You see, this simply doesn't wash. Nowadays there's a whole generation of adults who have grown up alongside the electronics revolution right from the start. So have these people been scarred for life by games? I have yet to ever have the slightest urge to re-enact any gaming scenario in real life. I have now played every conceivable form of videogame from the age of six and I'm now aged 30.

At no time have I ever felt like I'm out of control or losing my grip on reality, but my grasp of strategy is great, I react very rapidly to visual stimulus and co-ordinate my responses well in a reasoned fashion. I was, however, deeply distressed by being caned by the headmaster, aged eight, for reasons known only to him, and consequently never stood up to other children again in case it got me into trouble. Bullied? You bet. Need I go on?

There's a vast difference between fantasy and reality. Yes, Doom, Carmageddon et al are violent games. It's impossible to deny that. I find it hard to credit, though, that a person can accidentally buy Quake and not be aware of its content prior to playing. It screams, "This is a violent game!" from the rooftops and backs it up with a clear advisory label. It's the responsibility of the person buying or selling Quake to make sure that the person playing the game is up to it. In plain language, parents need to be aware of what their children are actually doing by reading the labels of games.

I spend quite a bit of time in games shops and am consistently amazed at how often you have to spell out to parents that Resident Evil 2 maybe isn't the game of choice for eight-year-old kids, no matter how much they say all their friends have it. Is this necessary for a game with an 18 advisory label? I actually saw someone complaining that the South Park game had swearing in it - read the box! Yes, he'd bought it for his 10-year-old daughter who thought Kenny was cute. Doh! As for adults, surely it's the responsibility of individuals to make this judgement for themselves.