On Political Issues
Although early video games surfaced in a peaceful capacity, such as Pong, there have also been many violent video games as well. An old instance of violent video games include Death Race from the seventies, where the player would physically run over gremlins in their car. However, violent video games have transcended running over pixel art gremlins indistinguishable from a piece of dust on your screen. Nowadays, franchises exist such as Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat, Call of Duty, and Assassins Creed which are centered around violence, whether it be through shooting, stabbing, raping, or even genocide. One can definitely say that games have been linked to sex and violence. Curiously enough, the United States army found no problem with this at first. In fact, they considered violent games as "a useful took for training children," (Owens) probably through the desensitizing of violence. However, it's video gamers like the Columbine shooters who bring massive scrutiny to violent video games. After all, both of the murders in the Columbine shooting were linked to playing a notoriously violent video game called Doom.
There are many and deep views regarding this complicated situation. Parents have taken on a certain hysteria regarding video games. Not only are many parents worried about all video games negatively impacting their children (not just violent video games), they blame the misbehavior of their children on games. Many have even gone so far as to ban all video games within their household. In fact, it is that very concern of parents that politicians and the media have manipulated. In fact, there are many who use violent video games as a scapegoat for the violence in their country. As mentioned earlier, the link between the Columbine shooters and the video game Doom has been used to blame video games for a county's violent tendencies (even in the wake of a militarized American police force and other television influences). In contrast, gamers themselves find little fault in the video games but in the parents themselves. After all, all video games have ratings (ranging from E-Everyone to M-Mature) allowing parents to get an idea for the appropriateness of a video game without having to do deep research. In addition, many video gamers blame parents for the improper supervision of their children and a failed education of morals.
It is hard to determine who is to blame and whether or not certain claims can be trusted. Considering the depth of the views above, blame is challenging to determine and that debate goes fairly unsolved. However, the effects of violent video games comes less in-determinant. In fact, there is lots of evidence that links violent games to short term aggression (Owens). This makes sense considering the psychological nature of "phases" and the way certain games glorify violence, criminality, and even suicide bombings. However, there fails to be substantial evidence in the long run. Most of this evidence is not hard, but soft, and is still widely and commonly pushed by various media outlets as if they were solid and reputable.
With the unfortunate amount of disagreement and uncertainty, there is a lot to wonder about and a lot of research to be done, regarding violent video games and video games in general.
Owens, Alisdair. "Political Issues In The Video Game Industry: Violence And Gaming". 2016. Presentation. <http://zaltys.net/uni/awoies.ppt>.
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