Knife City - making video games look bad

I saw this on the lunchtime news and, honestly, was shocked and disappointed by it. It's an advert by the Met Police about the dangers and consequences of carrying a knife around, aimed at those hoody-youths of today, entitled Knife City.

When I first heard that the ad was combination of video-game graphics and real-life footage regarding knives, I instantly had a hate reaction to it. Not because they are trying to get youths to realise what happens when you carry a knife around - I'm all for it, definately, any way to get guns and knives off of the streets is a way forward - but my hate is because they used (albeit succussfully, I admit) video-gaming as a reference to it.

The games industry has a hard enough time as it is with uneducated-band-wagon-jumping-Daily-Mail-readers and all those that think the Playstation, GTA, Manhunter, et al. 'killed my son/daughter/dog/fish' - and now the Met Police come up with an advert that is more or less saying that video-games borne the knife/gun culture on the streets today! Honestly, I couldn't believe it. Those tabloid readers are going to have a field day with this one and shout the likes of "See, we were right! Even the police think videogames are evil!". Stupidly, as usual (or as expected), those readers will be missing the point of the advert - there are consequences of carrying a knife, life's not a game. It's not 'videogames make violence happen', nothing like it at all.

Don't get me wrong, the advert is effective (the shock tactic usually works for me, except in this case as I knew what was going to happen, but it would have worked), but why use (or should that be target) the video-game industry on such a matter? I do hope that it's not because the Police are a bunch of Daily Mail reading idiots, but in fact are reaching to the youths in a way that they understand.

Mind, I'd imagine that a lot more under-18s than over-18s that are carrying around knives, and yet games that closely depict real-life violence get 18-rated anyway. So those hooded-youths mixing up gameworlds and real-life worlds shouldn't be playing these sorts of games anyway and therefore shouldn't be getting mixed up with the 'different worlds'. If that makes sense - basically, parents should be made more aware of what their children play on their consoles, and that they shouldn't have them in their rooms but some place where there's adequate supervision. And then the children need to be educated in the fact that when someone dies there's no coming back, and the same with them.

If everyone would stop being stupid and realised that games are just like any other form of entertainment, then there would be less Daily Mail readers (or knife crimes, whichever is worse).

Apologies to those Daily Mail readers that don't fit in with the tabloid's stereotype. Mind, you should think about reading a newspaper instead of that magazine.