Video Games: Inciting Aggressiveness

Video games have been around for decades following their booming existence in the 70s.

Its growth and popularity correlated with the advancements made in modern-day popular media

and jawbreaking technology. Hence, as computers became better at visualizing the gameplay and

graphics of games, the better looking and more realistic they felt. The current generation of the

said media mirrors the present and past, societies carrying the typical problems each has and

turning them into a plot, including historical warfare. Using violence in the virtual world was

inevitable. It is one of the widely used aspects in almost all current games. It may be perceived in

different forms: shooting, stabbing, pouncing, etc. Ranging from the well-known Super Mario

Brothers franchise to the Last of Us series, no matter how different they were styled and played,

they still have the aspect of hurting or killing characters. In recent years, there have been a lot of

violent happenings in the world that were assumed to be “caused” by playing video games.

Over the years, games have become more realistic than ever before, with almost lifelike

character models comparable to movie visuals and the human eye. As a result, violent actions

portrayed in this type of media are seen to be so realistic that they may seem more disturbing

than impressive. The Grand Theft Auto series by Rockstar Games depicts content that is only

safe for adults to observe, such as committing extreme forms of abuse and mass genocides to

enemies. A particular event in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in the year 2019 was similar to one

of the games’ missions, and it ignited the controversy about video games causing violence. The

U.S. government responded with a law concerned with taking the minors’ right to rent violent

media (Boffey).
 According to an online article, violent behaviors are more powerfully evident in video

games than in movies and TV (Dill and Dill). Games are emulations made by developers whose

goal is to make users experience fixed, fictional scenarios. People have the semi to complete

control over their designated character regardless of the already determined branches of

outcomes, unlike in movies where the actors play the roles of the characters with every decision

and action solely determined by producers that abide by the script written by the writers. This

also proves that due to the exposure of being given the free will to do almost anything in a virtual

environment, there is a chance that players are incited to be more violent because of the acts that

cannot be done in real life.

Another source has also analyzed the occurrence of three separate school shootings in

different towns. The similarity among the perpetrators, who were students of the schools, was

that they were everyday players of violent video games (Anderson and Bushman). The video

game company, specifically Bethesda, that made the game Doom, was facing harsh and heavy

criticism from the masses because they were blamed for the resulting behavior of the shooters.

They countered with the joint statement that the assumptions must first be proven with evidence.

Although the unfortunate events may be considered as concrete supporting arguments, it does not

steer away from other psychological perspectives, such as hat the students had a say in the final

decision of committing the crime and numerous external variables in play that can aid in

identifying the purpose of the unjustifiable action. Still, it is safe to say that even though the

video game did not give them the idea of how to do it, it highlighted why they should.

Psychologists have also studied and analyzed the duration of exposure of people to

violent media. In a study conducted by Cunningham, Scott et al., long-term exposure to video

game violence may increase players' aggression and impulsive behaviors. They have also linked
its release dates to the crime rate in a particular area, wherein it was found that it decreases

within an extent of time. This is another article that supports the assumption that it is tough to

measure players’ behavior after playing violent games without considering any external factors

in their personal lives. However, they roughly concluded that this type of game encourages rash

conduct.

Based on the paper’s arguments, it is somehow complex to connect video game violence

with players’ aggression, so based on simple, early lab findings, it was assumed that there is a

somewhat observable correlation with the players’ mental activity. In the recent resurgence of

shootings, it is such a shame that government officials were trying to blame game companies for

making realistically appealing media whose primary purpose was to satisfy the wishes of their

fanbase.

Works cited:

Boffey, Philip. “Do Violent Video Games Lead to Violence?” Dana Foundation, 1 Nov. 2019,

https://www.dana.org/article/do-violent-video-games-lead-to-violence/.

Dill, Karen E., and Jody C. Dill. “Video Game Violence: A Review of the Empirical Literature.”

Aggression and Violent Behavior, vol. 3, no. 4, 1 Dec. 1998, pp. 407–428.,

https://doi.org/10.1016/s1359-1789(97)00001-3.

Anderson, Craig A., and Brad J. Bushman. “Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggressive

Behavior, Aggressive Cognition, Aggressive Affect, Physiological Arousal, and Prosocial

 Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Scientific Literature.” Psychological Science,

vol. 12, no. 5, [Association for Psychological Science, Sage Publications, Inc.], 2001, pp.

353–59, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40063648.

Cunningham, Scott, et al. “Violent Video Games, and Violent Crime.” Southern Economic
Journal, vol. 82, no. 4, Southern Economic Association, 2016, pp. 1247–65,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26632315.