You’re playing Call of Duty: Black Ops, your heart’s pounding, and you have the opportunity to win the game for your team. And then you pull off a triple kill to end the game.

Killing is a very common thing in the video game world. It’s rare to find a game that doesn’t have killing. You can kill mob bosses, terrorist, zombies, aliens… the list goes on.

Video games developers pride themselves on the idea their video game is the most realistic thing out there. But when are things too realistic? EA Games who is releasing its hopeful Call of Duty killer, Battlefield 3, has announced it will not allow the killing of children in their game.

This follows Bethesda Game Studios decision to not allow killing of children in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. These decisions seem like no brainers…who really wants to kill kids? This is a great decision for the gaming industry.

It shows how conscience they are of what kind of content that they’re putting out there. Yes, you can kill people in games, but there’s a limit to what and who you can kill. Before EA’s and Bethesda’s decision, there has been proof of the video games industries effort to censor its own content, to make sure everything is still tasteful and not distastefully vulgar.

For instance in the Bioshock series, you are allowed to “harvest” little sisters for a material to help your character progress in the game. But when you “harvest” the little sisters you never see them killed.

I remember playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for the first time and before the title screen came up there was a warning that content in the game maybe disturbing and you have a choice to skip it.

Thinking back I thought to myself “what could be so disturbing to have to do that.” The level that you could skip was a level where you killed innocent civilians in an airport. I can see how people can find that disturbing.

I think this kind of censorship in modern video games is something that parents and special interest groups over look. Videos games are a part of the technology market.

I believe the video game industry polices itself well. With the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), content is tasteful and rated to the correct audience, and developers at the same time push the limits and producing new and exciting content.

I think other technologies can learn a thing or two from the video game industry. Technology develops fast. Look at 10 years ago…we had dial up. Now we have Wi-Fi. I love technology, but sometimes I wonder, “Do we ever go too far?”

We have phones that are literally small computers. You can find people from all around the world at the click of a mouse and steal information.

I swear if I wake up one morning and life looks something like the Terminator, well video games really didn’t prepare me for that. Video games made me ready for a zombie apocalypse not a phone which is smart enough to kill me.

I think technology should always improve because it makes life easier and can make lives better. But I feel like the people who produce technology should ask themselves if it’s really necessary to have it.

Like video games have done with its content.