In Perspective: Violence in Video Games

Violence in Video Games

What you've heard

You want to know why the world is going to the non-denominational negative afterlife? Video games. Today’s games are a showcase of ultraviolence that not only desensitises children to violence, it promotes violent fantasies. Kids today play these games and emulate what they see in the real world, resulting in the violent mass killings that are becoming all too commonplace in the world today. Lower violence in video games, lower violence in real life.

Except

First and foremost, kids don’t play violent games. For the 3rd year in a row, the FTC found that M rated video games are the hardest age-inappropriate product to buy, from a list that includes movie tickets, DVDs, books, and CDs, with a shocking 87% compliance rate. There are studies by child protection groups showing that buying an M rated video game as a minor is harder than buying cigarettes and alcohol. Both the Xbox and the Wii lock out M-rated games for children if the parents take 30 seconds to set up parental controls, a step that receives free tech support from both companies, and most major retailers will offer to set up professionally for a fee (around $40). The Xbox allows you to monitor your Xbox usage and what games are being played with real time alerts to your computer, while the Wii allows this feature on the console itself (minus the real time alerts). If a child is playing an M-rated game it is the result of a parent who honestly doesn’t give a damn, and that’s likely bringing its own set of problems to the table.

It’s also important to note that the average age of a mass shooter in the US over the last 10 years is 35, so if childhood video games are to blame we need to take a long hard look at exactly what about “Super Mario Brothers 3”, “Dr. Mario”, “Final Fantasy”, “Commander Keen”, “Ultima VI: The False Prophet” and “Wing Commander” is causing these people to lose it, because that’s what they would have been playing as children.

So what’s the deal?

We (North American society) suffer from child worship. It is the social dysfunction that defines our generation and what history classes will be teaching as the fall of western civilization 50 years from now. Simply saying something could be harmful to children is the most effective way to get whatever the hell unreasonable agenda you want pushed into legitimacy, and it works with unprecedented success. The conservative party in Canada recently tried to say we, as a country, should not consider ending discrimination on an estimated 350,000 transgendered Canadians because a child might see a dong in the rest room. I really wish I was making that up, but I’m simply not that creative! It successfully derailed almost a year of debate on what should have been a meaningful and important reflection on our cultural identity to one side saying “we should probably protect the rights of all people, and find a way to preserve our values while moving forward in a changing world” and the other screaming back “YOU WANT TO LET PEOPLE RAPE CHILDREN”.

The US government knows that violence in video games isn’t doing any harm. They have studies going back to the 1700s, when they were first asked to research if provocative dancing led to provocative behaviour. They have gone though the whole violence thing with theatre, books, radio, music and TV already and they already know the answer: there is no correlation. There is a huge vested interest in keeping fear alive however, and no one wants to give up this incredible tool for pushing the envelope on control. Now that the government has seen they can get people to sign away basic rights and freedoms (and give them millions of dollars) just by saying the welfare of children is at stake, they are never going to give that up. How bad is it? Just like gun control the CDC (Center for Disease Control) is under direct orders NEVER to research this subject directly or officially rather than risk an official report saying all this fear mongering is pointless.

More so, if you wondering why video games are so damn good at keeping children from playing them, check out the cost of getting a game rated by the ESRB, multiply by the number of games that come out a year, and quickly realise that they are making more money off video games then most publishers and pretty much every developer. They have plenty to spend on enforcement and education and have a vested interest in doing so. They also have a vested interest in making sure you feel that ESRB rating are essential, and should a child ever pick up a M-rated game he will immediately bash his mother’s skull in with it ... it’s HOW THEY MAKE (a stupidly large amount of) MONEY.

Still not convinced? Let’s head over to Japan. Not literally, that costs a lot of money. I’m just going to talk about Japan. You might have noticed that Xbox has fantastic parental controls while Sony has exactly zero, with Nintendo in-between. That’s not neglect on the part of Sony, it’s Microsoft and Sony reacting to their clients. Japan doesn’t suffer from the same child worship we do, so no one is crying to protect the children from the horrors of video games. Sony PS, while a popular system in the US and EU, is without question marketed for Japan where such features are simply not desired. For Nintendo, which is more of an even split between the two markets, the parental controls are tacked on for sale outside of Japan. So how is Japan’s horrible neglect of its children playing out? Well let’s compare the number of US mass shooting deaths last year to the number in Japan last year and get you a percentage...

Oh I can’t do that. Divide by zero error. Last 5 years. No? Ten?

Oh here we go ... 8 people were killed in 2001 in a mass sho ... HE USED A KNIFE? ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?

I’m out.