Video Games : Video Game Violence Essay

Video Game Violence has been a big controversial topic for many years, going back to the most simple classic video games like Ms. Pac-Man, Centipede and Space Invaders,which eventually turned into more modern games like Destiny and Grand theft Auto. This research expands and analyzes the idea of how video game violence is always accused and put to blame for aggressive events and how the research of this is faulty . The way most people look at video games and how people try to connect them to violence could needs to be corrected. Within this research we will be looking very closely at how these studies and tests were done on violent video

Call of Duty, Mortal Kombat, Grand Theft Auto, and Doom. Many know these games for their violent nature, stemming from their graphic scenes or gameplay involving shooting or beating up opponents, and these factors have caused these games to stir up quite a bit of controversy. For the last few decades, people have debated the effects of these games on the people who play them. Many believe those who play the games become more aggressive as a result of their violent nature, while others argue that playing the games has no effect on one’s behavior. Society should realize that violent video games have, at most, minimal effect on players’ behavior.

Video games have become a major occupation of majority of the youth these days. They spend hours on end concentrating on video games, some of which are apparently very violent, yet this is actually the whole idea. Coming from the horse's mouth is an argument in support of video games coined from a video programmer's point of view, stating that violent video games allow people to do what they can not do in reality- virtual reality. ( http://www.theroc.org/roc-mag/textarch/roc-15/roc15-08.htm ) For instance, someone said to be having a bad day could use a violent video game to release stress by shooting down a couple hundred bad men than actually taking an AK-47 and spilling down a few brains down the

Over the past few centuries,video games have become a great leisure and hobby among kids of all ages and cultures. With the advancement of technology, video games have advanced highly in its realism and genres. This high type of advancement brought the video game industry to a multi-billion dollar industry. However, with realism, comes negative effects as well. Ever since the creation of violent or “mature” video games, there has been a constant debate on whether it will increase violence in the player. Although, not all video games are violent, and just increase skills in a player such as hand-eye coordination. Nevertheless, there is research going on for the link between violent video games and youth violence. The question is which event happens first in the sequence, do violent video games aggravate a person’s violent behavior, or does a person get rid of their anger through playing violent video games? Either way, violent video games are not beneficial to our society.

The evolution of video games has taken a drastic change since the 1970’s when video games were first introduced. Since then every decade video games have become more violent in nature with strong language and realistic to suit society today. Craig Anderson states that with more violence in video games they would sell better than games with less violence (Anderson, Gentile, and Beckley pg.5). Violent video games really became popular when the first person shooter games were invented so that we could see through the eyes of the player, as if we were really experiencing it. Society wanted better graphics and games as time went on new technology was invented and society matured in electronics. This meant that for game creators would have to come up with something better selling than the last. Creators would make the games more violent and more realistic each time so that way they can keep the interest of their consumers. Each game would increase in blood or gore slowly, but what really got consumers to buy their games would be the update of graphics in the consoles or games. This is due to the drastic changing of technology and the maturing of consumers wanting better and newer violent video games. Violent video games can cause children to behave violently if not correctly supervised.

At least every child has played video games once in their lives. There are various genres and types of video games such as action, first person shooters, adventure, education, role-playing, strategy, and many more. 89% of video games contain some violent content (Slife, 2008). The most addictive, common, and popular video games among children are the violent video games (Slife, 2008). A lot of video games these days depict “real-life violence” meaning that the settings and plots of these video games are taken from real-life wars and events. For example, in Call of Duty, the plot is being in World War 2 and doing campaign missions identical to World War 2 events. While playing a video game, no matter what the genre is, the person is bound

Playing video games does not cause violent behavior. Don’t get me wrong, some video games show horrific acts of violence. “A recent survey found that 92 percent of U.S. kids--ages 2 to 17--play video games, and their parents bought 225 million of them last year to the tune of $6.4 billion.” (Sider 79).What’s here to argue is that violent video games do not cause violence among children, but the blame for violence should be on the individual and people who should have taught the individual better. If kids are not able to see the difference between reality and fantasy, then they really can’t be blamed for committing acts they see in a game and then imitating, not fully understanding the consequences of doing it in the real world.

Diverse surveys have presented uniform clues suggesting that publicity of violence is a vital risk component pertaining to hostile attitudes. Aggressive video game controversies are consequential on irregular grounds, ranging from the depiction of hostility, sexism, as well as ethnicity, alongside constructive portrayal of offensive conducts among others. Video gaming has been undeniably, evaluated for its connections to addiction along with hostility however, traditional varying assessments notably attained conflicting results. On the contrary, contemporary analysis have reported that exposure to insensitive video games would impose particularly a gradual rise in hostility, which might accordingly integrate with the actual

Have you ever had the urge to harm or kill someone after playing a game of football? People of all ages love to play this sport whether it be for fun or bragging rights. We watch two people almost tear each other apart in boxing or Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Chances are you probably just looked at these events and went on with your day afterwards. We have faced dangerous events such as wars, natural disasters, and terrorist attacks. What these events have in common is that they are actually real examples of violence. With events like these around, why would someone take the time to blame a piece of digital media that is only meant for fun? Parents, Ralph Nader a political activist and even our current president Donald Trump all

Secondly violence, another suggestive theme also contributes to societies major concerns about video games. “Advanced improvement in the presentation of the games comes an increased use of the technology to present extremely violent, bloody, and sexually explicit game scenarios.” (Duckett)Violence has gone from simple games like space invaders, and packman to present day games such as Mortal Kombat, Grand Theft Auto 1-3, Quake III and many other games where violence, blood, and death are prominent themes. The demand for violence is not because male children choose to witness it, but because males are looking for beneficial role models, which they find in these games. (Clark, 1993) Playing games such as these can increase a person’s aggressive thoughts and feelings under both laboratory settings and real life. Violence in video games according to Cesarone “points out that other authorities have speculated that when a child plays a violent video game, he or she is more likely to behave aggressively….” Sometimes however violent video games become addictive leading to many psychological disabilities.

Many studies have shown how harmful the effects of media violence can be for over 60 years, and some recent studies have shown that there may even be a direct correlation between a one’s emotions and their exposure to the highly concentrated violence in video games. It is also known that over 85% of video games today have at the very least some type of minor violence, and about half of video games contain serious violent actions (Carnagey, 2007). This is the reason why video game violence research and literature is growing so rapidly and new studies are being reported nearly every month (Krahé, 2011). This fascinating research as well as literature explains the need for further studies on what the effects of violent video games are. This research is especially useful for new video games and the age restrictions for them. Parents will benefit a great deal from this research, helping them to better understand how violent video games may affect their children’s emotions.

The rapid growing technology influences the creation of many sources of entertainment. According to a U.S Study by Rideout Et Al (As Cited in Anderson & Bushman 2001.a), the popularity of video games is rapidly increasing. In a U.S study by Butchman & Funk (As Cited in Anderson & Bushman 2001.b), Around 60 percent of 4th grade girls prefer violent games and about 3 out of every 4 boys with a similar age also prefer ferocious ones. This essay will argue that violence in video games should be censored. For the purpose of this essay, violence can be defined as the physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something, and censor may relate to the act of supressing unwanted material (Oxford Dictionaries). The three main points of this essay are that exposure to violent video games leads to aggressive behaviour, the negative impact caused by ferocious video games on the society, and how ferocity in video games collaborates with affecting the psychology of individuals negatively.

Craig Anderson, a distinguished professor, director and specialist in the study of violence through the media, argues that exposure to violence through video games is effecting the youth of America. To Anderson’s dismay, there is little research and scientific studies directly focused on this topic, due to the fact that an influx of video games throughout the nation has only occurred recently. However, Anderson continuous to believe, based off other meta-analyses studies, that the issue of violence being portrayed as entertaining rather than disturbing is more severe than many realize. According to the article “FAQs on Violent Video Games and Other Media Violence”, Anderson states that violence is being presented in a humorous way. He believes this is problematic because of it creates positivity towards the violence, leads to memorization of aggressive actions, decreases cognitive accessibility to handle situations in a non-violent way and desensitizes the viewer emotionally. In addition, he addresses the difference between TV, movies and other media outlets compared with video games, describing how video games are much more interactive and isolating. Anderson finds these issues to be concerning and can only hope that the general public will one day accept his philosophy and the research that backs up his position.

Video games, especially violent ones, have been given a negative reputation amongst many people as something that “increases aggressive behavior, aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, physiological arousal and decreases helpful behavior” (Carll). Despite there being evidence out there that support these claims, according to Lowenstein, these claims are often “conclusions and speculations not supported by the underlying research”. Which shows that these claims of video games being accused of causing violent tendencies in its consumers aren’t backed up enough to be taken as a fact. Video games do not play a role in inducing violent behaviors or thoughts in its users.

Video games have become a driving force in our culture today, and the effects, both positive and negative are scrutinized on a daily basis. The violent aspects of this form of media are a cause of concern, but to what effect remains an important question. This research proposal aims to look at a gap in the literature on this topic by qualitatively accessing aggression and enjoyment of players based on varying difficulty levels and numerous genre types available in the market today. The ultimate goal is to understand if the difficulty is an additional cause for potential aggressive behavior.