The Effect of Violent Games

A counter-balance.

Published 21/03/2010 at 20:00.
By Peter C [ColossalBlue].

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I think that the mainstream media’s depiction of modern gamers as socially inept, bereft of confidence and prone to acts of stupidity or violence due to their over-reliance on the fantasy world is a large part of what is, in reality, a very small problem. I also think that in chasing their perceived demon – video games – they let the real problem go unchecked.

I believe that there probably are very occasional cases in which a particularly vulnerable and susceptible individual has been influenced by scenes they’ve seen or played through in a video game but I would be surprised if those cases outnumber or even equal cases of individuals being influenced by movies, music or literature. The fact that people are influenced by their surroundings, by the creative works they experience, is hardly a revelation. In fact, it is precisely that influence which has led to the proliferation of creativity around the world – in all directions and in many different fields.

The simple fact is that humans, like all animals, learn from their surroundings. If those surroundings include video games then they are bound to be influenced. So at what point does the casual influence that we are all subjected to, regardless of the medium, become an unhealthy fascination and why? That is a question which is truly worth studying.

Rather than the numerous studies we see concerned with the affect of video games on individuals (which merely emulate similar studies done surrounding “video nasties” in the 1980s, sexual liberty in the 1970′s and Rock&Roll music and psychedelia in the 1950s and ’60s) wouldn’t it be a much more productive focus to target what triggers the loss of moral compass, regardless of the stimulant?

Games being primarily interactive is often a rallying call for the lobby to have them censored but I believe that their interactivity better serves to indicate the moral and emotional accountability of performing certain acts. I don’t know anyone who has spoken of guilt after seeing a driver run down a pedestrian in a movie but I know several who felt guilt when they steered Niko Bellic into a pedestrian in GTA IV. They felt, albeit in a very tiny way, the repercussions of their actions. This, I would argue, is something which is impossible to convey with any other medium and surely goes some way to simulating the real guilt that those with a strong set of morals would feel if that situation were replicated in the physical world.

So, games would seem, anecdotally, to be more likely to demonstrate emotional repercussions. Surely that makes them less likely to imply that morally reprehensible acts can be perpetrated without consequence?

The issue, for me, is that the mainstream media seems so keen to continue the vilification of video games rather than address the actual root of the problem: what causes these individuals to be so vulnerable to suggestion in the first place?

If I was pressed on the subject, and I would point out that this is merely my opinion which is based on conjecture – I’m no psychologist – I would say that poor parenting, peer pressure and a lack of suitable role models play a much grander role in the vulnerability to external suggestion that a few individuals have suffered. So why do we rarely see the mainstream media pick up on that?

Again, this is conjecture but I believe it’s because it is a great deal easier to blame something you have no control over than it would be to actually roll your sleeves up and try to do something about the problem. For most of the people who talk about video games in a negative way this would mean accepting their responsibility as a parent and a role model and joining with other parents to make a concerted effort to instil in their children a strong moral compass and a defined sense of right and wrong. If parents can show their children what it means to be a responsible citizen, a responsible human being, then maybe their children will be able to see potentially disturbing scenes and still know that performing those acts in reality is wrong.

I would start by enforcing the clear and recognisable age ratings at home in the same way as they are strictly enforced at retail but I wouldn’t stop there. It might be mutually beneficial if parents were to actually spend time and communicate with their children in order to find out about their interests and pastimes. Engage with the next generation or, regardless of how loudly you shout, you will become forever silent to them.

The only alternative is to detach ourselves from peer- and parental-responsibility and concede defeat to ambiguous moral censorship. That route has only ever led to the stifling of human endeavour and a large-scale cessation of creativity. I’d rather live in a largely free and colourful world and I think I’d be willing to put in some effort towards that goal. Wouldn’t we all?

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Kevling | 21/03/2010 20:09
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Great artcle CB.
Pedant alert: should the title be “Effect” not “Affect”?
(sorry)
- Kevling | 21/03/2010 20:09
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  Dang you fixed that quick ;)
  - colossalblue | 21/03/2010 20:11
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    I know, gutted that I did that.
    Maybe tomorrow I’ll balls up the whole its/it’s thing and really want to kill myself :P
  - mynameisblair | 21/03/2010 20:35
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    Yeah, their anoying to.
  - bunimomike | 21/03/2010 22:53
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    So are they’re and their. :lol:
  - cc_star | 22/03/2010 08:17
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    Your/you’re
Deathbrin | 21/03/2010 20:09
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I think you’ve got the target audience wrong. I mean, who will be reading this?
- colossalblue | 21/03/2010 20:17
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  I know but the Telegraph and the Guardian won’t publish me and I’d rather swallow thumb tacks than write for the Daily Mail.
  
  I’m available as a freelancer though, if anyone you know wants to pay me to talk to grown ups?
  - Apnomis | 23/03/2010 12:02
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    I think you should get ITV to book you for the Titchmarsh show so they can have a redo of their discussion – but without the crazy shouting woman they had on that will not be swayed from her view that video games are akin to crack cocaine…
    .
    It is the irresponsibility of shows like this that compound the problem – vunerable/unhinged idividuals are attracted to forms of media that are deemed ‘wrong’ by society. What they should be doing is promoting the 19 in 20 games that aren’t violent, promoting how to recognise this and join in with your child in the activity (afterall with a bit of media support an afternoon on LBP Create with your son/daughter could become the Mechano/Model Kit of the modern age), and also to promote how to setup consoles to restrict adult content.
    .
    Video Games aren’t going anywhere – in fact there’s a good chance they’ll be around in some form long after ITV have died off. So the sooner they embrace it the more chance they have of surviving in the future (it’s a bit like the music industries reluctance to accept digital music for so many years).
    .
    Going back to LBP, the creativity on the Contraption Challenges Sony run each more is breath taking – no one is telling me that is a ‘bad’ use of time for children/adults. Maybe Alan should be sent out to do a report on some of these creative individuals, instead of the usual “in one game you go into an airport and kill innocent civilians in cold blood” – it’s like picking one scene from the worst film you’ve seen and then using that as justification of why every film ever made is bad…
posem | 21/03/2010 20:09
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Well wrote :)
gaves give me something to talk about to other people. Our parents managed to get by in conversations at our age by using the medium of Films or TV as a conversation topic. When we get older, we may well find that the only way to hold a conversation is saying how we plowed over 20 pedestrians once on GTA4 or headshotted some nub glitcher ontop of a tower on MW2…
Daywalker | 21/03/2010 20:11
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I play violent games. I watch violent films. It doesn’t make want to go outside, hijack a car and try to see if I can beat my high score of running people down on the pavement! Its not real. I have seen things in the news that are much more horrific than any game or film, such as joseph Fritzl. No game makes you lock up your daughter and do the kind of things he did. What makes it so bad is knowing that these things actually happened. Fritzl did these acts of violence. Call of duty never happened. No-one threw a knife into someones eye. No-one ripped the head off a god. Its the kind of things that happen in the real world that these ‘experts’ (knobs) should worry about.
Rant over.
- Ryan1991 | 21/03/2010 20:23
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  Well said. I feel exactly the same. I have played many GTA games and I have never been compelled to go to a golf club and mow someone down in a golf cart and beat the witnesses to death with a golf club.
  - Ryan1991 | 21/03/2010 20:23
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    And lol at ‘No-one ripped the head off a god.’
  - 3shirts | 21/03/2010 20:50
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    To be fair, I have had the compulsion to run golfers down in a buggy but it’s nothing to do with GTA :)
  - cc_star | 22/03/2010 08:21
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    To be fair, hijacking a golf cart and tearing round town looks great fun
- SIR-DARK-HAZE | 21/03/2010 20:30
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BIGAL-1992 | 21/03/2010 20:16
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Well said mate. After that horrific clip on “The alan titchmarsh show” on videogames, I felt compelled to send ITV an e-mail about that awful piece of television. Tim was made out to be a pantomine villian out of the load of bullshit.
DJ-Katy | 21/03/2010 20:20
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CB I think your ‘mistake’ there if you like is to say that there is a trigger which causes children to lose their moral compass. I think the advocacy groups would argue that conditioning via media including video games – which as you said is something we learn from – is what establishes a young person’s moral compass in the first place, and that we are teaching them wrong behaviours by exposing them to this media.

I’m not saying that’s right or wrong, but I imagine that is what the comeback will be.
- colossalblue | 21/03/2010 20:32
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  I’m not saying that there is a trigger, merely that certain individuals are more susceptible to suggestion and it’s their moral compasses that leave them open to that.
  An individual’s moral guidelines are set by many external influences, my point is that parents and peers whould take a greater responsibility for instilling a positive attitude rather than blaming “parent substitutes” for providing a poor one.
- Gastos84 | 21/03/2010 22:55
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  They do have an influence on someone’s moral compass but that in itself falls back to the parent/guardian. If a game/film/cd is rated 18, for example, then there is a reason. It will only truly influence someone if they don’t already have reasonable moral values already in place…or are mentally unstable. Therefore children should be stopped from having access to such material.
amiga_dude | 21/03/2010 20:21
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The thing that always got me is fact that each time a game like GTA have been released violent crimes has statistically proven drop.

http://gamepolitics.com/2008/04/12/comparing-violent-crime-to-violent-game-releases
3shirts | 21/03/2010 20:55
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I think a key point you make is the ‘research’ which focusses on this decades ‘nasty’ medium just as the 50′s did with rock n roll; research we now think of as laughable.
We need a good courtcase that finds and punishes a parent for allowing their child to play an adult-rated game
Mikiyaru | 21/03/2010 21:00
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After watching that clip from Alan Twatmarch i feel that the root of all simulated evil is money. If you can afford to buy video games on your own, this means you have a job, this in turn implies you are aged 16+. Furthermore, its not like people arent ID’d for 18s anyway if the seller isnt sure. So really, its the parents who are moaning about their kids being addicted to video games, when really they are the ones going out and buying them it in the first place. So just stop buying them the video games and they wont play on them. Simples!

Plus if a game is really THAT bad, it gets banned when its being rated. Manhunt 2 is a prime example. I mean seriously, if my kid was scarred by some virtual boobies in Heavy Rain then hes obviously so sheltered by me that when he gets older it will be a real shock for him.

Just to note aswell, I am 17 and of course do not have a son, or buy video games very often, i consider myself heavily addicted to Final Fantasy XIII, having just hit 40 hours played since release date. I am comfortably passing my A-Levels and have 5 out of 5 University offers. My own method of dealing with games was 1. Stop playing World of Warcraft and 2. I play on my PS3 in the living room, and when my parents need the TV I cannot play on it so i surf game sites like TSA and Eurogamer etcetera instead. Now if my mum said that i was allowed no more Video Games, which i actually doubt will need to happen as nothing new is appearing before the end of the year. By which i will have departed to Uni, leaving my big black box behind. So in turn theres the 2nd Gaming Machine, my Craptop (Laptop, innit). Most of my days are spent playing on my PS3, with Football Manager on my lap, the only other Multi tasking i do apart from driving and other “Frivolities” that i shall leave to the absent and filthy minded. Ill also admit to downloading games online, since quitting Warcraft something hasnt quite filled the void, and this does not mean i use torrents, but more like free mmos like Silkroad Online and Atlantica online. As im a bit partial to MMOs games like White Knight Chronicles and Final Fantasy XIV, although White Knight got bad reviews and Final Fantasy XIV is never going to surface before i quit console gaming.

Another thing that pops up all the time is GTAIV. I remember a guy in America being jailed because he killed a cabbie and joy rided in his Taxi until he was caught by the coppers. He actually mentioned the game in the case. Now as far as i can see, although that is a case of Violent Games telling Young Kids to do stupid and dangerous things, but hes blatantly a nutter, theres peer pressure and then theres murder. To be honest he must be so Sheltered from life, absent form the law or downright crazy to do this he should be in a mental asylum rather than a prison. Which leads us back to the beginning.

Im Michael Mannion, 17. I own a PS3 a Wii and a Nintendo DS. I play games such as Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty along with a bit of Left 4 Dead. I consider myself heavily addicted, but with a sense of when enough is enough. I am not affected in any way by violent video games and completely smart (I think) enough to know that Murder is Baaad Mkay? Now then, Alan Twatmarsh, do Video Games affect Children? Yes of course they do, they make them have so much fun and make so many friends that without video Games, they would be only a shadow of what they intend to be, So take it all away and what do you end up with? Boring kids and fat people because they cant play on Wii Fit all the time. Keep it the way things are and… well. Im sure if you did your research you’d know what importance Video games are to the economy and what happens without them.

Just one last thought for you. I met one guy on Warcraft who hit 365 days played. He’d spent a whole year of his like on the addictive game. So he gave me one piece of evidence that opened my eyes to everything. We spend more time gormlessly watching Tele than playing Games, and theres a damn sight more violence in a yearly release of Saw than in any game bar Resident Evil, and zombies arent even real, are they? So next time your parents tell them that you spend too much time on your PS3 or 360, tell them that they’d just be watching tele instead. Plus twiddling thumbs and mental arithmetic is more exciting than Lark Rise to Candleford at least.

Shit i’ve written quite a lot, havent I?
- Dexter17 | 21/03/2010 21:03
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  Alan Twatmarch!
  
  I take it that I shouldn’t put that in my letter? ;)
  - Mikiyaru | 21/03/2010 21:07
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    cant imagine if you did theyd be reading much further after that :)
  - BLAGGER | 21/03/2010 22:16
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    No point TIT is clearly at the start of his surname…
- BIGAL-1992 | 21/03/2010 21:09
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  I’m 17 as well mate. I think it’s ironic that the two us both know more than those idiots that were on that show. I wrote a letter to ITV and I must say, I had to really hold back on putting any bad language in it.
aerobes | 21/03/2010 21:07
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That makes for interesting reading CB, I can honestly say I have never really thought too deeply about videogames but you make some good points.
It’s intriguing to me to look at how we spend our free time in a manner different from the way I usually do (an outsider looking in for instance).
I would like to think it’s easier for me to take a balanced view of games and their potential influences having played them since my father brought home an Amstrad CPC464+ (awesome machine and still gets used :) ) as things have changed an astonishing amount since those days.
Its been a very thought provoking weekend and I can move forward into the next week (or is Sunday the first day of a new week?) safe in the fact that there are like minded people out there and not just ignorant drones who have such a weak handle on the subject they are trying to broach they can’t even announce the games correctly.
As an end I agree completely and utterly with this motion ‘I’d rather live in a largely free and colourful world and I think I’d be willing to put in some effort towards that goal. Wouldn’t we all?’
Great read.