@Malena my head just exploded. In a good way. This conversation can go so many different ways. Here's my first attempt: I talk about people policing the industry themselves but it's like Lord of the Flies where in the end the Officer says he expects better of the British children while believing them only to be playing a game. Yet he doesn't know what's really going on and in reality children were murdered. So maybe letting kids be kids just isn't possible.

I think that one large problem is that much of society doesn't understand what is really happening in the gaming culture. It is ignored, assuming the best. But in reality there are some really awful, persistent issues with the culture. The culture surrounding Music and Movies have been brought into the mainstream, so why shouldn't that of the gaming industry?

I don't really think that these behaviors are inherited from our parents (some certainly are), but behaviors that were allowed to persist because nobody knew about it. I guess what I'm saying is that someone needs to hold us accountable because we don't seem to be very good at doing it ourselves.

So if I'm reading you correctly: you feel this generation of gamers has inherited the social maladies of their non-gaming parents — homophobia and racism, and all-around publicized prejudice, and that's a big problem.

While I agree with you, I'm curious how long we're gonna keep cracking on the forum our culture expresses its bale of isms through, rather than tackling the tough policies, such as bans on gay marriage and the funding of two still-spiraling wars, that house a country of xenophobes.

If the gaming generation is adolescent, then is it too much to ask: to let kids be kids? If not the gaming space, where else will our culture reveal its dark-side?

Reform games and you take the kid out of the crumbling school, without fixing the school..
any thoughts?