Editorial | Don't blame violent games, blame the individual.

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.