In 50 years of its history, video games have not escaped one thing and that is controversy. Video games are controversial for these reasons. One reason is because children and teenagers are the ones who are mainly playing video games. You don't see many adults or elderly people playing them or at least admitting to doing so. Children also seem to spend an inordinate amount of time playing the video games. They seem like people who are addicted to caffeine. Parents are worried that their kids are spending too much time playing video games. They are also worried by what is being depicted in those games and by how they can protect kids from what is being shown in those games. Parents have the same concern about video games as they do about what is being shown in movies and other parts of the media.

Parents certainly do not like the violence that they see in games like House of the Dead, Doom and Mortal Combat. These games depict limbs being torn from the bodies of people. Blood is spurting freely when a bad guy gets killed. Heads are being decapitated left and right. The good old guys of Pac-Man seem long gone. The most violent thing was Pac-Man eating the ghost. You didn't see any blood from the ghosts. You didn't do see their heads flying around as it is perfectly natural that heads should be flying off people's heads.

The most games that seem to be generating a lot of controversy right now is the Grand Theft Auto game series. In this game, one player is a criminal in a city like San Andreas and their mission is to make as much as money as possible. The problem is that the player seems to make this money by causing as much mayhem as possible. During the game a player can carjack people. The players of this game can fight one another. A player can even go to the local army base and steal a tank. If one prefers to go to an air force base, they can steal a Harrier jet. The reason that this game draws so much controversy is that the players are the bad guy and they can do bad things virtually. Parents are afraid that by playing this game, their will think that causing mayhem is the most natural thing to do. They want their kids to turn into good citizens, not full-fledge criminals.