Connecticut community cancels plan to destroy violent video games

Community members of Southington, the Connecticut town that made news last week when it revealed the blueprints for a program to collect and destroy violent video games, have announced they no longer plan to proceed with that portion of their mission.

We succeeded in our program," spokesman Dick Fortunato told Polygon. "Our mission was to create strong awareness in Southington for parents and families and citizens and children. And we accomplished that.

Our other objective was to promote discussion of violent video games and media with children and with the families at the home. And we’ve accomplished that in spades. So we deemed it became unnecessary to have the physical return on Saturday of violent games. Also because it would create an unnecessary amount of logistical details for us."

The program encouraged parents to speak with their children about their gaming habits. If the conclusion was reached that there were games they wanted out of the house, the parents were to be instructed to go to the local drive-in movie theater on January 12th to turn them in.

In exchange, each family would receive a $25 gift voucher intended to be used for other forms of (presumably less violent) entertainment. The certificates were to be donated by a Greater Southington Chamber of Commerce member as a "token of appreciation for their action of responsible citizenship.”

SOS officials believe once the discs were turned in, they were to be snapped, tossed into a town dumpster and later incinerated.

While the plan to collect and destroy video games is no longer in motion, Southington SOS officials explained the local Chamber of Commerce will still be giving gift certificates to families who had "the violent video games conversation with their children."