By Sam Coles:
I thought I wouldn’t have to write an editorial in 2018
about a subject that has been proven to be false, but that there are still some
out of touch fools within the United States government who blame media that
they do not understand rather than blaming the individual of a horrific event. I
am of course talking about the recent shooting in a high school in Florida
where a young man went in with a semi-automatic weapon and proceeded to gun
down students and staff. The current US President Donald Trump, instead of
address the individual’s mental state, he instead goes after violent media in
the case of this editorial video games.
Video games have been around for over 40 years depending on
your opinion of when mainstream gaming started, but for arguments sake
mainstream video games first came around in 1972 with early arcade machines and
Pong sets. The first moral panic about video games was the release of the
arcade game Death Race back in 1976, like the film it is based on Death Race
awarded you with points when you hit a pedestrian with your car. By today’s
standards Death Race is crude with its depiction of vehicular murder, but it
sparked discussion about if these games could affect the mental psyche.
It wasn’t until the early 90’s with the release of the
original Mortal Kombat in arcades and the corny B-Movie point and click
adventure Night Trap, where the US government wanted to step in and take
control as they gave the industry an offer regulate yourself or risk government
control. This of course of was the birth of the ESRB, where video games started
to have clear age ratings on games for the US starting at E for everyone to A
for adults only.
You would think after all that the government would leave
the industry alone… Right? No, in the late 90’s two individuals shot up a
school in Columbine, you would think logical people would assess the mental
state of them, but no instead they blamed Doom a game that is 6 years old at
this point was blamed because the two liked playing the first person shooter.
After the 90’s the game industry became more mainstream,
with creditable voice actors playing roles in games starting with Grand Theft
Auto III, but the scapegoating never stopped as GTA III was targeted (Not the
first time for the series) because of its open ended nature. Parents and
senators of the day commenting about how it will corrupt their children,
despite the game being rated M for mature in the US and 18+ here in the UK, at
this point video games was a form of entertainment not only for kids, as it
also catered to adults. I remember when GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas came
out with the controversy that came along side it; my parents were very sensible
and did not let me play these games until they deemed me mature enough, not by
age but mentality. They weren’t worried about what these games would do to me because
like most normal people they saw it as a different form of entertainment that
is fictional.
Now we get onto the point of do violent video games cause
real life violent behaviour? The short answer is no, which have been proven by
countless studies that have shown playing video games have more positives than
negatives. In January of 2018 the University of York did a study with 3000
participants to try and find a correlation between violent video games and real
life behaviour, surprise, surprise there were no links. Dr David Zendle stated
with his research “The findings suggest that there is no link between these
kinds of realism in games and the kind of effects that video games are commonly
thought to have on their players”. This shows that the normal mind can deter
the difference between fiction and realism; people are focusing on the wrong
thing and are trying to cover the main issue up with something else, if you
want to read the full article from the University of York click here.
What is the problem we need to address? Well the United
States needs to start taking mental health seriously, they need to address the
individual and what was going through their mind, it’s not the media he or she
consumes it’s about what is going on in their mind. I’m getting fed up with out
of touch buffoons telling me that my preferred hobby and art form is corrupting
people when countless studies say otherwise. Maybe the reason you keep having
these shootings within your country Mr President is because you’re allowing
people the ease of access to fire arms they don’t need, as well as you’re medical
departments not taking mental health seriously. Stop scapegoating and making pathetic
excuses because you haven’t got the gonads to address the actual problem.
I can’t believe that there are some people that attack video
games in the year 2018, when there are real forms of art and encourage social
interaction with online video games. If you think a game is not appropriate for
a child it’s not the video game industry’s problem it’s the parents problem.
With the shootings in America it’s terrible, but where we keep having them over
and over again, where it doesn’t really happen anywhere else in the world you
need to reassess the problem.
Overall do I think there is going to be more regulation of video
games in the United States? No, I think at the end of the day this will blow
over, but US government needs to stop scapegoating and take the problem head
on.
Great article. Well said! I can’t believe this is still a thing right now. Video games do not make violent people... Then again, Trump can’t even get his head around the fact that when he’s putting on deodorant INSIDE it’s still hurting the environment. So I didn’t have much hope for him anyway. But I think it’s great that you wrote this piece, let’s fix this reputation until it’s no longer needed!
ReplyDeleteThanks, I woke up at half 5 a few mornings ago with it on my mind so I thought I would put it into writing.
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