|
So once again the debate about whether video games inspire violence in youths has been ripped open by the academically intelligent lawyer, Jack Thompson, who has promised a lot of money to anyone who will design his game about killing people involved in the computer game industry. I've decided to enter the fray, firstly from a purely philosophical point of view, ensuring that the argument of inspired violence is indeed logical and then compareing current trends in views of video games to views of comics and then a bit about my own point of view (which should be obvious from the arguments laid out) ending in the skeptical defence which I'll explain a little more in detail.
Anyone who reads penny arcade should know who this moron is. And if you don't read penny arcade, well I'm not going to fill you in on the back story, you can go research all about Jack Thompson on your own. He's not the important issue anyway; what is, is 'do video games desensitise and encourage violent acts amoung those who play these games?'
Let's analyse the evidence. Many studies have been done to show that video games are infact causing these unwanted effects. Everyone, gamers and non, can agree that something that causes these kinds of unwanted effects should be eliminated. Nobody wants to be creating dangerous people in large numbers to cripple and implode society (barring sociopaths of course). The point to be made, again, is do Video Games actually cause these effects. All of the studies, to my knowledge, have taken a violent act undertaken by a youth and investigated whether these youths have played violent video games. Numbers are staggeringly high and this is all the evidence that experts and critics of video games say they need. But this is simply not true. Say 15 kids who have shot a schoolmate are questioned and 14 of them are found to have played 'Grand Theft Auto; San Andreas' and/or 'Counter Strike'. 14/15, conclusive proof right? Wrong! Completely wrong. I would imagine I could get similar results if I asked them if they liked Chocolate, or if they have 1 middle name or 2. Does this mean that people who eat chocolate and have only 1 middle name are more likely to commit a violent act? Hell no, it's a descriptive sample of the population as a whole. 14/15 people like chocolate reguardless of whether they're violent or not, same could be said about middle names. To my knowledge, no accurate study has been done to assess what proportion of youths (entire population; or sample including violent and non-violent youths) play these games.
But okay, for arguments sake, lets assume that the scales are tipped generously more to there being a direct relationship between those who play these games and those who commit violent acts. The next question to pose is "the chicken or the egg?" i.e. do the games cause youths to become violent, or are violent youths attracted to the violent themes in these games? If it's the latter, could it be possible that these games could become an effective outlet for anger, with no harm being done to the real world? I don't think any studies have tried to tackle this question.
Even if these games could become a potential influence on youths, who is really to blame. Children model their behaviour on those around them. If a child is exposed to flowers at a young age and both his parents are florists, he will quite likely come to have an appreciation of flowers as well. Take the same child exposed to flowers once more, but this time his father hates flowers and his mother doesn't see much point to them, it's unlikely that he'll come to have an appreciation of flowers. The flowers are no less beautiful in the second scenario, they still would have the power to entice those with a disposition for their appreciation. So then perhaps the same could be said about video games. It's because the people who these youths model their behaviour on don't have a healthy attitude towards these games and don't ensure that these kids understand that while it is all fine and good to do just about anything in a virtual world, it is not acceptable in reality.
Two decades ago, the comics industry was put under similar criticism about the violence in them and that caused a lot of fuss and change. Violence however, did not drop. There is a need for scapegoats to relieve irresponsible adults of blame. There have been many scapegoats throughout history that have been blamed for the erosion of moral fibre in society: Condoms, Jews, Comics, Video Games, Pornography, Womens Rights, Gun Laws, Communism. It's all balony. Show me one successful study which shows conclusively that any of these causes damage to morality and I'll show you a flying pig.
A special thanks to M. Jade for her input into this rant. Apparently this guy played counter strike an aweful lot. He sounds like a butt fucker to me.
|
|
|
