Jeremy Clarkson Defends GTA4

Author: Vince | Date: May 4, 2008

Jeremy Clarkson, legend, host of ‘Top Gear‘ and the man most brits want to see become their next prime minister, has thrown his 2 cents into the ring on the violent videogames debate. In his weekly column in ‘The Sun’ newspaper he wrote the following:-

“This week the latest version of videogame Grand Theft Auto hit the shelves — and pretty soon it will be cited as the reason why people feel compelled to lock their children in cellars, why Israel cannot find peace with the Palestinians and why everyone in Britain has been stabbed.”

Hmmm, I played an earlier version of the game and must say that at no point did I feel the need to go outside and chop off a prostitute’s head.

In fact, as is the case with most videogames, I hadn’t a clue what was going on. I sat there, frantically stabbing at all the buttons, until a message on the screen told me the game was over.

It was annoying. Not dangerous.”

Now I’m sure most of our readers probably already agreed with him, but it is nice to see somebody famous sticking up for the gamers for a change, because lets face it, playing ‘Last Ninja 3‘ on my commodore 64 (incidentally, also the first game I ever saw that was given a 100% rating by a magazine) didn’t make me want to run round chopping people heads off with a bloody big sword. So with a big celebrity name behind our cause, will people start blaming the people that commit violent crimes and not the games they play? Probably not, but we can dream…

(via)