Opinion: Are we ever going to reach a consensus on violent games?

by Chris Jager | Monday 5 December 2011

Yet another university study has made the claim that violent video games are bad for you. Will society ever reach a consensus on the issue?

Ever since Death Race stormed arcade parlours in 1976, debate has raged over the appropriateness of violence in video games - particularly when it comes to minors. Even if you're not a gamer, if you have kids, it's an issue you'll probably think about at some point.

One persistent theory is that violent games make players more aggressive and emotionally unstable in real life. Now, a team of researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine claims to have 'proved' what some concerned parents have suspected all along - although they are far from the first group to do so.

If the university's findings are to be believed, playing violent games changes brain regions associated with cognitive function and emotional control. These are the same areas of the brain that help to control aggressive behavior.

This is your brain on CoD. Possibly.

“These findings indicate that violent video game play has a long-term effect on brain functioning," project leader Dr Yang Wang said. "...The effects may translate into behavioral changes over longer periods of gameplay.” (For more details on how the study was conducted, click here.)

In other words, the paper validates claims that violent video games have a prolonged negative neurological effect on players.

The result? Another war of words, continuing a debate that has been raging between anti-game groups and the gaming community since the 1970s. Everyone from Bill Cosby to Hillary Clinton has taken a swipe at video games over the years, and the debate shows no signs of slowing down.

Among the criticisms of the study are the vague nature of the 'emotional interference task', to the decision to use non-gamers as test subjects. Criticisms have also been levelled at the funding for the study, apparently by Th e Center For Successful Parenting.

And on it continues. Last week the front page of the Australian Daily Telegraph had the headline: "Video game kids going crazy". (The accompanying story was about video game addiction. Read the online version here).

Actual front page news headline.

Another relatively recent salvo surrounded Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik. News that he was a casual fan of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare made headlines around the world (click here for a debunking).

Just what is it about video games that so agitates the press and various call-to-action groups? When sports riots occur, you rarely see hysterical headlines about how the sport in question is destroying society.

Now that the State Governments have approved the introduction of an adults-only rating for video games in Australia – it will be interesting to see whether this leads to mainstream acceptance or even more fear-mongering. After all, when it comes to violence in games, the gloves will soon be off.

Let us know your thoughts on the topic. Are the negative headlines just an attempt to sell papers/ad space? Or are violent video games really bad for us after all?

See more about: gaming | violent | games | banned

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DJ... 7 December 2011	It's not difficult to see that the author of this piece is biased towards acceptance of video games - "..it will be interesting to see whether this leads to mainstream acceptance or even more fear-mongering". Is it "fear mongering" or highlighting of a fact? If video games have no effect then why do the military of many nations use them as part of their training programs? Why is it that the majority of mass-murderers are known to have (extensively) played violent video games? Not all game players will become violent and not all non-players are complete pacifists, but the general outcomes are evident. Maybe video games are just another trigger that lessens our control of our violent tendencies, similar to alcohol and football for many people. Comment made about the PC & Tech Authority article: Opinion: Are we ever going to reach a consensus on violent games? ? Yet another university study has made the claim that violent video games are bad for you. Will society ever reach a consensus on the issue? What do you think? Join the discussion.
amcmo 7 December 2011	Violent video games do not make you more violent - and I'll beat the snot out of anyone who disagrees
frances 7 December 2011	If you really wanted an answer - then it's no. Of course society won't reach consensus, on this or anything else. If you meant do violent games beget violent behaviour, then yes, if the majority bothered to think about it they would almost certainly agree, because it's so blindingly obvious. But they don't think about it because they just don't care. Violence is the modern paradigm. It is so endemic in our currently arranged society that no economy can grow without it. Police, insurance companies, emergency wards, military organisations both government and private, illicit drugs, people smuggling, and on and on - they all employ people who would otherwise be out of work. Violence keeps them employed, so basic Darwinian logic strongly suggests violence will always increase. It is society's entropy.
skarpethinn 8 December 2011	DJ, you're an idiot. The military don't use video games as training tools becuase it makes soldiers more violent - it uses them because it is a cost-effective way of immersing greenhorns in battle scenarios without their lack of experience getting killed on their first "mission." And i'd like you to back up your claim that the "majority" of mass-murderers played video games; name five. i'll respond with a list of 25 serial killers that didn't play them. The ONE person mentioned in this article as playig video games (Breivik) didn't really, as it turns out, pay that much attention to the games he played, using them as a 'cover' for why he was really spending so much time online. And as for your attempt at mitigation, football & alcohol are responsible for WAY more violence (& death) than video games could ever hope to be. Read the comment by frances - far closer to the truth than even the article itself is. To paraphrase Alice Cooper, a person tending towards violence will be violent regardless; if it is not a video game that sets him off, it will be something else.
DJ... 17 December 2011	" The military don't use video games as training tools becuase it makes soldiers more violent - it uses them because it is a cost-effective way of immersing greenhorns in battle scenarios without their lack of experience getting killed on their first "mission." " No, this is not why they use games. Field training is what ingrains into soldiers an appropriate response to a battle situation. Each soldier needs to know where they should be under certain circumstances relative to other members of their patrol so that they don't get killed, or kill one of their own side. Studies of soldiers in WW2 and Vietnam showed that humans, despite all of this training, are still reticent to killing another human. Most ammunition was just wasted. This is a psychological barrier that had to be overcome and initially it was done by using human figures for targets on the rifle range rather than the traditional circles. Video games are used to train soldiers into psychological acceptance of firing upon human figures and the more 'real' a video game then the 'better' trained in this acceptance will a soldier be. Video training endeavours to remove psychological restraints of the 'intelligent' human on his basic animal instinct to fight. This may not MAKE him more violent but the end result is the same. Obviously the use of video games also has a psychological loosening on one's ability to be polite and not resort to name calling. :-)
rubaiyat 17 December 2011	There is one clear fact in studies of extremely violent people that as children they were cruel to animals and were bullies generally. The question is in the spectrum of violent behavior there will be individuals who are borderline and may be possibly tipped over the edge by violent enactment. Survivors of war or social violence are usually scarred by it for life and as in family alcoholism or violence seem doomed often to repeat it. Given the extreme naturalism of the video games, deliberately so, is it unexpected that it has some effect? That effect being unlikely to be therapeutic. At minimum it seems to be having an effect on deadening particularly young children, the most impressionable, to the effects of violence. My brother was struck over the head by another kid with a clay pipe because the other kid had been watching cartoons with similar "funny" scenes. It certainly helps to make the less thinking of children take this into real life as if it has no real consequences. If it gives just a few individuals the background urge to get even more of that adrenaline rush than the game can provide, others will pay for the social thrills of the few. I was thinking of the corporate fashion of treating business as war in the '80s and '90s. With group bonding in paint war sessions and using the language of war to justify policies that often have effects on people remote from them, mostly in 3rd world countries. I wondered if any of those people in the finance industry who had taken part in that, thought of the irony when they got caught in the 9/11 attacks or suddenly reverted back to "Why pick on me?" A question others may have asked of their actions. The clearest correlation you can find between the games and real life violence is in the operators of the attack aircraft in Baghdad, revealed by Wikileaks, and the remote operators of the US drones. It shows an uncanny resemblance to the behavior of games players and that casual detachment that comes from knowing you can do anything you want with no consequences. Or none that you can think of.
skarpethinn 19 December 2011	Part of the problem here, with the supposed connection between video games and violence, comes from one of the ways parents use video games - as babysitters, ways to keep a kid occupied for hours at a time without having to exert your actual responsibilities as a parent. There are a great many ways to screw a kid up - unsupervised indulgence in video games being only one of many. There is nothing in this world - nothing - that you can leave a kid with, without putting it in context for them. Dump a kid in front of a video game like Grand Theft Auto for hours at a time without explaining that it's a game, that it's escapism, that it's not illustrative of what is socially acceptable behaviour, and sure - you're gonna produce a citizen with a diminished moral compass, someone with nothing to keep their behaviour in check. But that is our fault - the parents - not the game. If i was to be honest with myself, i would have to admit that i am a somewhat morbid person; i have what a lot of people would consider an 'unhealthy' interest in things like serial killers, stories about murder, and just death in general; i consider the human skull the most beautiful thing in creation - i have several stone, plaster & metal ones at home (tho not, alas, a real one); i have several real animal skulls as well; these things are just the tip of my perosnality & interests. Don't even get me started on my collection of pictures and videos!! :-$ i'm 40 years old, & i have never tortured animals, nor committed a violent crime, nor attacked a person in violence; and i can assure you, i never will. And i have been saturated in more violence (through movies, pictures, video games, etc) than any Gen-Y'er you care to compare me to. If you think we need to hold video games (& the violence in them) accountable in any way to the violence in society, look up a biography (or better yet, the Saga of) a Norseman from the Viking Period called Egil Skallagrimson, and tell me our entertainment media is even a source of society's ills, let alone responsible for any of them. Edited by skarpethinn: 19/12/2011 06:56:41 PM
DJ... 21 December 2011	Don't miss the wood for the trees. Citing examples of individuals from the present or the past doesn't help us make a better future but understanding "GENERALLY" the affect that violent video games have across the broader population shows there is a significantly large enough number of individuals who will become a threat to the overall population. This disadvantage (death) brought on by a few outweighs the advantages of entertaining some others.
skarpethinn 24 December 2011	i'm sorry, but "citing examples of individuals from the present or the past" is exactly what does help make a better future; the mistakes of the past keep getting repeated because this one lesson never gets learnt. Edited by skarpethinn: 24/12/2011 11:21:53 AM
DJ... 27 December 2011	So Skarpethinn, if I can quote just one example of an individual who at some time in history was influenced by a video game to commit a crime then you would accept this example, learn from it to not make the same mistake and thus ban all video games? I think not. Individual examples only contribute to the debate but it is the general affect across the broad population by way of total outcome that changes laws. Most people don't drink and drive despite there being many individual examples of those who do but as a society we have come to the conclusion that the majority need protection from the minority who do Drink & Drive and therefore we have drink driving laws which affect everyone. Just because some individuals don't become drunk drivers doesn't mean we don't need laws, in the same way just because some individuals are not affected by video games doesn't mean we don't need appropriate laws.
skarpethinn 27 December 2011	"...if I can quote just one example of an individual who at some time in history was influenced by a video game to commit a crime then you would accept this example, learn from it to not make the same mistake and thus ban all video games?" No. Absolutely not, and the mere suggestion of something so heavy-handed and oppressive is ridiculous! There is a MAJOR difference between regulating and punishing (drink-driving) through legislation and just plain banning (video games) outright. What you might have come up with, were you not approaching this subject with such a knee-jerk-reaction mentality, is more severe penalties for the violent behaviour, not being punished for simply owning/playing the game. Drink-driving legislation was developed and instituted by even-handed people as a harsher penalty for those who drink-and-drive - it was never on the cards to ban drinking or driving. i will say it again - the responsibility lies with the parents to educate, not the state to legislate. Maybe you should stop hacking down the wood to get to the trees. Edited by skarpethinn: 27/12/2011 11:09:40 AM