I used to think computer game violence was a joke. All that changed after last night. See, I work 12 hours a day as a power plant security guard, and every night my boring shift ends with me switching off the lights, doing a last check on the cameras, and calling my wife to tell her I'm headed home. Last night, however, was different.

As I reached for the phone, I saw something moving in the corner of cam 4, in the hallway outside the main reactor. I ran down the hall to investigate. The room was seemingly empty, and for a moment I felt relieved. That was about 3.4 seconds before a secret-ops Splinter Cell agent infiltrating the facility grabbed me from behind, broke my neck, and threw my limp carcass down a sewage drain, to be found days after the plant had been remotely disabled by electronic warfare.

This scenario is obviously fictional, but happens all the time in games like Splinter Cell, FarCry, and other military/espionage shooters. Many video games depict brutal, callous violence against enemies who would just be "normal Joes" in the real world, but are savage, bloodlusted fiends hell-bent on your destruction for the purposes of the game narrative. Many games reward players for decapitations, torture, or the stealthy disposal of corpses. Many of these games are on the "must-have" lists of children and tweens across the country, if not the world.

The natural reaction to the level of violence in computer games is of course outcry from parents, politicians, and religious groups, constantly concerned that children will be corrupted by gaming and turned into the next Columbine killers. What everyone in society seems to forget is that 5-year olds don't have $1000 lying around to build gaming computers, plus another $40-60 per kill-fest game. Ultimately, parents willfully buy games that are CLEARLY violent just because "Timmy really wants Killtrek 4: Dismemberment Decathlon" for Christmas. Whatever happened to just saying "No"?

Ultimately, it doesn't matter how violent a game is; a game cannot affect a child unless a parent shells out for it, or lets their kid hang out unsupervised at friends' houses. I have played dozens of gory games, but none of the worst offenders were paid for by my parents. I purchased the games with money from my part-time jobs, which I had in high school. If parents really wanted to protect their children from "murder simulators", all they have to do is pull the plug or hold the check. If a young adult is responsible enough to have a paying job and save for the games himself, he is probably responsible enough to handle the fictional gaming violence; but even in this case, the parents still have the final word.

A comprehensive New York Times study recently showed that no video game is even close to as violent as many scenes in "Saw 2" or "Saving Private Ryan"; these films don't cause as much uproar because parents actually research movies and prevent their children from being exposed to graphic torture, war violence, and brutality. If parents took the ESRB game ratings as seriously as they did movie ratings, much fewer children would be exposed to games' gruesome violence. The game industry has gone out of its way to promote parental education of what games contain, yet their warnings often fall on deaf ears.

Yes, many computer games contain disturbing levels of violence, but they also say so right on the box. Regulating these games, however, is unfair to the reasonable adults who wish to play them, and unfair to the gaming industry as it would place unconstitutional restrictions on the developers. What must be done is the education of parents about what games contain before they give in to their child's demands. After all, who's really in charge here?