Running header: DO VIDEO GAMES CAUSE VIOLENCE

DO Video Games Cause Violence? University of Texas El Paso By Jose Reyes

DO VIDEO GAMES CAUSE VIOLENCE

Abstract Provoking violence or not videogames have become an important factor of social life in this world. This report is about what research has been provided in order to decide whether video games are a danger to society, or if they are merely an inoffensive pastime. Video games have long been thought as a cause of aggressive behavior and presented here is information that demonstrates the research that both backs it up as well as disproves those claims. This report also discusses the probability of reasons other than video games that could be the probable cause as to what promotes violence in people. Contrasting what is real and what is fiction, in the idea that violent video games are the sole cause of this generations violent events, especially the ones going in the United States. Finally this report also includes what constitutes a video game that would promote violence in society.

DO VIDEO GAMES CAUSE VIOLENCE

Causes of violence There seems to be a big issue on violent behavior emanating from the multimedia, especially video games, in recent years. Although the eye is on violent video games there is no reason to limit the field to only a specific type of video games, especially since they are all meant to be sold and enjoyed. Some research suggests that it could violent behavior could arise from any video game at all, as long as there is some form of competition involved. The underlying problem put forth by Kain is mental illness since those are the people that will be influenced more easily, and blaming anything else is just avoiding it (Kain, 2013). This suggests that video games are merely the tipping point to an already mentally ill person, which shows that violent video games only really affect a very small percentage of the population, and this also means all the attention the media is giving it is oriented in the wrong direction. The media boasts that violent video games turns people into killers, although as put by Pinchefsky, Is it odd to describe a mass murderers darker side not as his killings or other unstable interactions with people, but as an activity he shares with millions of other people? (Pinchefsky, 2013). Research has proven that it is important to put our efforts into treating mental illness rather than keep on blaming video games themselves. According to the Marquette Tribune mental illness the real problem and blaming it on video games, parents or TV shows is just an excuse, and that ideally we should be spending our time funding psychiatric research (Marquette Tribune, 2013). Video games are unlikely to change, but if the media or researchers started changing their views in order to research mental illness first then maybe the answer to why there are mass killings could be found, instead of researchers spending time on researching more people that will not be as affected as others by what they play, in this case video games.

DO VIDEO GAMES CAUSE VIOLENCE

How does video game affect your judgment? Video games have a way of influencing that surpasses many previous ways of doing so; great examples are school and television. Video games are a powerful source of education, whether we use it for good is up to both the developers and the consumers. The main reason video games are better than television or school at teaching is that video games are active, engaging the user in its actions making the person learn by being actively involved, a great example is when you learn to fly an airplane because it is easier to do so with a simulator than with a book or by watching a show. (Bushman, 2010). So if video games can be more instructive than previous forms of education, then why are there more games teaching violence than games teaching math? The main reason would probably money. In order to sell video games successfully they have to be appealing to the audience and at the same time make them enjoy the game enough for them to tell their friends about it. According to Bushman, one way video games do this is by rewarding your actions, every time you complete an objective they reward you with points or compliments, for example every time you shoot someone the game says nice shot, all these rewards change the persons behavior and makes them want to play more, whereas in a TV show they rarely give you rewards, and when they do they dont affect your behavior as much as a video game where you are actively involved (Bushman, 2010). The only problem with this is it leads to video game addiction something that is common in competitive games, and not so much in educational games. Being addicted to video games clouds your judgment and makes your whole world revolve around that one game you cannot for the life of you stop playing. This could severely affect your social relationships with other people, driving people away because all you can talk about is about that one game you play or you are too busy playing it that you do not have time for your friends(video game addiction, 2013). Videogames have been proven to be educational

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but they are mostly being used for marketing purposes. If game developers started using their skills to make video games in order to make them more educational by giving them a moral stand point instead of choosing to make videogames with no deep plot with only one objective of killing all the bad people, then maybe all this mess could be avoided. Should video games be banned? If video games are proven to cause violence and aggression, then should they be banned forever from the stores, or at least ban kids under the age of 18 to be able to buy them? Clearly if video games were to be proven as main factors in todays violent crimes like school shootings, then children should not be allowed to even go near them. In the case Brown v Entertainment however, the court decided that to prevent under age children to buy M rated mature games would be a form of violating the free speech amendment (Ferguson, 2013). If this is what the Supreme Court decided, then there is evidence that banning video games whether it be morally right or not would not be allowed under the constitution. There was another instance where selling video games that were M rated to a minor would be criminalized. That instance was when the then senator Hillary Clinton signed a bill saying that all video games rated 18 and up should not be allowed to be sold to minors (Procon, 2013). The bill eventually failed to pass as not enough research had been made to conclude violent behavior arising from the selling of video games to minors. This lead the way for the current vice president Joe Biden to instigate to the populous that more investigations are needed on this topic for he firmly believed that video games are the cause of this new age violence and that the supreme court was wrong in its decision. Even with all these attempts, the following image shows that even though there have been attempts to ban video games, they have instead gone up in popularity, while at the same crime related events are decreasing.

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(Procon, 2013) With this image in mind there can be no denying that video games have become very important for the market, but there is also no denying that videogame related violence has not gone up but rather gone down and it is the coverage of these events by the media that has gone up. What constitutes a violent video game? Video games have a wide variety, but it is widely believed that only violent video games cause violence, but what are the properties that make them violent. The main properties that make these video games violent and cause all these aggressions are its competitiveness like mentioned before, but this is merely an incentive, that is what brings people in, what makes a video game violent, and how does it make people violent. The other important parts in what makes a video game violent is that they show blood and gore, and they do that by giving you weapons and make you do missions that involve you killing people or aliens. That according to some researchers implies that these video games are simulators for future perpetrators of the law. These simulators are what give people the idea that they have already practiced and now they are ready for the task of the real world (2013, Ferguson). As noted before simulators are a great source of knowledge and practical training, but do they really train people enough to make them

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believe that they can take on the real world all by themselves? According to Ferguson Some advocates promoted the idea that video games were training children to become murderers and began using polemical language such as murder simulators or, in Germany, killerspiele (killer games). (Ferguson, 2013). No matter how you look at it many people believe that it is this simulation alone that acts like a boot camp for future criminals, a valid point given that even the US military uses these types of simulators to train their soldiers. In summary, video games are violent while at the same time competitive, and even though it has not been proven that they cause violence, they definitely have a say in the matter. If it were to be proven that video games cause violence however, then the researchers should decide whether it is only violent video games or all competitive games that bring forth this characteristic in people. In conclusion, video games have been proven to educate people, both in good ways and bad ways, but it is the fact that the media claims without scientific research that violent video games are the major cause in this event, when it is in fact a combination of factors, mainly mental instability, and a competitive nature, that brings forth these events, not the simulations with blood and gore.

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Reference page _Procon.org (2013, September 20). Do violent videogames cause violence. Pros and Cons of Controversial Issues. Retrieved from: http://videogames.procon.org/#Background _Video game addiction.org. What Makes a Video Game Addictive? Retrieved from http://www.video-game-addiction.org/social-consequences.html American Psychological Association (2010, June 8). Violent video games may increase aggression in some but not others, says new research. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100607122547.htm Bushman, B. (2013, February 12). The effects of violent video games. Do they affect our behavior? Retrieved from http://www.ithp.org/articles/violentvideogames.html Ferguson, C. (2013, March). Violent Video Games and the Supreme Court. Retrieved from http://www.popsci.com/files/SCOTUSPaper.pdf Kain, E. (2013, September 18). Do Games Like 'Grand Theft Auto V' Cause Real-World Violence? Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/09/18/do-games Pinchefsky, C. (2013, May 08). Yet More Proof That Violent Videogames Don't Cause Aggression. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolpinchefsky/2013/05/08/yet-more-proof-that-violentvideogames-dont-cause-aggression/like-grand-theft-auto-v-cause-real-world-violence/ Wright, E. (2013, January 15). Video games named as a possible source of violence in the wake of Newtown. Retrieved from http://marquettetribune.org/2013/01/15/news/shootingresponse-sh1-bf2-ap3-rework-lede/