Assignment: Game On
Do you think that violent video games can increase the
aggressiveness of the people who play them?
When you are finished reading and annotating the
selections, write a substantial answer to this question that
makes specific references to the readings.
As you read and write, consider the following:
 What points in the readings do you agree with? What
points do you disagree with? Why?
 What sorts of evidence does each author use to back
up his claims? Which evidence seems convincing and
which does not? Why?
 What sorts of assumptions do different authors make
about human nature? What assumptions do they make
about socialization? How do these assumptions affect
their arguments? How are these assumptions similar
or different to the philosophers and literature we have
examined in this unit?
 Are you personally biased about this issue? If so, in
what way and why?
Nature, Nurture, and Video Games
Stephen Barr, "Computer Violence: Are Your Kids at Risk?”
Video games have become a pervasive form of entertainment in the 1990s.
Today an estimated 69 percent of American families own or rent video and
computer games. Most are harmless entertainment, but in far too many of the
most popular ones, kids are acting out realistic violent experiences on their TV
and computer screens. They are severing heads and snapping spines in Mortal
Kombat IV. They are paying a go-go dancer to flash her breasts and then
blowing her away in Duke Nukem 3D. They are scorching the high school band
with a flamethrower until they burn to death in Postal.
"These are not just games anymore," says Rick Dyer, president of the San
Diego-based Virtual Image Productions and an outspoken critic of titles with
violent and sexual content. "These are learning machines. We're teaching kids
in the most incredible manner what it's like to pull the trigger. The focus is on
the thrill, enjoyment and reward. What they're not learning are the real-life
consequences."…
Potential for harm
When it comes to the effects of video games on children, there's a double
standard in the industry: While publishers trumpet educational games in
helping develop kids' learning skills, they discount that violent games can have
baser influences on behavior and attitudes. "There has been no evidence to
show that video games increase violence in children," says Pat Becker of
Electronic Arts, the industry's largest publisher.
Video-game developer Rick Dyer, whose company makes only E-rated titles,
says the effects on children are "one of the dark secrets that this industry does
not want to talk about, and for one reason: they're making money from it." It's
the same kind of attitude that has allowed the tobacco industry to contend for
so long that nicotine is not addictive. "There's no concern for the potential price
we may pay in society," Dyer says. "It's strictly the dollar."…
"With a video game kids don't just observe an aggressor rewarded; they
experience the direct reward," says Stanford communication professor Donald
Roberts. "Engaging in these activities rather than watching them increases the
potential for the negative effects to take hold."
Indeed, soldiers trained to kill in combat use the same brutalization and
desensitization techniques now used to entertain children. Lt. Col. Dave
Grossman of Jonesboro, Arkansas, a military expert on the psychology of
killing, notes: "Every time a child plays a point-and-shoot video game, he is
learning the exact same conditioned reflex skills as a soldier or police officer in
training."
"The media are probably more powerful than we realize," says the NIMF's David
Walsh. "And if parents are responsible for caring for their children, then our
definition of caring has to keep pace with a changing media world."
Video Games Do Not Cause Violence
Rashawn Blanchard
Game Players Have Common Sense
…While people choose to emulate certain video games such as fans of Street
Fighter performing a motion that in-game would yield a fireball or Final Fantasy
fans performing a motion that would yield a magical result, there is a level of
common sense that intercedes before they pick up and proceed to beat a
prostitute to death to get their money back while refilling their health meter as
seen in Grand Theft Auto [GTA]. The level of absurdity that is seen in these
games is something that gamers know they can't do in real life—that is one of
the core reasons that many people play the game.
The popular God of War series is known for its brutal combat, where the gamer
is rewarded for being as ruthless as possible. On the special features disc that
is included with the second installment of the series, developers go on to
mention that the allure of some of the violence is to release frustrations that go
on in the real world. The entire idea of an escape from reality can be used to
explain entertainment in general, of which video games are parts of…
The most important notion, however, is that as human beings (not as gamers)
there is a distinct realization between video game violence and real life violence.
People in general do not want to bring harm to one another for no reason and
playing a video game simply isn't a large enough reason to force someone out of
the comfort of their living room and onto a sidewalk with a shotgun and an
aimless vendetta.
VIDEO VIOLENCE IS COMING TO A SCREEN NEAR YOU
By William Sears, MD
Children are not born violent, they are made violent. They become conditioned
to associate violence with fun, as part of "normal life." Are we bringing up a
generation of soldiers, or are we bringing up children? The end result of
unmonitored video violence is we are training an army of kids. There is a
psychological and physiological principle called "operant conditioning," which is
a stimulus-response training where a person is conditioned to act, not think, in
a stressful situation. This is how pilots train in flight simulators and the United
States Army trains its soldiers. Could the video game addict become
conditioned to shoot or hit whenever provoked? Could these video games trigger
what we call "instant replay," so that the player is conditioned to pull a trigger
when seeing someone go after his girlfriend? We are concerned that this
terrifying technology can fill a child's vulnerable and receptive brain with a
whole library of scary instant replays, so that by reflex he replays one of these
violent scenes when faced with a real-life problem.
Desensitizes children to violence
Kids becoming increasingly attracted to violence and numb to its consequences.
They build up an immunity to violence and therefore need higher levels of
violence as "booster shots." Since violence is actually unnatural for children,
video games make it fun for them, which gradually conditions the child to
believe that violence is natural. Colonel Grossman dubs this as AVIDS acquired violence immune deficiency syndrome. As violence goes on to
desensitize children, they perceive violence as "cool." At a very young age,
children learn to associate violence with pleasure and excitement, a dangerous
association for a civilized society. As the desensitization process continues,
parents should be aware of disturbing words, such as "It's just a game," or the
most concerning, "It doesn't bother me." It should bother them.
It's developmentally incorrect
Children instinctively copy adult behavior, and violent imagery is much more
easily stored in the memory than less violent behavior. Yet, many preteen
children have not yet learned to completely differentiate fantasy from reality.
They view, interact and get involved with the video game, yet developmentally
lack the moral judgments as to the rightness or wrongness of the action. They
lack discernment. Violent screens put the wrong messages into children's
vulnerable brains at the wrong time.
"Games Don't Kill People—Do They?" by Greg Costikyan
Violence has become commonplace in video games and is often portrayed in a
graphic, grisly fashion. However, violence is only part of the whole aesthetic in
most games. Violent first-person shooter games are not simply virtual shooting
sprees—they also engage players in exploration and puzzle solving.
Furthermore, first-person shooter games actually benefit society because they
allow players to express their violent impulses in ways that are not antisocial.
The current attack on video games echoes the irrational fears that fueled the
hysteria surrounding comic books, pinball machines, and other benign youth
culture phenomena…
First-person shooters are violent games. Yet they are not depictions of endless,
orgasmic mayhem; in their solo-play mode, they are mainly about exploration
and puzzle-solving, with opposition provided in the form of monsters you shoot.
Though violence, and the edge-of-the-seat tension it builds, is a key part of the
game's aesthetic, impressive 3D technology and art and clever "level design"
(where exploration and puzzle-solving come in) are at least as important.
The "violence" is against monsters, defined as such, who are clearly attempting
to kill you; the back story, such as it is, presents them as some kind of horrible,
Lovecraftian intrusion into the real world. Hence they are, in a sense, totally
depersonalized opponents. But the notion that this kind of thing therefore
"desensitizes" people to violence and makes them more willing to commit it
seems dubious. Shooters are really about the "booga-booga" fright instinct: A
scary monster appears out of nowhere and roars at you; you have to turn
quickly and blow it away.
And of course, you die frequently yourself. The feeling engendered is not "I'm an
immortal Rambo, I'm so cool I can kill anything"—rather, it's more like, "God,
that was a hard level, those spider things with the cannon launchers are really
tough, I'm glad I finally got through it."
Interestingly, the multiplayer online version is very different. You shoot not
monsters but other players, who are running around trying to kill you. And
they aren't depersonalized; they look just like you, you can chat with them (but
rarely do because the game is too fast-paced), and so forth. This has been
portrayed as something new and frightening—but frankly, it's no different from
paintball and not much different from tag…
Violence, and the attraction of violence, is a fundamental part of human nature.
It is particularly appealing to young adolescent males, for it is a clean break
with the rules-bound environment in which they have lived, a rejection of
parental order. In every society, violence is most common among young men.
It is foolish to try to change human nature; it is immutable, or mutable only
through the slow process of evolution. What can be changed is society. Society
can develop institutions and mechanisms to channel antisocial impulses to prosocial purposes. That's one reason for armies, of course; they institutionalize
violence in a mechanism designed to protect rather than damage society.
And games of violence? They allow players to be violent, to act out their violent
impulses, to hunt and shoot and kill—in a way that harms no one.
Violent computer games don't spur violence; violent computer games channel
antisocial impulses in societally acceptable ways.
VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES CAN INCREASE AGGRESSION
By the American Psychological Association
WASHINGTON - Playing violent video games like Doom, Wolfenstein 3D or
Mortal Kombat can increase a person's aggressive thoughts, feelings and
behavior both in laboratory settings and in actual life, according to two studies
appearing in the April issue of the American Psychological Association's (APA)
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Furthermore, violent video games
may be more harmful than violent television and movies because they are
interactive, very engrossing and require the player to identify with the
aggressor, say the researchers.
"One study reveals that young men who are habitually aggressive may be
especially vulnerable to the aggression-enhancing effects of repeated exposure
to violent games," said psychologists Craig A. Anderson, Ph.D., and Karen E.
Dill, Ph.D. "The other study reveals that even a brief exposure to violent video
games can temporarily increase aggressive behavior in all types of participants."
The first study involved 227 college students who completed a measure of trait
aggressiveness and reported their actual aggressive behaviors (delinquency) in
the recent past. They also reported their video game playing habits. "We found
that students who reported playing more violent video games in junior and high
school engaged in more aggressive behavior," said lead author Anderson, of
Iowa State University. "We also found that amount of time spent playing video
games in the past was associated with lower academic grades in college."
In the second study, 210 college students played either a violent (Wolfenstein
3D) or nonviolent video game (Myst). A short time later, the students who
played the violent video game punished an opponent (received a noise blast with
varying intensity) for a longer period of time than did students who had played
the nonviolent video game.
"Violent video games provide a forum for learning and practicing aggressive
solutions to conflict situations," said Dr. Anderson. "In the short run, playing a
violent video game appears to affect aggression by priming aggressive thoughts.
Longer-term effects are likely to be longer lasting as well, as the player learns
and practices new aggression-related scripts that can become more and more
accessible for use when real-life conflict situations arise."
Violent Video Games Do Not Encourage Violent Behavior
Douglas Lowenstein, testimony before the Senate Committee on
Commerce on the Effects of Interactive Violence on Children, March 21,
2000.
The Research on Interactive Entertainment
The Australian study updated a 1995 study conducted by Kevin Durkin, Ph.D.,
Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Western Australia. In that
study, which reviewed all literature on the effects of video games on users,
Durkin concluded, "Overall, evidence is limited, but so far does not lend strong
support to the claims that computer games play promotes aggressive behavior."
As noted earlier, the new study reaches much the same conclusion after
evaluating research carried out since the 1995 study was published.
A few key points from the Australia study are worth reporting. First,
government researchers found in a national survey that "most people associate
positive feelings such as enjoyment, happiness, exhilaration, relaxation, and
challenge with playing computer games": and that "young players report that
aggressive content is not the central attraction of games. Many players said that
they perceive the aggressive content as fantastic and preposterous, with the
result that they do not take it seriously; they do not perceive their own actions
as harming others since they do not believe the characters are real or suffer
pain." This punctures the oft-repeated statement that kids prefer violent games
or that they take them seriously.
I want to cite briefly a few important studies covered by the Australians. Derek
Scott, as reported in the Journal of Psychology, had hypothesized that the more
aggressive games subjects played, the more aggressive they would become. He
set out to prove this point of view, and failed. In fact, Scott found that the
moderately aggressive games substantially decreased feelings of aggression,
whereas the highly aggressive game resulted in no more of an increase in
aggression than the nonaggressive game. "Results are discussed in terms of a
general lack of support for the commonly held view that playing aggressive
computer games causes an individual to feel more aggressive" Scott wrote.
There are several other studies which have sought to prove that the more
aggressive the game played, the more significant the impact on behavior, and
they have not been able to demonstrate this link, suggesting that there is not a
nexus between the level of aggression in a game and behavior outside it…
Yet another weakness in some of the research is that it fails to control for the
pre-existing tendencies that subjects bring into the research. Griffiths points
out that more aggressive children may be drawn to more violent games. And the
Australian authors suggest that "it would appear plausible that the direction of
effect is from player to game. Computer games cannot turn players into boys. A
more reasonable interpretation is that people with certain characteristics seek
out certain types of games. It remains uncertain whether involvement in
aggressive games by already aggressive individuals contributes to the
exacerbation of their aggressive tendencies, provides a harmless avenue for its
discharge, or makes no difference."…
While the subject of this hearing is the effects of violent interactive games on
children, I want to briefly point out that there is a growing body of evidence that
video games have many positive effects on players, including enhancing
educational performance, improving spatial skills, improving cognitive
development, and as therapeutic tools to treat attention deficit disorders,
among other things. I hope we can address these benefits at some future
hearing rather than continually and exclusively focusing on the issue of
violence....