I feel obliged to respond to this, because it really bothers me. I'm in my early 20s and grew up playing video games. I've had a computer in my home as long as I can remember, and always had plenty of games, especially violent ones. I seem to remember this one game on my C64 called "Barbarian",or something like that, where two guys with swords would duke it out, and if you did the right move with the joystick, you would decapitate the other guy. That game was fun. To this day, I still play bloody and violent games. I've played the games in the Quake series, as well as many of the other games of that style. These days there are two reasons I play games: for enjoyment, and for stress relief.
Yes, you heard me, stress relief. If I'm angry about something, I'll just sit down, turn on my Nintendo 64 or my computer, and kill things. Doesn't matter if they're monsters, Soviets, spies, Nazis or cute little bunnies. I'll play for a little while and suddenly realize I'm not thinking about whatever it was that has been stressing me out, and I feel a lot better. Imagine that, finding an outlet for my anger.
When I run around killing monsters, causing blood to squirt all over the screen, I don't get violent. I'm not at all a violent guy. Last time I was in a fist fight was 1990. "There you go", the 'experts' would say. "You were fighting because of those violent C64 games as a kid". Last time I checked, kids that age got in fights before there were computers in anyone's home. Even before TV shows got so violent. Its a phase you get over, in most cases. And guess what? I'm a big guy, there were probably 10 guys in my high school bigger than I was. The football coach at one point begged me to play. So I could have run around my school smashing in noses and breaking arms without a problem, and there were some people that did get me angry real fast, but I never took them up on the offer to fight.
Another thing that annoys me about this article, the relation between video games and grades. They quote, "We also found that amount of time spent playing video games in the past was associated with lower academic grades in college." Hate to say it, but I've got a 3.0 (out of 4 possible), and its that low because I'm a beer-drinking up all night kind of guy here at school. If I remember my psychology class correct, a corelation between two types of activity does not automatically mean a cause and effect relationship. It certainly doesn't in my case. Sure, there have been times when I played video games when I should have been studying, but everyone in college finds excuses not to study, whether its video games, drinking with their buddies, watching TV or whatever they want to do.
So to sum up, I've played a lot of violent video games, but here I am with decent grades and no anger problems. So in my opinion, the video games themselves aren't the problem, I believe its the people who are playing them. But they must have some problem. Maybe its a chemical inbalance, maybe its a problem stemming from how they were raised. I sure don't know. All I know is that I play a lot of violent games and I never plan on killing a person. Sorry guys, back to square one. Go start some more research to waste my tax money.
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I feel obliged to respond to this, because it really bothers me. I'm in my early 20s and grew up playing video games. I've had a computer in my home as long as I can remember, and always had plenty of games, especially violent ones. I seem to remember this one game on my C64 called "Barbarian",or something like that, where two guys with swords would duke it out, and if you did the right move with the joystick, you would decapitate the other guy. That game was fun. To this day, I still play bloody and violent games. I've played the games in the Quake series, as well as many of the other games of that style. These days there are two reasons I play games: for enjoyment, and for stress relief.
Yes, you heard me, stress relief. If I'm angry about something, I'll just sit down, turn on my Nintendo 64 or my computer, and kill things. Doesn't matter if they're monsters, Soviets, spies, Nazis or cute little bunnies. I'll play for a little while and suddenly realize I'm not thinking about whatever it was that has been stressing me out, and I feel a lot better. Imagine that, finding an outlet for my anger.
When I run around killing monsters, causing blood to squirt all over the screen, I don't get violent. I'm not at all a violent guy. Last time I was in a fist fight was 1990. "There you go", the 'experts' would say. "You were fighting because of those violent C64 games as a kid". Last time I checked, kids that age got in fights before there were computers in anyone's home. Even before TV shows got so violent. Its a phase you get over, in most cases. And guess what? I'm a big guy, there were probably 10 guys in my high school bigger than I was. The football coach at one point begged me to play. So I could have run around my school smashing in noses and breaking arms without a problem, and there were some people that did get me angry real fast, but I never took them up on the offer to fight.
Another thing that annoys me about this article, the relation between video games and grades. They quote, "We also found that amount of time spent playing video games in the past was associated with lower academic grades in college."
Hate to say it, but I've got a 3.0 (out of 4 possible), and its that low because I'm a beer-drinking up all night kind of guy here at school. If I remember my psychology class correct, a corelation between two types of activity does not automatically mean a cause and effect relationship. It certainly doesn't in my case. Sure, there have been times when I played video games when I should have been studying, but everyone in college finds excuses not to study, whether its video games, drinking with their buddies, watching TV or whatever they want to do.
So to sum up, I've played a lot of violent video games, but here I am with decent grades and no anger problems. So in my opinion, the video games themselves aren't the problem, I believe its the people who are playing them. But they must have some problem. Maybe its a chemical inbalance, maybe its a problem stemming from how they were raised. I sure don't know. All I know is that I play a lot of violent games and I never plan on killing a person. Sorry guys, back to square one. Go start some more research to waste my tax money.