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Videogames Really Are Linked to Violence
ahoehn writes "Amanda Schaffer has written a refreshingly balanced piece about the connection between video games and violence. Instead of regurgitating the typical reactionary voices in this debate, she looks at what scientific studies suggest about the issue. From the article: 'Pathological acts of course have multiple, complex causes and are terribly hard to predict. And clearly, millions of people play Counter-Strike, Halo, and Doom and never commit crimes. But the subtler question is whether exposure to video-game violence is one risk factor for increased aggression: Is it associated with shifts in attitudes or responses that may predispose kids to act out? A large body of evidence suggests that this may be so ... Given this, it makes sense to be specific about which games may be linked to harmful effects and which to neutral or good ones. Better research is also needed to understand whether some kids are more vulnerable to video-game violence, and how exposure interacts with other risk factors for aggression like poverty, psychological disorders, and a history of abuse.'"
... is a study that can differentiate between videogames increasing the violent tendencies of the player and increasingly violent people playing violent videogames. Anything else is just trying to translate correlation into causation with a lot of handwaving.
Can videogames affect the mindset of people? Sure - I'm sure I'm not the only one who, after a particularly intense multi-player session of burnout ponders the best way to force the slowpoke ahead of you off the road. But I'm also sure that I'm not the only one who has realized that this is not the proper way to deal with a slowpoke ahead of you blocking traffic. What I'd like to see in one of these studies is the establishment of the direction of the link, and whether the increase in violent thought patterns translated into action. If someone can actually show that, I'll be all on-board the "violent videogames are bad for you" band-wagon. Anything short of that, and I'll fight for my right to play the latest Doom-incarnation without censor interference.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
How is this any different than Joe Six-pack who gets pissed off after his team looses on Monday Night Football and decides to beat his wife to take out his frustrations, or the guy that has a bad hole on the golf course and wraps his driver around a tree? There have been losers like that since Ally Oop lost 20 clams on a Mastodon race, went back to his cave and clubbed his wife. Some people just can't handle things not going their way. If there was a way to screen them and take them out of gene pool I'd be all for it, but to try and point the root cause to some external influence is just shifting the blame. The problem isn't that Johnny plays counterstrike; it's that Johnny has a violent temper and lack of self control. You can plug any anything in place of video games, the stock market, sports even jobs, basically anything that can involve a positive or negative outcome can lead to violence in a person inclined to be violent.
Those that don't want violence in video games should just start producing non-violent ones. With all the violent games out there, you would guess there is quite a bit of a market left for non-violent onces, but except a little sports game here or a mini-game there, the market is mostly ignored by the developers/publishers. Where are the non-violent triple-AAA titles?