Hugo Chavez: PlayStation Is Poison

The leader of Venezuela hates two things: Capitalism and video games. On his weekly radio-TV show Alo Presidente Hugo Chavez said, "Those games they call 'PlayStation' are poison. Some games teach you to kill. They once put my face on a game, 'you've got to find Chavez to kill him'."

I don't remember that game, but I suppose you could say Chavez was referenced pretty heavily in the last Mercenaries game, although not by name, and I made a Hugo Chavez Mii and pitted him against Sandra Day O'Connor in Mario Kart... I wonder if he's talking about that? Also, did you notice he didn't say anything bad about the Xbox or Wii? Who would have thought that Chavez was a Microsoft fanboy?

Anyway, Chavez went on to decry games where players "bomb cities or just throw bombs"  because they incite violence against countries like Venezuela, and create a market for arms dealers and capitalists. At least Chavez and I agree about Bomberman. That game was bunk.

Chavez said games "promote the need for cigarettes, drugs and alcohol," adding "That's capitalism, the road to hell." Now, I take issue with this -- if anything, games discourage smoking and drinking by being more addictive (and less expensive) than either. Plus, how is alcohol a Capitalism thing? Those dudes in Soviet Russia used to drink Vodka like it was Vitamin Water.

Hugo Chavez doesn't think games are bad by their nature, however. He enjoys "educational games" and suggests game makers should be creating "little indigenous dolls" to replace Barbie.

Like all gamers, I agree that developers should spend time making little indigenous dolls of different cultures, but only if the little indigenous dolls smoke, drink, cuss and shoot Kalashnikov rifles at other indigenous dolls while having sex on great big piles of money.

What do you think of Chavez's statements? Bonus points for having a working understanding economic theory!

Source: Yahoo News