People who do not play video games, nor understand what they really are, are always the first to demand its head on a plate whenever something goes violently wrong. The problem with this philosophy is that if video games were really the cause of violent behaviors, the world would already be a wasteland of death and destruction. Yet oddly enough it isn’t.
In my experiences, the only aggressions I’ve seen that stem from video games are caused by either poor game design (including op enemies), hardware/system malfunctions and/or dealing with jerks when playing online. That’s pretty much it.
Whether its stomping a walking mushroom or getting off a headshot at 350 meters we understand its just a game. We know these polygons and sprites are not real living creatures. They’re just parts of a larger fantasy world that we escape to, every now and then, to relax. Because we know how to relax. Maybe you should learn how to too.
January 20, 2013 at 6:13 am #
I kinda want someone to find a link between a bunch of violent crimes, like “all the shooters were found to be using Crest brand toothpaste”. Then gather a group of people demanding that Crest acknowledge that their product may be causing violent tendencies. What’s that you say? Millions of people use your toothpaste that aren’t violent? Well whaddaya know….
January 20, 2013 at 6:45 am #
Another cause of videogame related violence: Listening to people telling you video games are causing violence.
January 20, 2013 at 1:19 pm #
TBH, I think there’s even been a decrease in violent crime per capita over the period of time that gaming has increased in our culture. Not sure, someone needs the stats.
January 21, 2013 at 3:30 pm #
I’ve read that somewhere too, but I don’t remember where.
January 23, 2013 at 2:49 pm #
Five seconds of googling: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/violent-crime/violent-crime . Obviously this particular graph is a little slanted in that it looks like stats have dropped drastically (define drastically in this context, I guess), but dropping about 200,000 out of 1.5 million isn’t quite as dramatic. Nonetheless, my point is that the statistics are out there and anyone can look them up, but they don’t.
I harder question is whether video game violence, competitive video games, or just competitive sports in general are positively correlated with acts of violence. But since we can’t even get people to look at the stats first…
Found an even better graph:
http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=b1tlmra7lb7a9_&ctype=l&met_y=crime_rate#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=crime_rate&fdim_y=crime_type:violent&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:US&ifdim=country&hl=en_US&dl=en_US&ind=false