Children and Violent Videogames by Carissa Creveling (2001)
Imagine your son in a long, dark hallway, with his night-vision goggles on his head and a rifle in his hand. Suddenly, a dark hulking silhouette appears at the end of the tunnel. He hears a hoarse growl as the creature stops to look at him, then it begins to jog down the passage towards him. Alarmed, he raises his rifle and pumps all the shot he has into the monster. The creature falls dead at his feet, and he grins as an extra 1,000 points are added to his score at the top of the television screen. Before he runs down the hall in search of another monster, he presses the pause button and gets a drink in the kitchen. This is a videogame.
Games such as the one described above have brought about controversy between parents and gamers, about the psychological effect of pixellated violence on the minds of children and teens. Yet despite complaints and concerns that games influence kids� behavior, research shows that videogames contribute little to the violence in society today.
In today�s technological world, computers are a way of life for adults, adolescents, and kids alike; no matter what career a person chooses, a computer will play a role in the job. As electronic technology progresses and the industry booms, more ways of entertainment by computer emerge. This includes videogames.
Gaming began in the 1970s, but didn�t become popular until the 1980s. The very first system ever released was the Magnavox Odyssey in May of 1972. It came with only a few built-in games, and the graphics consisted of white blocks on a black background. Game violence wasn�t even considered a threat with early systems, since the graphics were very simple. Despite the Odyssey being the home game console of the time, it did not sell well. This may have been partly due to sales practice; the system was sold only at Magnavox stores, where unscrupulous salesmen told customers that it could only be played on Magnavox televisions (�Console launches� 68). The Atari Video Computer System, released in October 1977, boasted the game Pong, which gave the system some fame in history. However, the boom in gaming came with the release of the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES, in the fall of 1985. Nintendo initially marketed its console as a toy, until it sparked enough interest to be released nationally in the U.S. to people of all ages. Game developers became more daring as the market grew and the audience spanned a variety of ages.
Perhaps they were too daring, though. In 1987, Macintosh introduced MacPlaymate on PC; the object of the game was to undress an animated woman and stimulate her with sex toys. An underground World War II game in Europe put the player in charge of a Nazi concentration camp; rewards were given for the number and brutality of their executions of Jews. Angry parents raised an uproar with the release of Mortal Kombat in 1991, which gave the player a choice of how to kill their opponents, with the bloodiest �fatalities� ever seen in a videogame (Choi 2). Ever since, games such as Silent Scope and Resident Evil have given anti-violence people a reason to push for the regulation or even banning of violent videogames.
The school shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado gave these angry parents more reason to try to strangle the gaming industry. The game Doom had supposedly helped the young shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, learn gun and shooting tactics. Yet, of all the bullets that were shot in Columbine High School, less than 1% found their mark in other students and faculty (Alastor 2). This proves that the shooting methods used in games and many other forms of media are extremely misleading. In fact, guns on television do not work at all like they do in real life; there�s no recoil, no ammunition limit, bullets will simply bounce off or knock people through walls, and many other errors (Wynar 5). A videogame is strictly pixels and polygons, and there is no real feel of the way a real gun would work.
In fact, gamers argue that games have little impact on violence in children. Television and movies have a huge impact. Themes of evil villains trying to destroy the world, and themes of organisms from other planets coming to Earth only to destroy or conquer it are so common in children�s plots anymore that movies which are more graphic and violent than games are a greater threat to children�s psychological development. But these movies are dismissed as �just kid�s movies.� No one ever considers the hero. The hero of a story could be just as bad as the villain. For example, in order to save the world, maybe he or she steals someone�s car to get to a building to defeat the �bad guy.� These cases are even worse in more mature plots, especially the ones involving guns. Many �heroes� take guns and shoot at the minions of the bad guys or anyone who stands in their way; in real life, they would be prosecuted and imprisoned for the illegal abuses of the firearms and authority (Wynar 4). What kind of hero is that?
No one can say that television has not influenced society. Novice shooters in firearms classes start out by imitating the incorrect techniques they see on television, martial arts schools boomed after Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and sales of S6W .44 magnums skyrocketed after the release of Dirty Harry (Wynar 4). Studies show that many frequent game players also engage in more violent sports and watch high amounts of television every week (Ask 2).
And yet, the blaming finger still points to videogames as being the core risk for negative behavior changes in children. When anti-gamers accused the games industries of producing more mature games than fun and educational ones, game enthusiasts pointed out the fact that 42% of gamers are over age 18 (Choi 2). In 1997, 43% of games reviewed by the ESRB were rated inappropriate for the under 13 age group.
Many gamers believe that the people arguing against them are merely ignorant of many of the studies and facts presented by researchers that favor the neutral or positive effects of games on children. An independent study conducted by Alexander Ask showed that high-frequency players playing a violent yet easy game became less angry and calmer, while low-frequency players were on the flipside; also, more frequent gamers experienced and expressed more anger, but felt they could control it better. A different study by the American Psychological Association (APA) sampled twenty-five boys and girls between the ages of eight and twelve. The children were asked questions about violent behavior or empathy, then were given one of two games to play (violent, non-violent) for fifteen minutes. Afterward, researchers gave their subjects a set of hypothetical situations designed to trigger either a compassionate or an aggressive response. No connection between gameplay and the responses to the situations was discovered (McDowell 2).
Yet the demand to ban still ran strong among anti-violence supporters. After viewing several violent videogames, including Mortal Kombat and Night Trap, Senator Joseph Lieberman (CT) created the ESRB, Entertainment Software Ratings Board (McDowell 1). The ESRB is an organization in which representatives from all of the major software companies rate every video or computer game before it goes out on the market. Ratings vary: E for everyone, T for teen 13+, M for mature 17+, AO for adults only, and others. Other ratings companies followed, such as the Amusement Machine Operators Association (AMOA), which puts warning/rating stickers on arcade machines (Choi 2). The effort to protect children from violent games stretched across the world. In Australia, the State Attorney General declared that all videogames would go through a screening test. Violent games would be restricted to adults and excessively violent games would be banned all together (Ask 1).
So why hasn�t the violence stopped? With the ESRB and other organizations striving to protect children from the gore and guns of games, and the results of numerous studies showing that there is no connection between games and violence by kids, you�d think that the shootings and violent play would stop. However, aggression research suggests that poor parenting is the cause of much of the erratic behavior by children. The limiting of play time and the supervision of the types of games that are played are just as important as monitoring the television programs and movies that children watch.
Despite the common belief, there are benefits of gaming. An important plus to gaming is being able to vent anger non-aggressively. What could be better than blowing away that non-existent monster after a long day of school/work or other stress? If this method of venting were taken away, hyper-aggressive people would be forced to find some other way to purge their anger and frustration. This could lead to real people being hurt. Another advantage to gaming is that it opens up a social opportunity for kids; a certain game might cause some common interest between children and create more friendships and interactivity. People also seem to forget that educational games do exist, and can teach kids things that do not involve guns and killing. Games that are prosocial, educational, and fun would be more popular if more people tried to encourage the acceptance, popularity, and availability of them (�Violence� 3).
Controversy is not anything new to society; there were arguments about television and rock and roll. Now videogames joins the pack. With the industry booming and the ESRB running full force to warn of mature games, it is doubtful that videogames will lose their place in the electronics empire and our everyday lives. So next time your son is gleefully gunning down monsters in dark tool sheds with his Playstation controller, just remember that if anyone objects, proof of protection is on the package of the game on the ESRB tag. It is the parent who chooses to be aware of and follow it, and lay down the law to their kids� gaming and other media habits that might spark the violence and arguments in the lives of both gamers and non-gamers.
Works Cited