There's been a lot of talk lately about video game violence as there always is after tragedies like the one that occured in Newtown, Connecticut in December. It's a subject that I think about periodically both as a person who plays a lot of games and as a person who makes them. Consequently, I feel the urge to address it here.
I have always firmly believed that violence in video games does not inherently encourage real world violence and that belief has never waivered. I also don't believe the reverse to be true.
In my opinion, the vast majority of violence in video games can be attributed to laziness. Killing is simply the easiest thing to have a player do.
Create an environment, fill it with "enemies," drop the player in with a weapon, add a few basic elements like a scoring metric and you have a game.
Want a story? Make it a revenge tale. Want character progression? Give the player experience and or skill points for killing things. Want to add tension? Add more "enemies" or take them away for a while and being them back unexpectedly.
These concepts are all so simple and surefire that it's often difficult to look beyond them. As with other creative works, the low-hanging fruit is the most tempting. Turn something into a business and that only exacerbates the issue.
What possible motivation could a major video game developer and or publisher with millions of dollars invested in the development and marketing of a game have to deviate from a formula that's been proven to work time and time again?
There aren't hundreds, perhaps thousands, of violent video games released every year because game players are bloodthirsty psychopaths looking to feed some deep-seated desire to kill. It happens because those sorts of games take the least creative and technical effort to produce and lead to the highest level of profit.
As I said before, I don't believe that video games make a person violent. I have personally killed millions of people, aliens, animals, robots, monsters and barely-classifiable creatures in games over the years. I have killed them individually and en masse. I have killed them accidentally, purposefully, casually and callously but none of that has ever made me want to kill in real life.
For all their attempts at verisimilitude, video games are not real and a person who is incapable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality has bigger problems than whether or not they play video games.
To be sure, people are often impacted or inspired negatively and or positively by a video game in the same way they might be moved by a book, a piece of music, a film or dozens of other stimuli but as has been established regarding those mediums, that is not sufficient to drive the vast majority of people to any sort of real-world action.
There are those who argue that the interactive nature of video games makes them somehow different from other types of entertainment. To this I say look closer. "Choose Your Own Adventure" books and the ability to rewind, replay and edit audio and video have all been around for a long time now. People always find ways to interact with their preferred artistic forms. Interaction merely comes easier where video games are concerned.
Having said all that, I understand the temptation to look at something like "Call of Duty" multiplayer and say "Oh, obviously that must encourage violence. It's a bunch of people running around with guns killing each other over and over again." I get it. It's more of that low-hanging fruit and if video game makers are going to pick it to make and sell their games, they shouldn't be surprised when people do the same to decry them.
But video games are much, much more than "Call of Duty" multiplayer. There are plenty of games out there that have no violence in them to speak of (cough, Powergrids, cough) or where violence is appropriately contextualized such that it makes sense and doesn't feel lazy or cheap. "XCOM: Enemy Unknown" is a good, recent example.
My overall point is this: While I acknowledge and disapprove of the fact that video game makers often use violence as a crutch in their craft, I do not subscribe to the idea that violence in video games makes people violent in reality. My own personal experiences with games as well as those of the many people I've discussed the subject with leads me to conclude that they are no more or less influential than any other form of artistic expression.
One final note with regard to children: I personally don't believe that children should play violent video games as a general rule until their ability to distinguish and contextualize that violence has fully developed. I also respect a parent's right to choose what their child consumes, and have access to information regarding the content of a game prior to purchase as provided by the current ESRB rating system. "M" rated games should not be sold or marketed to children and there should be stiff monetary penalties for doing so.
Until next time, have a good one folks!
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