Controversies of Video Game Violence

Abstract

Video games have always been a favorite pastime of the world. It provides a challenge and a sense of accomplishment when playing games. As such, video games have become quite large. Ranging from brain strengthening Tetris to the ultraviolent Grand Theft Auto series, video games have become beloved by the people of the world. However, the latter series is at the center of quite some controversy. Although today most of the controversy has dwindled down, it still remains. The controversy being video game violence and its effects on humans. There are many viewpoints to this topic, but generally, it is said that there are two sides. The side that says video game violence has a negative impact on humans and a side of the opposite position. The research is expected to prove the latter position and as well as shed light as to why people may think that video games cause violence. In order to form a concise conclusion on the findings, the research would need to be from a variety of viewpoints all from professionals and those who have studied the topic. The research done by them is expectedly correct and usually without fault. I will also attempt to interview and ask questions to one of these professionals in order to obtain their viewpoint on the subject at hand.

Historical Context

Video games date back to the 1960s with Pong. It wasn’t until 1976 when the first controversial game was made and released into the public. Aptly named Death Race, this game had you run over humanoid figures who would scream upon being ran over. The public did not approve of this game and was subsequently removed from the shelves of stores. It was not until 1997 when the first hit against video games was taken. Jack Thompson sued many game companies who produced video games such as Doom and Wolfenstein on behalf of the families whose children were killed in the Heath High School Shooting. The shooters played games similar to those mentioned, first person shooting games, and watched a variety of other damaging films, such as The Basketball Diaries. The suit was dismissed after Thompson could not present a claim. In 1999, the Columbine High School Shooting occurred, thrusting video games once again back into the spotlight. Coupled with the release of Grand Theft Auto 2 years earlier, paranoia of video game violence exploded. In 2000, the city of Indianapolis filed an ordinance that limited a minor’s access to violent video games, which was ultimately taken down by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in American Amusement Machine Association v. Kendrick. Joe Baca, Democratic representative of California, introduced the Protect Children from Video Game Sex and Violence Act of 2003. Then in 2005, Hillary Clinton, after being disturbed by the Hot Coffee mod released for Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, advocated for new regulations and an investigation into who created the mod in Rockstar Games. Video games and companies got a break when Henry Jenkins, a professor at the University of Southern California, debunked the link of video games and violence. He sifted through data, and found that the rate of violent crime of juveniles in America at that time was at a 30 year low. Although those school shootings committed by those children did play video games, he found that video games in general were being played more by children, mainly 90% of boys played and 40% og girls played. During this time, it seemed that the narrative had shifted from video game being the cause, to other factors. The Supreme Court also had a say in this in their ruling of Brown vs. Entertainment Merchants Association, in which they said that a California law that restricted the sale of violent video games to minors was unconstitutional.

Findings

 Craig Anderson, Douglas Gentile, and Katherine Buckley wrote a non-fiction book titled Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents: Theory, Research, and Public Policy, in which they assert the link between video games and violent crime. They claim that video games have become very accessible in today’s time and due to this accessibility have encouraged behavior which leads to violent crime. There have been many criticisms of this research due to “overstating his [Craig Anderson] results” and being very stubborn in his position, as in he refuses to view other perspectives and believes his is the correct and only correct one. Right in the introduction of their book they say “… violent crime have also been linked by the news media to violent video games…” showing how their perspective is set in stone and no counterdata will change that. This stubbornness has caused much criticism and has made him seem as if he were arguing his side just to prove he is right.

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 On the other side of the spectrum, psychologists Cheryl Olson and Lawrence Kutner in their non-fiction book Grand Theft Childhood assert that video game violence and real world violence have no correlation. Throughout the book, they look at previous research and how it would not help parents and policymakers, what the potential benefits of video games are, and they looked at the behavior of adolescents, with a school-based survey of over 1000 students in 7th and 8th grade and 500 parents, with more focus on teenage boys and their parents. Olson and Kutner also looked at their behavior and attempted to find similarities between them, ultimately finding what normal behavior for adolescents is today. They also talk about how studies within media violence are conducted, and the concerns of parents. From their study, they found that 68% of boys and 29% of girls had at least one M rated game among 5 games they chose which they played a lot of. The survey showed that teens who played violent video game also had “childhood problems” such as getting poor grades or getting into fights. However, Olson and Kutner clarify that this one survey is not enough to create a fact and more research would be needed, as well as telling us that this one survey does not indicate that video games do cause problems, but rather it could be that teens with childhood problems prefer violent video. Teens also told Olson and Kutner the positive effects of games, such as releasing stress and anger. They end off by reassuring the parents that their worry is misplaced and that by “. . . focusing on such easy but minor targets as violent video games causes parents. . . to ignore the much more powerful and significant causes of youth violence that have already been well established. . . ” (Kutner and Olson, 190).

 To add onto the compelling case that video games do not cause violence is a news article from Forbes by Ollie Barder, a previous game developer, informs the reader of a new study by Oxford Internet Institute and University of Oxford which used both the parents perspective and teens perspective. They sampled 1004 students ages 14-15 and 1004 parents. They used official ratings from the Pan European Game Information and Entertainment Software Rating Board rather than from the teens as in previous studies. From their findings, they tell us that past studies could have been affected by researcher bias. They conclude that no link was found, however, certain aspects of video games do cause anger, for example when playing multiplayer one becomes more competitive which can produce trash-talking and trolling. They also say that procedures such as those that they followed should be followed for areas as well like social media and phone addictions.

 Video games also have benefits as well, according to Daphne Bavelier, a professor at the University of Geneva. She assures her audience that video games have certain benefits, if played with control, and that most gamers, despite 90% of school-aged children playing video games, have an average age of 33 years old. She argues that in “reasonable doses” video games can have powerful, positive effects on the behavior, however, discourages binging and playing video games for a prolonged period as it is not healthy for you. She backs this up by bringing up her own work. She disproves the claim that screen time makes your vision work by showing that action gamers have better vision than non-action gamers. She then brings up another claim that says that video games lead to attention problems and greater distractibility. She gives an example on how to test this by giving the audience a little game, where you have to name the color of the text rather than the word:

Orange

Blue

Green

She explains how this tests your attention by explaining that “. . . how good your attention is determines, actually, how fast you resolve that conflict…” (Bavelier 6:05). Another point she makes is eye tracking, and how gamers have more points of attention, once again, giving the audience a game to play in which they stare at a dot in the center of a circle, do not move their eyes and then have to track blue dots which turn yellow, and then Bavelier chooses a random dot and asks whether it was originally a blue or yellow dot. Bavelier states that most ordinary people can track around 3-4 dots, while gamers can track about 6-7 dots. This shows how gamers have better multitasking abilities and can focus on more than one thing at a time.

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 Charles Anzalone in his University of Buffalo article asserts that it is not only video games that affect aggressive behavior in people. He focuses on Richard L. Lamb’s research, a director of the Neurocognition Science Laboratory at the University of Buffalo. Lamb says that “any casual relationship between video games alone and violent behavior” should be cautioned against. In other words, video games solely should not be the most blamed factor in aggressive behavior, if it even is a factor. Lamb’s studies were based on models that were computed to study the relationship between factors. Lamb found that certain people had vulnerabilities that could have been cognitive, social, biological, or emotional. As such, when these people played video games, they were more likely to exhibit aggressive behavior. He used existing data of more than 1000 teens between 9th and 12th grade, comparing the data through social factors and genetic disposition. According to Lamb, neither model provided good predictions for whether aggressive behavior would be shown. When he added biological factors (genetic disposition to violence), social factors (socioeconomic status and society bias), and emotional factors (how easily upset one becomes), he found that video games could possibly act as a trigger to aggressive behavior. He goes on to clarify that it is not the game itself which causes it, but rather a whole slew of combined factors that causes this aggressiveness.

Surveys

The survey participants were mainly teens. From the results we can see that 72.7% of the participants knew someone who owned a violent video game, and when asked whether their behavior was aggressive, 62.5% answered no. These results show that despite owning a violent video game,              a majority of the people are not aggressive. When asked whether video games caused violence in real life, most answered yes, which surprised me. I did not expect most of my classmates to think that video games do cause violence. Finally, when asked whether they would allow a child to play a game with mild violence, the majority said yes. When asked why, some said that it would introduce them to sensitive topics and violence at an early age, which could possibly make the child realize that violence should only be in video games, while others said that it could possibly mess with the brain of a developing child. When asked what they thought caused today’s violence in teens, most said that bad parenting was a big cause. The data shows that there is more than one believed factor for aggressive behavior in society now. I expected these results excluding survey 5, which i did not expect a majority to believe that video games can cause violence in the world.

Epilogue

 Despite the major push to link video games and real world violence, significant research is yet to be made confirming this statement. The Supreme Court has struck down many lawsuits and laws that attempt to restrict video games. Multiple studies have been done on both sides and yet both have studies that aren’t the best. School shootings have reached an all time high in the age of video games, and yet violent crime is at a relatively low level when compared to the 90s. How is it that in this day and age we have a lower violent crime rate, despite the technological advancements and amount of new, limitless, video games, which can easily be distributed whether they contain extreme violence or not. Sure school shootings are high relatively speaking, but the likelihood of bring in one is astronomically low. Terror acts nowadays have yet to be Influenced by video games, from ISIS to Tarrant. Sure, these people may play video games, however, it does not cause them to commit such horrific acts. Violent crime is yet to be Influenced by video games. The only rectification for not only violent crime, but crime in general is strong parenting and a sense of community, both of which seem impossible in today’s state of the society. Change starts in the community.

Works Cited

• “A Timeline of Video Game Controversies.” National Coalition Against Censorship, ncac.org/resource/a-timeline-of-video-game-controversies.
• Carnagey, Nicholas. Andersson, Craig. Bushman, Brad. “The effect of video game violence on physiological desensitization to real-life violence” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 43, no. 3, 2007, pp. 489-496.
• Kutner, Lawrence. Olson, Cheryl. Grand Theft Childhood. Simon & Schuster, Inc: New York, 2008. Print.
• Barder, Ollie. “New Study Shows That There Is No Link Between Violent Video Games And Aggression In Teenagers.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 16 Feb. 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2019/02/15/new-study-shows-that-there-is-no-link-between-violent-video-games-and-aggression-in-teenagers/#71599dff328e. Website
• Bavelier, Daphne. “Your Brain On Video Games.” TED. November 2012. Lecture.
• Anzalone, Charles. “Many Factors Influence Video Games’ Link to Violent Acts, UB Researcher Says.” Why We Create Monsters – UB Reporter, 6 Mar. 2019, www.buffalo.edu/ubnow/stories/2019/03/lamb-video-games-violence.html