"Why would you buy a GameCube?" the stranger asked me. "You should have bought an Xbox. All GameCube games are for kids."

I quickly responded, "No, that's not true. Just look at Eternal Darkness; exclusive to the GameCube, and most definitely not for kids. It was probably one of the top 5 games last year."

"Well, regardless of the gameplay, you have to admit that GameCube games are targetted for people somewhere around 12 years old," was his retort. I let the subject drop.

"Adult" games are the reason that people buy the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox much of the time. What are some games for adults? Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, in which you hijack cars, sometimes bodily throwing their drivers out of their seats. Halo, in which you kill other people with all manner of fancy weapons. (Really, any first-person shooter.) Real-time strategy games of all kinds, which involve battling competing armies with your own forces and allow you to build replacement men for those who die in the line of battle. Some of these strategy games even allow you to recreate actual wars, the lowest points of human history.

Notice a pattern?

Somehow "games for adults" has been equated with "games which trivialise life." The object in many "adult" games is to find bigger and better weapons with which you will kill your opponents. What's more, games which lack needless death are labelled as "for kids" even if they contain exactly the same gameplay elements which make the "adult" game fun.

Somehow the common gamer has lost sight of the fact that games are a method of having fun—no more, no less. For normal people the act of having fun isn't predicated on blood and guns, pain and suffering.

The reason I bought a GameCube is clear to me: I wanted a system on which I would be able to play innovative and fun games. I feel no need to hurt people in my gameplay, although I have played (and will continue to play) games in which that is an element. When I play games, I feel a need to be entertained. I suggest that many gamers need to re-evaluate their priorities; instead of judging the game based on the superficial content, they should judge the game based on gameplay and fun level.

Perhaps the most convincing rationalisation for why stealing music is acceptable is "I wouldn't have bought it anyway." "If I wouldn't have spent the money on the artist's album in the first place," the argument goes, "why is it a bad thing for me to take one or two songs? The artist isn't losing any money." This train of thought naturally extends to the further conclusion "Copying music isn't the same thing as theft, because nothing has been taken from the artist." While I won't argue with the latter, which hinges on the definition of theft and thus is technically accurate, the assertion that nothing is taken from the artist when you steal his or her music is patently false.

An artist spends time, energy and money to create his or her music. When someone steals that music instead of buying it, the artist has clearly lost the revenue from the potential sale. If however the person stealing the music would never have purchased it, there has been no monetary loss to the artist. Instead what the artist loses is more ephemeral: the value of both his or her labour and the product of that labour, the music, has been ignored. Stealing music which you wouldn't buy says in unequivocal terms that the artist's work has no value.

Two types of people exist: those who believe that work and effort have value and merit compensation and those who don't. A person who decides that work has no value—potentially a hypocrite (why exactly does his or her job pay him or her?)—is the type of person who does not donate when entering museums and art galleries and raises a fuss when asked to pay for a broken item in a fine china shop. When you download music which you wouldn't buy you place yourself squarely in the same group as the tightfisted museum goer.

It is important to decide what you believe is right. Keep in mind, though, that if you believe work has no value, what reason does anyone have to pay you for your work?