The first time I can remember killing someone was around 1997. I was only about seven years old and my taste for blood hadn't really been conceived yet. I snuck up behind two men in uniform who were carrying automatic weapons. I shot them both in the head with a silenced Walther PPK. They didn't even know I was there.
Of course, this was all in a videogame. I hope I didn't scare anybody. For those of you who got the Walther PPK gun reference, I owe you a Kewpie doll. For those of you who got Kewpie doll reference, I owe you two. The game I'm referring to in case is "Goldeneye 007" for the Nintendo 64. The reason why I'm bringing this up is simple because it really is the first time I ever actually killed somebody in a game. This wasn't like before. At first I was somewhat shocked. I said to myself, "Wow. I just shot those guys. Will you look at that?"
I didn't really know if I was even really right in what I did. Was it a righteous shoot? Those guys didn't even know I was there. I practically executed them! Then I thought about it some more.
"Wait. I am James Bond. I have a license to kill. They are Soviets. If this was a movie, they'd be toast in there too. Maybe this isn't so bad. Whatever, let's just get on with it."
So I proceeded to mow down about 30-40 other guys that obviously weren't very happy with me sneaking around and sabotaging their nuclear weapons plant. The funny part about all of that is that I didn't really care too much about who I killed after those first two guys. I picked up all sorts of assault rifles and grenade launchers, blew people away left and right. I even drove a tank over people and cars and never even blinked an eye. Killing became second nature.
I never realized how this happens until recently when I came upon a episode of "Law and Order" on TV and Jerry Orbach mentioned how "Someone never really gets used to killing another human being. You just try not to think about it." This isn't the case with videogames. Since the player knows for a fact it isn't real life; you can get used to it. It's strangely easy to get used to such a heinous act. It's when the player loses track of where reality starts and stops, that's when the real trouble begins.
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