essay 4

Pete Carper

Dr. Mulliken

Engl 1114

28 Nov 2011

Effects of Violent Video Games

            Today video games are becoming more and more popular.  Since technology has increased since the Mario Brothers days, video games are becoming increasingly life like.  This has sparked the debate on how violent video games can adversely affect the thought process of the teens and young adults playing them. One argument is that violent video games can have positive affects on the people that play them, by providing an outlet for them to explore a violent character. Another argument which opposes the first view, says that violent video games such as Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto can alter the way a person would normally behave in a public setting. I agree with the first argument   because violent video games have become more and more popular among teens in todays market, youth violence in reality has actually started to decrease.

            On February 11, 2009 CBS published an article titled “Can a video game lead to Murder?” In this article, Rebecca Leung told the devastating story of how an eighteen year old male shot and killed three men, two of them being cops. In the article Leung argues that the main reason why the boy killed these men is because he had played the popular game Grand Theft Auto non-stop for months. In this game people are encouraged to do violent acts to get what they want. For instance, in the game if you see a car you like you should steal it and then try and avoid the cops or even kill them. Although Leung made a very compelling case as to why violent video games should not be played by teens, at the end of the article she reveals why the boy really committed the violent murders. Leung tells the story of how the boy was not raised in a good home and was bounced around in different foster homes. In the boy’s life, he had been abused many times by many different people. This is the reason the boy acted out in the way that he did, not because of the video game he had been playing. This article is just one of many that argue against teens being allowed to play violent video games. Although some of the stories in the articles that are told are tragic, none of them present a clear indication that the violent acts were committed because of a violent video game that was being played. This argument does however lead to the conclusion that teens that are brought up in a violent community are more predisposed to seek out violent entertainment such as popular, violent video games which is exactly what the boy did in this story.

            Today video games are making record sales, with some of the more popular titles like Call of Duty, selling upwards of ten million copies. These sales are leading to more and more adults and teens playing them. Ever since the release of the first commercial video game, Pong, it has been proven that the more violent and graphic the game the more popular it will become.  For example, in 1976 the first violent video game was released. The game was called Death Race and prompted players to drive a car and hit as many pedestrians as they could in order to win the game. This game sparked media frenzy and its sales increased tenfold in spite of the controversy.  From the early 90’s to the late 2000’s video games have almost quadrupled in sales. During that same period of time, crimes caused by minors have fallen over fifty percent. This fact alone should almost eliminate all arguments against violent video games because it is clear that the video games do not have any correlation to youth committing acts of violence in public.

In 2004, Muir Hazel wrote an article telling all the readers about the side effects of the violent video games kids are playing. In this article, Hazel raises the question; is there any scientific data to prove that bloody and graphic video games can increase a child or young adults aggressiveness?  Hazel says that although many tests have been done they do not adequately represent what actually happens to a child’s brain as they are playing violent games. For instance, two scientists conducted one experiment over this matter. For their experiment they asked a group of students to play a certain video game that contained violence. Then the scientists asked another group to play a different video game that did not contain any violence. The two scientists agreed that the test showed that the violent video game increased the aggression of the students who were playing it. However, Jeffry Goldstein, a psychologist said that the answer to this complex question is definitely not a simple cause and effect type answer. Goldstein warns that there may be many different things that cause the one group to be more aggressive than the other. Goldstein says, “What's more, the experiments that purport to recreate gaming in the lab and measure aggression fail on both counts. Playing a game because a researcher tells you to does not mimic patterns of voluntary gaming. And blasting with noise is not the same thing as a real intent to injure someone.”

Some scientists and researchers believe that their data is enough to prove that legislature needs to write new laws regarding minors and video games.  Although their tests do prove that people playing violent video games have increased arousal and aggression, it is because the comparative groups game is not as exciting compared to the game with violence.  When a person is playing a game that increases their aggression levels it is only temporary.  That temporary form of aggression does not at all mean that that same person is going to go out and hurt someone.  Again, it is an underlying issue in that person that would want to make them go do acts of violence.

            In some stories that have been aired on television and published in newspapers people will argue that because the criminal seemed to act out a certain scenario in their game of choice it is the video games fault.  Like in the case where the boy murdered two cops, people argued that criminal acted out a part of Grand Theft Auto, because in that game people are encouraged to kill cops. Jeffery Goldstein says the violence does not occur because of the video games. Although the violent games might affect the type of violence that is committed, it does not cause it to happen. With or without violent video games in our society we will still have violence.

         In my lifetime I have owned and played many different types of games, some violent, some not. I have played them from the time I was six years old, when I got my first Sega Genesis, so I feel as though I have a certain degree of understanding on this issue. When I am playing video games I am only playing for fun and I do not care if I am the best at any of the games I have owned. So I feel as though my opinion will speak for most other people in this situation. Playing video games for me is just a fun thing to do to just relax and not have to worry about anything else in that moment. Even though I play violent video games almost on a weekly basis, it does not mean that I am a violent person. All it means is that it is fun to see what it would be like to be a particularly violent character.  The violence for me stops when I turn the game off. I am not going to go shoot a cop or steal a car because my character did in Grand Theft Auto. I know that everything I saw in the game was not real and it was not at all based on what should be done in real life.

The fact is that people are going to commit violent crimes in every society, even the ones with no video games to play. So the criminals in our culture were going to commit the crimes anyway, but it is not because of something they saw on a video game. It is simply because of underlying issue that they have. These few people are the kind of people that need the help of a psychiatrist. These few people should not be able to ruin the fun for everyone else just because they cannot handle what they saw in a video game.

           

        

        

              

           

           

           

           

           

           

Works Cited

            Olson, Cheryl. "It's Preverse, but Its Also Pretend." New York Times (2004). Print.

"Video Games." ProCon.org - Pros and Cons of Controversial Issues. Web. 30 Nov. 2011. <http: Hazel, Muir. "The Violent Games People Play." New Scientist (2005). Print.//procon.org>.