"Cost your mother $250 to buy that for you so you can practice your entrance exam (to prison)." Bill Cosby at a gathering on Thursday.

Bill Cosby went on record recently as saying “Grand Theft Auto is an entrance exam for prison.” He said this in Greenwood, Mississippi at a community gathering.  He additionally said “The drug dealer is not in your culture, nor is the prostitute, nor is the glorified pimp if you teach black pride. They have no pride. They don’t know their culture.” That is the long and short of what he said. However, I have been watching some reactions to this, mainly on Game Politics.com (who provided the picture and story). This one irked me quite a bit.

“The people who make ridiculous statements like this have no idea what they are talking about. They just want to find a scapegoat and a catchy statement in order to gain some notoriety. Some have good intentions, but for most, it’s just about the ‘attention’.”

Or, how Kotaku handled the story.

“Cosby was not in fact flacking some new collector’s edition, he was flogging everyone’s favorite scapegoat for everything that troubles society. To be fair, he got off on an angry-old-man rant about hair extensions, sagging pants and lots of other things, too.”

I think we may be reacting the wrong way towards Mr. Cosby’s remarks. It seems that gamers are reacting like NRA members, fearing that whenever anyone makes a criticism towards games or some outspoken individual is making a case against them, we act like they are gonna take them away. But that is far from the issue. If you look at it, Bill Cosby isn’t slamming the game, he’s slamming the parents who are irresponsible enough to allow their children to play this. There are a great number of children who play games not intended for them, and there needs to be more responsibility by parents.

Gamers, too, need to participate. Kotaku is still central figure in game journalism, and they need to use their platform for something other then dismissing critics as crazy old men.  You too, Gamer Blag contributors! This is an enormous opportunity to make our voices heard, so that when there are real crazy old people trying to say games kill children, we can point it out. But at the same time, we need to give validation to those voices who do make real criticisms of games, and the people who play them.

~Zetto