Violence in Video Games
”The randomly chosen victim of mass scapegoating”
Written By: Webmaster Christopher Beley

The argument as to whether violence in video games causes aggressive or violent behavior in people has been argued over and over.  New studies seem to pop up constantly saying that violent video games do or do not cause such behavior in people, yet no one seems to actually come to a conclusion.  Maybe it could be the fact that some of the better research projects dealing with violence and video games used RPG (Role Playing Game) type games, which present players with fantasy violence which you, in most cases, couldn’t relate too well with real life.  While the research projects saying violent video games do cause aggression in people tend to be over exaggerated, but use games like the Grand Theft Auto series, which have environments that are more realistic.  In the end, it all seems to come down to personal opinions.

What people seem to not be realizing is the fact that in order for someone to actually be affected by violent video games, he or she has to have the potential to be aggressive or violent in the first place.  Most people can distinguish the line between fiction and non-fiction, and just because they play a game where they kill people doesn’t mean they are actually going to go ahead and do it in real life.  Sure, there is the small percent of people who may actually not be able to distinguish the difference between a game and reality, ending up becoming the next big hit in the news.  The keyword here is “small”.  Another factor to consider is why is everyone just focusing on video games? Just turn on the TV and prepare to find stuff much more realistic than many violent video games that could potentially trigger aggression in someone much faster than from video games.  You could even say that things someone saw on TV could be channeled out though video games instead of real life, thus making violent video games a means of preventing the next mass murder.  Of course, I don’t intend that comment to be used as an excuse to actually play violent video games.

If you haven’t noticed already, most reports you see on the discussion at hand use children and teens as their primary subjects.  The funny thing about this is that in most cases the kids aren’t the ones buying the M rated games, but actually the parents.  The trueness of this fact increases when we look at the fact that the majority of retailers will not sell M rated games to minors.  Sure, someone could go to a friend’s house and play a certain game behind their parent’s back, but in most cases the parents have almost full control of what their child watches and plays.  To top things off, it’s the parents who start scapegoating games when their children do something that would get on the national news (note the small amount of exaggeration here), but were the ones who bought those M rated games for their child in the first place.  I would think that if the parents were worried or could see that their child could be potentially violent they wouldn’t go out and buy them the latest Grand Theft Auto game!

The whole violence in video games subject is all a big joke and nothing more.  TV, music, pictures, and various other things could have been used instead of video games with arguments just as ridiculous as the current ones about violent video games.  Another question is why is why isn’t sex in games talked about as much as Violence in games, though the GTA: San Andreas “Hot Coffee Mod” did spark a lot of attention in that area, causing the game having the rating being upped from M to A, but that is beyond the scope of this article.  Anyways, once again, the parents shouldn’t have been buying their children an M rated game to begin with, which was what all the uproar was about with the Hot Coffee Mod.

This whole subject should just end.  It has lasted too long and is just beginning to be absolutely ridiculous.  Surprisingly, I’m not the one playing any of these games (I’ll stick with my Zelda, Mario, and Nintendogs), but in no way do I think that a violent video game is going to make someone aggressive who didn’t already have the potential to be so.  Video games or no games, if someone has that potential, there is a high possibility it will be sparked by something else anyways.  May this subject never be brought up again (Of course, that’s not going to happen).