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.

The meme goes:

[i_ate_god]

If video games affected kids, then they would all be running around a dark room eating pills and listening to electronic music.

Unfortunately though, that happened. It was called the rave scene.

To all of the doubters of the lead theory

[greg_barton]

Here is a better article than the small blog post cited. Read the whole thing. The clincher for me was that when lead was removed from gasoline in different states at different times the reduction in violence in those areas tracked perfectly two decades later. Not only that, but the shape of the violence reduction data tracked well with the shape of the lead reduction data. (i.e. a fast phase out of lead resulted in a fast reduction of crime twenty years later.)

Video games/violence

[RazorSharp]

The video games/violence debate is extremely flawed from both angles. In this regard it reminds me of the nature/nurture arguments -- whenever someone takes a side one way or the other I'm convinced they're wrong. The problem with the 'video games cause violence' argument is that people are free to make choices of their own. The problem with the 'video games don't cause violence' argument is that the choices people make, especially among children, are influenced by environmental factors.

I'm critical of video gaming as a lifestyle. I have no problem with them as an occasional diversion, but playing for hours on end is like running a screensaver on your computer -- it's keeps things active enough to stay on, but nothing useful is happening. I've seen children who act violently, mimicking video games/tv/movies/etc., but that's not what really concerns me. What concerns me is that the children who play lots of video games have an extremely adverse reaction to any suggestion that they should read, do something constructive, or exercise. All too often these 'gamers' are confused for nerds (or geeks or whatever word you choose to use). They are not. They're morons and they'll remain morons as long as they spend the majority of their free time on XBox Live or the Playstation Network.

That's not to say I think video games are a scourge to society. They're no different than TV in this regard. The problem is parents who allow their children to plug into these diversions from actual life on an almost permanent basis. Many of my friends have children. The ones who limit video game/tv time and only offer it as a reward for doing constructive things have well adjusted children who are bright. The ones who let their kids zombify themselves in front of the boob tube have maladjusted morons for children who think an example of fine art is a Michael Bay film.

When people claim that video games cause violence they're oversimplifying the issue -- however I can't disagree that children who are raised by video games moreso than their parents will be more prone to becoming violent adults than those who aren't. When people dismiss the idea that 'video games cause violence' that's not really what they're objecting to -- they're objecting to the very true assertion that playing video games extensively has a negative impact on an individual's life.

Re:Video games/violence

[shadowofwind]

I think these video-game-violence /. threads are mostly an exercise in rationalization and justification, not an effort towards understanding the nuances of the issue.

If you play violent video games, you have violent images and patterns in your mind which you are reinforcing by repetition. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing isn't easy to answer, since as omnivores we already have such patterns hard-wired in, and expressing an instinct in a relatively harmless way can be better than suppressing it. But there's absolutely no doubt that violent gaming affects a person's thinking. And the barrier that separates 'pretend' from 'real' is never completely impermeable.

Almost anyone who has kids can see the addictive and adverse effects of gaming. As with candy, some kids will limit themselves to a healthy level without parental intervention, but in my experience and observation those kids are the exception.

Note that I'm not making an argument for any kind of government regulation, or saying that nobody should play violent video games in moderation.

Re:Lead Paint Theory is Flawed

[Medievalist]

Having lead paint around is not an issue. The problem occurs when the paint is not maintained and chips off where it is easily ingested by children.

Yep. And crime already correlates incredibly strongly with poverty (go figure!) so it's hard to separate the effects of poverty from the effects of the heavily polluted, badly maintained environments the poor often inhabit. It's probably even harder to sort out when the poor live in close proximity to crime targets; poverty-stricken inner-city youth live near stores and wealthier people, whereas subsistence farmers in less polluted environments usually live prohibitively far from any large number of easy crime targets.

Everyone knows it's not the violent games...

[Zaphod-AVA]

Everyone knows it's not the violent video games, it's that evil Jazz music corrupting our youth!

What about movies

[synapse7]

What games compare to movies like Saw?

Re:It's not a matter of heavy metals

[nitehawk214]

Then what's the issue with alcohol?

I keep running out of it.