Hiding in Plain Sight

Julian Sanchez | January 5, 2006

So, a press release from Focus on the Family is touting some unintentionally-hilarious sounding contribution to the moral panic over video games, which I'll have to remember to make fun of in due course, but this line caught my eye:

Focus on the Family will soon be offering parents an in-depth look into the seldom-glimpsed underworld of violent video games.

Seldom glimpsed underworld? The video game industry has higher revenues than Hollywood. Last I checked, the games in the Grand Theft Auto series held the top sales records for the Playstation 2. What kind of "underground" is that? By whom is it "seldom glimpsed"? And do you really need Focus on the Family to tell you that a game named after a felony that sports screenshots of mayhem with automatic weapons on the box might be violent?