Violence in video games

Raven 06-24-2007

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?

Hsoolien

I think that the viololence in vide games is just part of a larger social problem (non nuclear families, the over hype of sex and viloence in the media, the less social aspects of the internet) and that it's only going to make people likely to commit the act more likely to commit the act. For a well adjusted individual, all the viloence int he media in the world is not going ot make him/her go out and shoot somoene.

Dream

Games is an outlet for people. I've been in in a pissy mood and I would play UT for about an hour and I feel just fine afterwards, well aslong as I was winning lol. If they worried about violence no one would know who John Wayne or Rambo is. America is built on violence throughout its history way before video games were even possible.

SamiJo

definitely with dream on this one. there is violence out there wherever you look, news, tv shows, video games. if these people are really concerned about their kids they would do a better job monitering what they do. the violence in video games is only different from the violence in john wayne movies by the type of guns they use. either way its still there.

bigbird

the crimes today are some what game related but the rest are beacuse people are so fuckien stupid