Final English Paper

Patrick

Kulfan

Ending the war on games

We have all heard the stories, maybe some of you have experienced them. A kid finally snaps and half a school winds up dead. Then the police canvas the kid’s room and find that he enjoyed horror novels, rock music, and video games. The story then hits the news. The killer’s face is displayed and the discussion starts. Do video games cause violence in teens? I’ve been gaming my entire life. I remember playing “Putt Putt Travels Through Time” when I was younger. After a few years it was World of Warcraft, then numerous other games. So many it’s take days to talk about each one. So the question “do video games cause violence in teens?” really hits home for me. I firmly believe that this is not the case. I feel this way because throughout my years of gaming I’ve never felt the need to kill another person, and I’ve heard many opinions from people I respect that believe the same way.

So why have games been the focus of so much controversy? I believe there are a few reasons. First, many video games have a display of violence in one way or another and often this is graphic. In the media, video gaming is always attached to something negative, school shootings, teen behavior, bad grades just to name a few. Many of these issues can be attributed to other causes as well, but that doesn’t always occur.

When people think of violence in video games what comes to mind are the gory “FINISH HIM!” scenes in Mortal Kombat or the blood soaked battlefields of Call of Duty. If used correctly, this form of conflict can be a challenge that the player has to overcome to get their reward. Killing or fighting is used in the majority of games to offer a sense of challenge. This is often displayed in different ways, in Mario the killing is stomping on Goombas whilst the challenge would be navigating over the obstacles including the many enemies. In games like Call of Duty this changes to moving between cover and killing tougher and tougher enemies that get in your way. Fundamentally they are both the same thing. Clear x amount of obstacles to reach the ending point for a reward. In Mario it’s the gratifying sound of sliding down the end flagpole, in Call of Duty it’s the start of another story sequence.

I do understand where other people are coming from when they talk about how games promote violence. This ending gratification could be seen as a type of operant conditioning where killing an enemy then being granted the points or gear of the fallen enemy is the positive reinforcement teaching people that killing x gives you y. Yes this strategy eventually teaches you that killing an enemy in-game gives you a reward, but the keyword here is in-game. Does cooking in a game make you a cook in real life? Does playing a lawyer in a game make you a lawyer? No. Thus killing in a game does not make you a killer.

This is shown through trend lines presented by Max Fisher on The Washington Post’s website. The first graph shows the expected trend line if there was a relation between gun violence and game purchases. The second graph, off the same website, shows the actual trend line tracking video game spending versus gun-related violent events. As you can see there is no relation between the two. Instead there is a general decrease in gun violence versus game spending per capita actually suggesting that games reduce crime. This same theory actually has a basis in psychology as well.

In an article published by Polygon, authored by Colin Campbell, he presents evidence of a reduction in overall homicides coinciding with popular game releases. In support of this Campbell writes "We always have to be careful with correlational data." Markey added, "Correlation doesn't mean causation. But we haven't just looked at sales of games and violent crimes. We have taken into account trends in the data. We remove stuff that typically happens, like a spike in murders during summer and high sales of games near the Holidays, and it's still negative. To me what is most amazing is that it is never positive. It is always statistically negative."

As I mentioned this has a basis in psychology, and just common sense in general. When a game is released what are would-be criminals doing who are fans of a game? They are playing said game. Thus they aren’t out on the streets committing crimes. On the psychology side, what if instead of potentially hurting someone in real life they can take out all the anger and stress of real life by playing a game instead? An article on the True Stress Management website presents an idea that games can relieve stress for some types of people. “Video games allow Type A personalities to get enough of a mental challenge to be able to relax, but not get too bored or overly stressed. So it’s like giving that sugar filled kid a toy to play with. It gives him something to do so that he’s occupied, but doesn’t go overboard.” In my case, I’ve used games to distance myself from reality. If I’m angry, I can take a step back and immerse myself in a virtual world, one that allows me to de stress in an environment that won’t be permanently damaged.

I do understand where people who are not gamers are coming from. Games like Hatred (a sociopath mass-murder game) or Postal (A murder game) really leave a negative impression on the gaming industry. If used correctly though, the majority of games can be used as a learning experience, one to be enjoyed by the whole family. What’s required is for parents to take heed of the ESRB rating system. It provides an easy system to determine whether a game is meant for the age your child is at. But often this doesn’t happen, my belief is that parents know these ratings exist but haven’t grown up in a world where games exist thus aren’t accommodated to the fact that games can be mature. “Mr Freund suggested that the problem was that parents felt disconnected from the world of video games and so showed little interest in this aspect of their children's lives.” Excerpt from a BBC news article on the subject.

Thus it’s my belief that there are misunderstandings across the board, from consumers to developers nobody can understand anyone else’s views. For this to truly end parents from this generation must make steps to research what games are available and correct for their children to play. The media has to stop associating games with violence. Finally, these studies have to be released to the public and be easily found by those looking to purchase games. Games don’t cause violence, they’ve just been misunderstood. Games can be a positive influence on society if we let them, we just have to remove this misplaced hate that is focused on them.

Bibliography

Fisher, Max. "Ten-country Comparison Suggests There’s Little or No Link between Video Games and Gun Murders." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 17 Dec. 2012. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.

Campbell, Colin. "Do Violent Video Games Actually Reduce Real-world Crime?" Polygon. Polygon, 12 Sept. 2014. Web. 01 Dec. 2015.

"Can Video Games Relieve Stress? - True Stress Management." True Stress Management. N.p., 02 June 2014. Web. 01 Dec. 2015.

Hermida, Alfred. "Parents 'ignore Game Age Ratings'" BBC News. BBC, 24 June 2005. Web. 01 Dec. 2015.