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Cereal&Milk

Violence in video games

A friend pushed me in the direction of a couple of interesting statistics. Since Doom was released in 1993, violent crimes in the United States have to 40% of what they used to be. Coincidence? Possibly, yes. However, the year Quake and Duke Nukem 3D were released, violent crimes fell by 4%, and a further 2% when Grand Theft Auto was released.

I don’t take that as mere coincidence. A simple Google search brings up countless articles citing experiments and analysis on how a child’s mind gets affected by the violence and gore in video games. Here’s an excerpt from one I particularly liked:

Is this the critics of the video game industry’s dirty little secret? An interesting analogy is the United States national drinking age, known to be higher than most countries in the world. Why? It’s easy to justify based on the fairly blatant statistics: in 2005, the total of people killed in alcohol related car accidents has fallen 32% since 1984 (the year the National Minimum Drinking Age Act was passed). While I realize the opposition to the act is strong and convincing (I believe it should be 18 ), it is difficult for the government to argue against such strong statistics. If Jack Thompson were to provide me with such strong statistics, maybe I would be inclined to agree with him a little more.

Understand that I do take all statistics with a grain of salt–I haven’t looked into the methods of collecting data, the reliability of my sources’ source etc., but it raises interesting questions nonetheless. Why do critics of video game violence focus on this so much? The devastation of a child’s mind is one of the major talking points of most of these studies. I personally feel the authors who write the reports should be working somewhere else: there seems to be a great use of emotive language to compel mothers and people like Jack Thompson to stop people from having fun.

Let’s talk about the kids for a moment. Or not: the average game player is 33 years old, and the average game buyer is 40 years old. In computer games, 93% of gamers are over the age of 18. Console gamers follow closely at 83%. The source has a great list of interesting statistics–I don’t want to list every one–which are well worth a read.

I’m not saying that the 7% of gamers under the age of 18 (87% of whom get their parents’ permission to play those games anyway) aren’t important enough that they don’t deserve the respect of being looked after, but it seems to be that the whole critics movement is based around blowing their analyzes way out of proportion. Social critic J. C. Herz puts it brilliantly:

At the end of the day, (as the Virginia Tech. shootings taught us), some people are just messed up in the head. I think it’s a bigger leap to say that a criminal’s behavior is the cause of playing violent video games than to say that Doom started a shift in the climate of the United States (and probably the world over) in reducing violent crimes.

What do you think?

Source: avinash.vora

Sources are cited on the source page.

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Seronx239

Wow that what i think just plain wow :O

Random69

Violent games, well, games in general, can help reduce or create stress. Say if you play a FPS and you're either completely destroying everyone else or you're getting killed like no one's business.
If you're winning, you feel good inside (Well, at least I do) and lots of people comment on how well you're doing. In that situation, stress from life is greatly reduced.
But think if you're getting raped. Most people would get at least ticked off and some would get stressed, I know I do. This, in some cases, can lead to violence, but for the most part people tend to shoo the anger away.
(^That sounded much better in my head )
Think of what games are there for though; to entertain, waste time, relieve stress, etc. Last year when I was a freshmanin in high school, I got extremely stressed by life; this included worrying about my grades, my mom telling me to work 10x harder when I was working my *** off, and trying to keep a social life. For me, it was either study my whole life, not have any friends, and play games or fail school, drop out, and drink all day everyday. I'm sure you know which I picked. Life was extremely hard on me, as the only time I was out and about was Saturday and Sunday, and that was just going to church.
Every time I had a chance, I would get on the computer. MapleStory was the game for me and I was quite into it. I had friends, life just went away, and I didn't need to worry about the stress on life. Some of you may know that MS isn't a violent game, and I understand that as well. Games aren't there to give you something to do when you're stressed like I was, and gladly I figured that out.

Now to be more on topic...
I'm going to use GTA as my reference because that's the only one I really got into.
GTA is a great game, whether you look at it from missions, or from what you do when you're bored (Which can include killing people, stealing vehicles, trying to get as many cops to follow you as possible, etc.). Most people that play(ed) it would be able to buy it, and since it is an "M" Rated game, that's the older gamers. (Refresh me on what the age is to get M Rated games please)
For the people that try to relieve stress, and try NOT to conduct violence go for the more violent route. If you don't really know the game, you still know that you can do so many violent things and most people would laugh at the insane things you can do. I think people subconsciously know that public violence would ruin their lives, so they resort to playing violent games to (Yay I'm gonna say it for the 231908th time in this post!) relieve stress.

Sorry if I got WAY off topic. As I said before, this sounded 10x better in my head.

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Seronx239

*Quote on*
But think if you're getting raped. Most people would get at least ticked off and some would get stressed, I know I do. This, in some cases, can lead to violence, but for the most part people tend to shoo the anger away.
*Quote off*

People can play games when there getting raped?

Dead Eyes

use [ quote ] and [ /quote ] on either side of a bit of text to turn it into a quote.

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TheRequiem

Virginia tech has nothing to do with video games, it had to deal with phycological issues within the school.

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Seronx239

Well actually the people FRAMED him of playing Cs:S so the People who framed him of using bad game aka "Jack Thompson Organization" said cs:s was the cause and bad influences in school.

Ska-Boy

Well guess what. At the same times those rates jumped when Doom came, the amount of active ninjas was on the downfall. Coincidence? I think not!


Seriously though, in my opinion the main reason why violent games are under so much fire is because it's an easy excuse for minors. Say a 36 year old kills 3 people. Oh, it's fine, he's insane. But if a 16 year old kills someone, he can instantly lean the the fact that he plays Counterstrike and take some heat off. If there is any way to excuse something, especially if it's a popular excuse, people will use it.

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Seronx239

Good point you got there Ska-Boy

Don't forget he will get support from the "jto"
lol

CabooseNation

I agree. Games are a way easier way to blow of steam.

Just turn it on and rampage to your hearts content and you can go back anytime you want.

In real life, you gotta prepare a lot and you only get to play once...

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