Violence in Video Games
GTA Protagonist
Over the last several decades, video games have become an accepted, and to varying degrees integral, part of many young lives, and the debate surrounding their potentially harmful effects have sustained for nearly as long. The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday, June 26th, striking down a California law, banning the sale of violent video games to minors, as unconstitutional, represents an important development in this debate, if only to establish video games as so-called “protected media,” akin to movies, music, and television shows, with literary merit of their own that allows them full first amendment protection. In the majority’s opinion, the California law’s intent to insulate children from violence and death did not alter the application of constitutional free speech. “Disgust is not a valid basis for restricting expression,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote.
For many horrified parents, “disgust” may be an apt word indeed. Since the video game industry first realized the vast marketing potential in gratuitous violence with Mortal Kombat — a 1992 game in which players “finish” their opponents in (for the time) spectacularly gruesome fashions — there has been only one trajectory for the levels of gore, bringing us such video game franchises as the Grand Theft Auto series, and Postal 2, a game cited numerously in the defense of the California law, which seems to revel in the very gratuity and meaningless death which video games have made their province. When considering that video games are played overwhelmingly by young people, perhaps California lawmakers could be forgiven for concluding that more explicitly protective measures were excusable.
Psychologists have long warned that playing violent video games can lead to increased aggression, and may be more harmful than violent television or movies because of the interactive nature of game play, especially considering the increasingly realistic worlds, and convincingly human reproductions employed. Subsequent studies seem to have repeatedly upheld this judgment. For young children and adolescents, still discovering the ways of the world and learning right from wrong, the psychological effects could be especially pernicious. The values of the lawless virtual reality they enter into every day, could come to substitute for those of the real world. Indeed, there are some, perhaps surprising, therapeutic uses for the more violent video games which would seem to back this up: hyper-realistic military first-person shooters, such as Full-Spectrum Warrior, have become integral parts of some PTSD psycho-treatments for soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Presumably, by playing these games, and re-immersing themselves in the death and destruction they survived and left behind, the parts of the soldiers’ minds that enjoyed the thrill of combat were able to practice these disturbing pleasures virtually rather than repress them, or worse, feel compelled to recreate them in everyday life. The soldiers were empowered to relive traumatic events in a safe, secure setting, and, crucially, could turn the game off at any time should negative responses or flashbacks result, as they sometimes did.
There is something disquieting in all of this. Human fascination with death and violence, of course, is long established, explored in every manner of literature, film, and artistic expression. Video games, a relatively new medium, offer an entirely fresh, and arguably less “artistic”, or “enlightening”, form of diversion — in effect, vicarious living, an opportunity to actually “be” the Arnold Schwarzenneger killing bad guys. And it’s fun. Nobody plays a video game to learn something about the world. Rather for the thrill, the challenge, and the competition (perhaps why they remain an overwhelmingly male activity). The trouble comes when the values, or lack thereof, in the virtual world begin to substitute those of the real world, a risk more pronounced for younger people than older, and for the depressive than the emotionally secure. This is the basis of desensitization: death and mayhem become to seem less of a big deal — a good thing, perhaps, for soldiers grappling with compromised morality, but dangerous in the extreme for already malleable personalities. Perhaps the real lesson is that we, as a human society, have yet to find that place where our darker inclinations can be exorcized safely, in the open, with no shame. Until we do, the market for vicarious, gratuitous death will probably grow no smaller.
My Dear Cousin Is Still An Angel at My Side
“The Boy and the Heron” by Hayao Miyazaki
Scott Johnson, a reporter for the Oakland Tribune, wrote a thought-provoking piece on this issue for his blog:
http://oaklandeffect.com/
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Very interesting ideas. Inasmuch as the deaths of many in these video games are used as mere punctuation, and because those who are slaughtered are not individuated, the effect may be to desensitise but, on the other hand, it may simply trivialise death in a context which players know not to be real life. The fact that playing these games engages real-life aggression and inspires real-life exultation in violent conquest is possibly the really dangerous thing about them.
I don’t know, I really don’t, but it is notable that societies which become secular (I’m writing from England, which is very secular) are very bad at dealing with death because secular folk do not integrate an understanding of their own mortality into the way they conduct their lives. So you could argue that most people are morbidly oversensitive to death when it actually happens despite the amount of real-life (at second hand) and virtual death they’re exposed to throughout their lives. In other words, when they kill someone in a video game they do not fully understand the implications of what they are doing.
I’m not sure how violent feelings are safely exorcised. I have a feeling they are best suppressed.
But I’ll stop because I’m beginning to rabbit on a bit. Thank you for getting my synapses crackling!
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Very well written article, and I respect your position on the subject of game violence. However as a game player myself, I do have conflicting feelings towards game violence. On one hand, in a primal kind of way violent games fils a need for me. But as a responsible and caring human being it can sometimes play a little with my moral compass. I do wish that we had I few more educational games that are still made with the same kind of “fun factor” the the violent games do. But I believe one of the issues that keep games kind of in this dark age is because there aren’t enough adults trying to understand the subject from a gamer point of view. See the appeal and then accept the media form, and maybe we can make some practical changes.
Thanks for the article, I enjoyed it.
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Gameguy: Yes, I suppose there are some clear benefits to game play, certain skills to develop. It probably doesn’t help things to stigmatize them as a whole. Anyhow, thanks for reading.
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That’s interesting to make the connection to religion and dealing with death. I’m not sure how much I agree though — I don’t think the U.S. is that much better at dealing with death, yet we are notably more religious. In my book, suppression of feelings is one of the worst ways to go!
Thanks for reading,
Antal
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Thought you would be against suppression! Would you accept curb? I once worked in a school which subscribed to the idea that sports enabled students to express aggression in good and cathartic ways. It was my observation that the school community was much more loutish and aggressive in the term where the game everyone played was rugby (a primitive version of your football).
Just come across this link, which will amuse and appal you: http://wegotthiscovered.com/news/halo-anniversary-preorders-grunt-funeral/
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I suppose my feeling is that suppression can will only work for so long before those urges come out, one way or another, perhaps despite the best wishes of the individual. Dialogue without shame is the best avenue, in my opinion, how a person can most easily learn to live with themselves.
Haha. Good to know Halo people have a sense of humor.
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Whoa ………. Game Guy – This article is one thing but now I’m really rethinking the fun I have while watching my nephews play Grand Theft Auto.
Suzette
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Best Violent Games: Blood and Gore – We take a look at the ten most violent video games ever made. Ever since developers figured out that a few red pixels could stand in for gushing blood, video games have been catching flak for being too violent. Whether digital decapitations and virtual eviscerations are corrupting our children is up for debate, but there’s no question that there are some spectacularly gory games out there.
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