Huge thread on slashdot about a Monday night CSI show. I don’t watch CBS because their shows suck and I’m not the market but I had to watch this heralded gamer bashing.

Sure enough it pissed me off to no end.

From the description: ‘Delko witnesses a bank robbery and the CSIs soon discover that the culprits are playing out the action from the videogame ‘Urban Hellraisers’ on the streets of Miami. As they score points for each crime committed, the CSIs must discover what consists of getting to the next level in the game in order to stop the culprits before they strike again.

Before the episode aired, people were already flaming away. angle_slam (623817) writes:

That is what got to me in one particular episode of CSI:Miami. While I know that they can’t always clean up video or audio as much as they do, for some reason, I’d been able to suspend my belief. But one particular episode dealt with photography, a hobby of mine. A guy using a zoom lens that couldn’t be more than 200 mm, judging by the size of the lens, was taking pictures of someone’s front yard. Turns out that he caught a murder in his camera. But the murder was at the next door neighbor’s house and was just in a small window in the corner of an 8×10 print. But they magnified it and not only were they able to see the tatoo on the killer’s hand! It didn’t matter that the camera’s exposure was set to portray an outdoor scene–they were somehow able to resolve a something in the darkened house.

“I agree!”, I replied:

I hate zoom and enhance. I hate it. It’s crap. Total crap. I hated this episode, I hated the assumptions it made. I hated the fact that Buick ads and The Who markets CSI to parents of so called ‘gamer-crimminals’. I hate how bias the show is, how bias I am as a gamer and how bias everyone is about everything. Flame on.

They had a gamer die. They found a bunch of cans all around his ‘console’ he was dead with the controller in his hand. The cans looked like AMP and Red Bull. Then whats his name… David Caruso says “HE PLAYED THE GAME TO DEATH”. I left the room. I seriously went to the bathroom. I thought I was going to puke, but didn’t. It just felt like I should. I trimmed my beard instead. *sigh*

I enjoyed reading the other threads about studies from The Guardian about how TV has affected the virgin land of ‘XYZ’. I enjoy reading all the debate back and forth, it is on a serious note, good debating. On a not so serious note, I’m going to kill CSI:Miami once it materializes into the physical world.

Indeed the episode was clearly trying to scare parents of ‘gamers’ (note they only used it to describe the gang of killers) into thinking that GTA or other violent games are going to turn every last kid into a killing lunatic. Whatever.

I can only watch in horror hoping no one is falling for the ploy. Thank god Edgar imparted some truth onto the matter:

thankfully, everyone knows it’s a fictional show, and it will have no affect on popular opinion or cultural relevance …

Probably because no one was actually watching the show. Except for all the serious gamers out there soaking up media and outputting bullets and evil. God help us all. Thank you CBS. I will turn away from my evil ways and take up a holy consumption of mass media and Buick advertisements.

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