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Video Games Too Violent?
Video games have brought up a lot of controversy over the years, but the most prominent issues is the effects of violence in video games. Violent video games have been blamed for several bad things including; School shootings, violent attitudes/behaviour, and depression, but are any of these accusations directly linked to violence in video games?
Violent video games are often seen as the cause for violent behavior. Whether or not this is true is very debatable. People always point to the few cases of shootings which were done by fans of violent video games. However the number of people who play these games AND DO NOT get more violent is hugely larger than the number of people who are negatively affected by this. All in all, some people are more receptive to videogame violence and those people might become more violent because of the games. After all, violence is all in the eye of the player. It's up to the parent to know what games their child/teenager is playing. People should know the difference between realism & virtual! If they cannot tell the difference, then they should not buy them. That seems like quite a simple solution if you asked me.
Another reason why violent video games are criticized is because people say that nobody learns anything by virtually killing people except to kill real people. First of all, they create extreme enjoyment. Plus, killing people in a virtual reality blows off a lot of steam like nothing else can. Once you have blown off that steam, you have no more steam to blow off, so you are no longer angry. If you asked me, killing someone in a virtual reality is much better than killing someone in real life which more people would do if they didn’t have video games to blow off their steam for them.
This world has countless amounts of violent and bloody episodes in its history; The Coliseum, Napoleon’s reign, Hitler, The Cowboys and the Indians, etc… and the last time I checked, none of them ever had access video games, let alone violent video games.
Another thing that violent video games create is a virtual reality that you could never pull off in real life, whereas, in a sports game, you can pull it off in real life. No matter what sports game you play, you can do that in real life. Maybe not to the extent that they play it (NHL, NFL, NBA, etc…), but you can still play it in real life. Another video game genre that there is and you can do in real life is the “Sims” kind of video game (which stands for simulation). These kinds of games simulate a person’s life that you can customize. They grow up, go to work, eat, sleep, and then die… where’s the fun in that? Why would you take time out of your life to virtually control someone else’s life? It seems pretty dumb to me.
The last point that I would like to bring up is the fact that depression and violent attitudes/behavior is not directly linked to video games. Let’s go back to the Columbine shooting, shall we? According to police and news reports, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (the boys who conducted the shooting) were seen bowling the morning of the shooting… not playing video games. That means that it was almost like bowling negatively affected them, and they conducted one of the most devastating school shootings in the history of the U.S. Wouldn’t that mean that bowling could be just as much linked to that shooting as violent video games are? This topic was already covered by Michael Moore in his hit documentary; “Bowling for Columbine”, so I won’t get too far into this one specific topic.
On September eleventh, two thousand and one, sixteen terrorists boarded four different flights (four terrorists in each plane). Two of which found their way into the World Trade Centers in Manhattan, New York. One of them found itself in the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The last plane was found in a field in Pennsylvania. This attack was called the biggest and most devastating attack on America in history. There have yet to be any reports filed that indicate the sixteen terrorists played violent video games that morning.
Cheers,
Justin