The Editor,
Re. "Let's talk - not shout - about video games" (Opinion, The Tri-City News, March 22).
The recent first-person shooter depiction of Port Moody secondary school is significant in many ways but uppermost in my mind is the sheer banality of the response to the game. A local high school has been depicted, in apparently accurate detail, as the blood-spattered scene of mass murder in progress and Diane Strandberg's response in her column is a cosy, let's-make-tea-and-talk approach?
The idea in this video game is bad enough. A local school that is the home away from home to students, teachers, support staff and visitors is depicted as a heinous crime scene. Even worse, the game offers any player - and I'm sure the police have thought of this - a footstep-by- footstep opportunity to rehearse mayhem.
Ms. Strandberg calls the game "a remarkable achievement in computer animation," notwithstanding "the requisite spatters of blood." I cannot help but ask her if her attitude toward the blood would be so sanguine were it her own home so depicted in a game.
Doug Rolling, Port Coquitlam
