly what lots of people said when novels first became popular. Video games are currently plagued with plenty of similar generalizations and misconceptions.

One particularly troublesome one is that “video games are for kids!” Well, no, video games are for whoever the individual games are made for. Saying so is just as silly as saying “fiction is for kids!”