I wanted to look at violence in video games because almost all the top selling games are either first person shooters or some sort of violence shown in a game, examples are games such like; the Call of Duty series, Grand Theft Auto series, Gears of War, Killzone, Mortal Kombat and many others.
I was intrested to know why video games get critized and blammed by the media for all the violence caused in the modern world today. I learnt that other than games getting the blame for violence films, music, books and comics were once blamed for there content but as fims got filtered and had age certificates so young children were unable to see them in cinema. But games now get the blame into the modern violence because games are becoming far more popular as the game world is largely increasing, games are also being acused more freaquently as games actually emerce you in the world and your decsions to kill someone or not is the players choice.
Further looking into my research I learnt about how many researchers have looked into violence in games and how they effect young people. I looked at Lt. Col. David Grossman who had written a book about how game companies are hardening up children in the ways of war to make them not feel emotion, he also believes that video games are teaching children how to understand and use weapons in the method of killing. As I looked further into his book and I found an example of 14 year old Michael Carneal who got hold of a gun and open fired on a small prayer group and he hit every member of that group in the upper torso or head. After reading this it reminded me of watching the 1999 Columbine shooting in america and how 2 best freinds went on a rampage at there school killing 12 students and a teacher aswell as injuring 23 other students, after the blood shed they both committed suicide.
In the psychoanalytic theory (Ellis. 2002) sexuality and aggression are two drives. Both are used for releasing what may happen in the reality or fantasy. Therapeutic ideas according to the ‘Symbolic Catharsis Hypothesis’ form the basis of the ‘Hydraulic model anger model’ (Bushman. 2002.) this model suggests that frustration leads to anger and eventually that anger will build up inside an individual like “hydraulic pressure inside a closed environment” until it is realised some way. This is suggesting that if people do not their anger out, but instead keep it bottled up inside it will cause them to explode in an aggressive rage.
This idea was carried out by Feshbach (1955), who investigated the impact of exposure to television violence on aggression. According to his research violence in video games would allow the player to engage in fantasy aggression, therefore discharging their hostility in a satisfactory way, it will also help reduce the need to carry out aggression in a behaviour realm.
Looking into further arguments about violence in video games an article came up before the debate in California between Schwarzenegger and the EMA (about banning the sale or rental of certain “violent” video games.) and it was arguing the fact if violent video games should be banned, why not ban violent theme park attractions? (Adam Theirer. 2010) He talks about how all the games you see on the shelves are influenced by books such as ‘The Lord of The Rings’ and ‘The Godfather’ was inspired by Mario Puzo’s novel.
Adam also makes a bold comment about how video games are now inspiring movies, books, music and comics, for example ‘Prince of Persia,’ ‘Max Payne,’ ‘Resident Evil,’ ‘Tomb Raider,’ ‘Doom,’ ‘Halo’ and ‘Gears of War.’ This of course means that all the characters and stories you see and read in books, comics and films have been all inspired by video games.
This must mean then that if the games get selected under the new law of banning certain violent games then surely comics and films will have to go under this law as they all are influenced by each other. But then that will also mean that theme park attractions will have to be changed as they will contain the inappropriate amount of violence. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s attraction Terminator 2 3D will have to be cancelled with its real life cybernetic robots shooting and violence shown a screen.
However children love the attractions when I went to Universal studios I remember how much myself and my brother loved the idea of fighting each other as terminators, children love the idea of being emerged into a sense of thrill and action, just because children are shown something violent doesn’t mean that they will necessarily be violent.
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