Adults and children both enjoy and occasionally indulge in the wonderful world of video games. From Pokémon on the Ds to Halo on the Xbox, video games are able to cover the interests of millions. Over the years however video game companies have been the target of blame when it comes to violence in younger adults and children both in the home and out in the community, many parents have blamed them for their children’s outrageous behaviour.
Such violent offenses like The Columbine shooting (Rosenberg, 2003) which took the lives of 12 students as well as the two young offenders in April 1999, blamed the video game industry mainly the game Doom as well as other fictional media for the crime that was committed, it was debated that their mental state was both dysfunctional and depressed due to bullying and their involvement in Goth Culture. There were several law suits against video game companies made by the parents of some of the victims, these were unsuccessful.
Why do Video Games get the blame?
Many of the reasons video games are being blamed more and more for young violent offenses is because video games have become increasingly realistic as the industry evolves. Some of these games in particular may also take the violence to extreme such as Grand theft auto (Wikipedia, 2010) which emulate gang crime but give the player a more control over the level in which the violence escalates. There are other games such as Call of Duty and Just Cause, all in which hold an R18 age restriction for similar reasons.
In my own opinion video games are not to blame. Video games such with such levels of violence have these age restrictions on them for a reason and video game shops should refuse to sell these to minors without id, this being not only because the company can be fined thousands, but because they don’t wish to be pinned with the blame. If a parent or older sibling invites a young child below the age restriction to play such a game they are just as much to blame.
According to Video Game Voters Network “We believe parents — not the government or industry — should be the ones to decide what games are appropriate for their children.” (Network, 2010) and while family can have a lot of power over what their child is able to obtain, society can also have its own hand in encouraging the opinions of parents with younger children. It is because each family varies in their beliefs and values there is a possible chance that a child from another family could be influenced by others. The same is possible for the parents.
There is also a level of blame that needs to be put on the child. Children can be deceitful to un-savvy parents using excuses to get their way, I’ve seen this before (spending 2 thirds of my life in a game store).
The media also has a large part to blame for the encouragements of violence, many news articles show real violence and we are exposed to a lot more than we used to be. This kind of exposure to an easily influenced child may trigger violent behaviour. The problem with this is that there is less censorship these days, parents should take care in what their child is exposed to.
The mental stability of the child has also got to be taken into account; if you put a child that is mentally unstable, depressed or easily influenced in a room and tell them to play a violent video game there is a possible chance that this may influence their behaviour. It is up to the parents to assess their child’s mental stability before allowing them to get involved in any violent media, failing to do so may in turn affect the child’s behaviour.
Those who stand in favour of Games
There have been talks of making some videogames harder to obtain in certain states of America, similar laws have been threatened about Books, Comics and Movies in the past but never were due to the breech of Freedom of speech.
Being a gamer myself I have a strong sense of justice when it comes to people putting blame on video games for the way their children behave, in my view the current generation of children have been spoilt so much and there has been very little restriction put in place. Allowing minors to play violent games despite the age restriction should get a fine like those video game shops get when they are caught out, when a child asks for a game like Grand theft auto the parent should say no.
Popular comic artist Stan Lee has stated “Politicians and the media keep trying to score votes and viewers by blaming games for all of society's ills. In doing so, they're trampling on free speech and putting the government in charge of decisions that should be left to parents.” (Lee, 2010) Video games are being attacked by the media just like other mediums of entertainment in the past. They are having the blame placed upon them when it is not their fault directly. Many companies and powerful figures in the gaming world are standing against these accusations, voices like Yahtzee (Croshaw, 2009) from the popular game reviewers site the escapist which recently brought out a video promoting VGVN cause.
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