[moodgiesanta]

People, people, Bush is playing Barbie goes Shopping for the Game Boy Advance.

Dominions has some pretty heavy themes, but you're not put in an everyday situation by playing the game. I'm not about to become a centimeter high tga graphic that has control over thousands of people and can cast spells. I am likely to be in a dangerous city at one time. I'm familiar with cities. In GTA3, I shoot people and they bleed. I see all of this, and it is very visceral. Whether this is a healthy outlet of violent urges or an injection of unhealthy ideas into the subconsious is up for argument. But Dominions doesn't appeal to the carnal. It appeals to the strategic mind. Surely, a lot of the issues dealt with are fairly heavy-duty, and it could be very discouraging for many people I know to kill hundreds of virgin girls in order to summon demons from Hell, or that having a fellow enslave population actually counts as a *good* event. But these are dealt with at a conscious level. We know that we aren't going to kill virgins and enslave our neighbors. A game like Grand Theft Auto 3 plays to our subconcious. We don't deal with it on an entirely conscious level. We, in our in-game avatar, take part in the killing of hookers. Whether this is a beneficial, benign or malignant thing, I do not know. But I do know that a game such as Dominion does not provide that questionable input.

My three cents.