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Not too long ago, I revealed my secret love of video games. As I said then, I’m pretty specific on the games that I like to play. And I don’t own every console ever created. In fact, a trusty GameCube is all that’s left in my arsenal of game systems. But when I do find a game that I like, I can spend hours a day playing it.

My recent addictions have included Resident Evil 4 and Call of Duty 2: Big Red One. I’ve played RE4 all the way through about six times. Yeah. You heard me. Six times. CoD2 has been completed twice. But that’s how I roll when it comes to good video games. I can continue to play them over and over again without getting bored.

Both of these games share one common trait: guns, shooting, and blood. I don’t own an actual gun. The few times I’ve shot a gun I was surprisingly good at it. I’m a dead shot in the video game world. And I love to zoom in and blast a video enemy right between the eyes. But I don’t have any desire to own a real gun. I don’t have a desire to shoot anything real. In fact, I’m not really keen on hunting, even though I understand why so many people are.

In Resident Evil you shoot and kill zombies, monsters, and crazed villagers coming at you with pitchforks and kitchen knives. In Call of Duty you shoot and kill Nazis to make the world a safer place. I don’t think many people would argue against pumping the shotgun in the direction of monsters or Nazis.

But in my newest game addiction, the crosshairs don’t always fall on zombies or members of a fascist regime. The target in the True Crime series is often an unsuspecting populous.

Is this the digital violence that they’ve been warning parents about and does it breed real violence? Or is it simply good, unclean fun?

So far, there are two games in the True Crime series: Streets of L.A. and New York City. Yeah… both of them are in my living room. In both games, you play the role of a law enforcement officer with a foul mouth, fast cars, and trigger-happy fingers. Both games feature surprisingly accurate maps of the respective cities that you are able to drive through on your way to solve missions and work beat crimes. Every couple of minutes a call comes through about some crime being committed in the city that you are supposed to respond to. The crimes range from street fights to arsonists to unhappy vegetarians.

The idea of the game is pretty simple: solve crimes… arrest “perps”… and uncover devious plots and crime rings in two of the country’s most famous cities. Both games are extremely interactive. You can hop out of the car at any time and walk the streets. You can go into buildings, stores, and clubs. You can stop pedestrians on the street and frisk them for contraband. You can even commandeer cars on the highways for “police use”. But the choices available to the player don’t end there.

As the player, you also have to choice of whether you’re going to be a “good cop” or a “bad cop”. You can wrestle the bad guys with your bare hands. Or you can shoot them in the head. You can put a bullet in their legs to take them down. Or you can blow their brains out. You can arrest them. Or you can kill them. Depending on how you handle a criminal, you’re awarded “good cop points” or “bad cop points”. In Streets of L.A., the story line actually changes based on where the majority of your points fall… on the good side or the bad. But the choices available to the player don’t end there, either.

Your fists, your car, and your guns are not restricted to criminals. You can walk up to innocent city dwellers and frisk them. Or you can punch them in the face. You can walk past them without a word. Or you can knock them to the ground and kick them to death. You can flash your badge to get them to pipe down. Or you can put a bullet through their faces. And they all have attitude. They curse and swear and give you the finger and tell you to “watch it” when you bump into them on the street. They just beg you to assault them in some way. Oh… and did I mention you can run them down with your car? Oh yes… you can pull your 3000 pound police car onto the sidewalk and run over walkers with a sickening “splat”. But the weapons don’t stop there. Tazers… sledge hammers… bottles… and bamboo are some of the variety of things you can use to inflict pain to criminals and pedestrians alike.

If you cause too much of a ruckus with the innocent, the police come after you and take you down. But you have to get pretty violent to have the cops called out. In New York City, you get a “temporary demotion” and have to solve three crimes using “good cop” tactics to get your rank back. But if you don’t, and instead head back into the streets to murder more civilians, does the game end? Nope. You get chastised and sent back to try again. And again. And again. In Streets of L.A., you just get shot and have to start over where you last left off. In New York City, you can even extort shop owners for money and plant evidence on innocent civilians to make your wallet fatter and your “crime stats” look better.

Keep in mind, all of these “bad cop” actions are optional. You’re never forced to kill anyone. In fact, you’re actually encouraged to take criminals alive so that you can get them to talk. You’re never forced to extort anyone for money (you are occasionally made to extort criminals for information). And you’re not even required to drive in New York City (you can take taxis or subways). In many situations, you’re presented with two options: one good… one bad. The choice is left to the game player as to how the crime gets resolved.

So the question is, do games like this breed violence? Do they teach people, especially young people, that violence is the answer to problems or the best way to get through life? Do they paint a negative image of law enforcement? Are they bad for society?

I can understand the push to keep games like this out of the hands of young, impressionable children. For one, the language is definitely of an adult nature. And the wielding of a badge is reserved for adults in reality… so it stands to reason it should be in the virtual world as well. Factor in the blood and some of the situations the characters find themselves in (making arrests in strip clubs or buying alcohol for “health”) and you can easily see why these games are rated 18+.

But do they teach violence? The short answer, in my opinion, is no. I’ll submit that they depict violence. But there is a big difference in showing someone something and teaching it to them. You can see examples of violence anywhere these days. A lot of people will argue that these increased images of violence from many fronts are the reason we have so many more violent kids today than a few decades ago. I don’t agree.

The largest increase in violent crime in recent decades has been among youths. Youth offenders are more common today and so we assume that there has to be some external cause to blame for the change. But I don’t think it’s an external one. I think it’s internal. As in parents not taking responsibility for the upbringing of their children. It’s the movies or the television shows or the video games or the news. Someone got shot in a movie last night, so my kids are going to think it’s ok to shoot people. The cop in the video game picks up hookers and then kills them for their cash so my kids are gonna grow up to kill hookers.

That’s the thinking of the deadbeat parents. The idea that they, the parent, are the primary teacher of their children never crosses their mind. It never occurred to the deadbeat parent to turn the television off, look their child in the eyes, and say “ya know… we need to talk about why what you just saw in that movie is not cool”. It never occurred to the deadbeat parent to limit what kind of material their child is exposed to. It’s much easier to just shirk the responsibility onto the digital babysitters. It helps the parents of violent children sleep at night to think that their child learned to brutalize other people from a game or a movie than from their shoddy parenting.

Other than the fact that your character simply regenerates when it’s killed, there is nothing in these games that doesn’t have a basis in reality. Some cops are bad cops. Some cops extort innocent people. Some cops use their power to bend the will of others for personal gain. We hope that these “bad cops” are few and far between. But they do exist. And when presented with a choice between two options, one better than the other, we have to learn which choice to make both in the video game world and in the real one.

So do video games like the True Crime series inherently teach violence? No. They can if lackluster parents don’t do their job. If anything, games like this teach decision making. They teach kids that there can be a temporary gain from performing “bad” actions… but in the long run, those bad choices always catch up with you. I’m not suggesting we install GameCubes in kindergarden classrooms and use True Crime to teach kids the difference between right and wrong. But if a parent has done their job and taught their child the difference between right and wrong, those “bad cop points” are fewer and farther between… and their children understand the difference between the video game Streets of L.A. and the real streets of their community.

What about me? I’ve got about 2200 “good cop points” and about 400 “bad cop points”… mostly from accidently running over people with my HORRID driving skills. I don’t drive much in the game anymore simply because I was running over so many people. I take cabs. My weapon of choice? The stun gun or the ol’ pythons.

But I won’t lie. I’ve punched a few hookers who gave me the finger simply for getting too close to them. But ya know… that’s reality. I might punch a real hooker if one ever copped a ‘tude with me for no reason. In the meantime, I’ll just avoid them like I’ve done for the past 27 years.

And I’ll take a few more driving lessons…