I still have the violence in gaming debate in my head. Armed with some new information that you will find very interesting, I am hoping to quell the debate for now. I know it won’t die permanently, but it may convince you that a violent gamer is not a violent person. If you’ve traveled around my site enough you’ll notice that the number of games where violent conflict is not included is extremely small, and while some games do omit any sort of violence they are in a significant minority overall. Violence in Pokemon or Skylanders is visually very different from violence in Gears of War or Call of Duty, but both types of games hinge on the idea that the player has to actively subdue enemies with force.
The somewhat recent violence in Connecticut and in other locations around the country may have spurred new talks about the use of violence in video games, but this is hardly a new subject. Doom, one of the original first person shooters, was brought into controversy after the Columbine massacre. It’s pixilated blood and two-dimensional enemies seem laughable compared to the detailed graphics of today, but they were a serious issue in 1999. But at least Doom had a somewhat redeeming, albeit very basic, story about a marine who had to fight his way through the forces of Hell to prevent their invasion and the subsequent destruction of Earth. That wasn’t the case for the 1976 video game Death Race, where the player had to run over what the designers called “gremlins”, but who looked remarkably like people. The player would get points and whoever had the most points before time ran out won. I’m not saying we should dismiss modern video game violence completely because it’s an old topic. Obviously I wouldn’t even bother with a “violence” section in my reviews if I felt that was true. But painting violent games as educational material for the potentially homicidal is wrong. There is yet to be any hard evidence pointing to even a correlation between violent video games and violent behavior and beyond a few anecdotal stories and tragic incidents, I have yet to see any soft evidence either. If you are still unconvinced allow me to make a different argument. It is my experience that when a game depicts violence but gives it the proper emotional weight and potential consequences, that it is much more difficult for players to commit those violent acts than if the violence were depicted without emotion or consequences. The prime example for this is The Walking Dead game. In a recent interview, the executive producer of The Walking Dead game Kevin Boyle discussed how the developers of the game included the emotional weight attached to each potentially violent action and how that affected their gaming audience. While the entire article is interesting to me, I found one paragraph particularly relevant to this discussion. In it, Boyle describes how difficult it was to “devise situations dire enough for players to see death as an attractive solution, even when it came to unpopular characters…” He said that “Time and time again, players would tend towards the least destructive option…” For example, there is one event where the rude and unpopular character Larry has a heart attack and dies. The player is well aware of the fact that Larry could reanimate as a zombie at any moment, and the only solution is to destroy Larry’s head. But it was extremely difficult for players to work up the courage to kill Larry in front of his daughter. There was a deep emotional involvement that, even though gamers knew this wasn’t real, made them stop and seriously consider whether violence was the appropriate course of action for the situation. As I stated before, I’m not arguing that all video game violence is acceptable because it doesn’t affect gamers. I have my own opinions about it, but ultimately everyone has to make up their own mind. I am simply trying to explain how not all violence is the same and how just because gamers play violent games that doesn’t make them violent people. Before we can have a real discussion about the actual effects of video game violence on preteens, teenagers, and adults, we have to be willing to accept that violence can have different levels of significance when placed in different contexts.
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The Legendary Carmine
Andrew Clayton (a.k.a. The Legendary Carmine) is SSG's Executive Editor. He toils at the stone to make sure this site brings its readers valuable content on a daily basis. Like what we do? Want to see more? Donate to the site using the button below!
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