Senior Game Designer Talks About Game Violence, Real Violence, and Lead (Video)

William Volk may not be the world's oldest game designer, but he's up there. He started out as a play tester for Avalon Hill in 1979, and since then has worked for Activision and other major players in the game space. His current job is with PlayScreen, where he's working on their Word Carnivale iOS game, which is not violent at all. But over the years Volk has worked on slightly violent video games and has watched public outcries over video game violence since 1976. He's also tracked how much less violence we've seen since lead was removed from gasoline. (Editorial interjection: Aren't most remaining pockets of massive gun violence in cities where many poor kids grow up in apartments that have lead paint?) Due to technical problems during the interview, some of the conversation is missing, primarily about the recent spate of multiple murders. It seems, for instance, that Newtown shooter Adam Lanza was heavily into violent video games, which is sure to spark plenty of new discussion about how they affect players. But then again, as Volk reminded me in an email, "If people were influenced by video games, a majority of Facebook users would be farmers by now," a meme that has been floating around Facebook since last year, if not earlier.

Comments

Matter of Perspective

[UnknownSoldier]

One thing that is important is to keep in mind is perspective:

The millions murdered in World War 1 & 2 never played video games.

So I'm not sure ready to jump on the "video games == violence" bandwagon; no doubt "video game violence" and the "causation vs correlation" will be debated till the end of time so I did my own experiment. As both a game programmer and designer I have found that when take a month long break from gaming I have found that my mind is significantly calmer. I have also done experiment with Aikido, meditation and yoga (found Aikido to be very interesting, meditation to largely be a waste of time, and found yoga to be extremely helpful.) Gaming with my online buddies is also a great stress reliever since we're almost all 40+, can joke around with each other, have fun cooperating, and don't have to worry about the typical bullshit drama. I would wager to bet that we all find it therapeutic after a long day at the office. The point of all this is that each person needs to find out what works for them. i.e. Listen to a new genre of music and keep a log of how it effects you, etc.

Since the human brain is at least a threefold structure ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain ) I wouldn't be at least bit surprised if the reptilian complex ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_ganglia ) is responsible for some of the inherent violence in men. A civilized person doesn't want to beat the living crap out of another person -- yet our species is "entertained" by such mindless violence -- one has to wonder if it isn't deeply ingrained in our genetics.

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Only cowards use censorship.

Cause or Effect

[jklovanc]

Does playing violent games cause people to be violent in real life or do violent people in real life prefer to play violent games? In both cases there is a correlation but the cause and effect are reversed.

Re:It's not a matter of heavy metals

[Hatta]

It's probably video games themselves that have contributed to the decrease in violence. Those who are prone to violence are attracted to violent media and this keeps them off the streets where violence is more likely to occur.

Re:It's not a matter of heavy metals

[RazorSharp]

I say that because there's little evidence to support the lead theory aside from a correlation that abortions also share. The difference is, the abortion theory is backed up by much more statistical evidence and even a control group (Romania banned abortions about the same time the U.S. legalized them -- crime in Romania skyrocketed about 15-20 years later and crime in the U.S. plummeted). The linked article explains this, which is why it has everything to do with the topic at hand. The research was done by Steven Levitt and published in a paper. He also wrote about it in the book Freakonomics. The documentary the poster above me mentions is based off this book.

My criticism of the original poster was that he didn't cite Levitt or Donohue, not that he didn't elaborate enough.

Or the simple matter of how many people play games

[Sycraft-fu]

The Call of Duty series are some of the best selling games out there, and they are violent as hell. If they lead to more violence, well then we should be seeing a lot of it given how many people play them, and that the number who do is increasing. But of course we don't. The best kept secret of the media, it would seem, is that violent crime has been on a steady decline, which is a wonderful thing.

Also it rather ignore nature. A big part of play in many critters is fighting. Their play mimics their combat in many ways, just non-harmful. Get a couple of kittens and watch what they do: They stalk and ambush each other, the wrestle, bite, kick with their back feet, etc. Well guess what? This is what cats do when they are hunting/fighting, only the claws are out and the moves are full-force. This is true even of cats who are 100% domesticated, and never have to hunt for food or defend themselves. They can tell the difference, they don't accidentally rip each other apart, play and combat may be related, but they aren't the same thing.

So why would we think humans would be so different? Why wouldn't our play be play fighting, and why wouldn't be be able to tell them apart?