Stop Pointing Fingers at Video Games

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            Like many of you reading this, I am an avid gamer who enjoys the escapism of video games. I enjoy sitting down on my couch and living vicariously through fictional characters. Videos games have offered me an interactive form of entertainment that I often find more enjoyable than movies and books. It’s not a passive experience but something I’m just as much a part of as the character I’m controlling. Hours can be invested in a single story like Mass Effect where I enjoy unveiling the plot and making game changing decisions. Other games let me blow off some steam while I pepper my friends with fake bullets in a multiplayer match of Halo. No matter what satisfaction you gain from playing a video game, I think it’s fairly safe to say that not one game on this planet has been the leading cause to violent crimes committed in the real world.

            This argument has been brought up numerous times in my life and I have even blogged about it before. However, with the release of Grand Theft Auto V, it was again brought to my attention, this time by my father. He’s a big Bill O’Reilly fan and began telling me to avoid GTA V at all costs because it’s extremely violent and just absolutely awful. I told him that I had been playing for a week already and that it’s just a game. No matter what my argument with him was about, it doesn’t change the fact that people truly get angry at games when violent events occur. O’Reilly was talking about a Louisiana man who stole a car, kidnapped a woman, and wrecked the car into nine other vehicles. The perpetrator stated to authorities that he wanted to see what it was like to be a Grand Theft Auto character. There is no doubt that this individual possessed a real special kind of stupid, but his story isn’t the only one giving GTA V bad publicity. In a London midnight release of the game, a group of teenagers smashed a brick into a man’s face, stabbed him multiple times, and robbed him of his mobile phone, watch, and fresh copy of GTA V. Naturally the media points a finger at the game because this caused the violence, but I ask, did this game condition this act of violence? My guess is that it didn’t.

            So what is the big deal with violence in video games and what is it about them that make it so people, most of whom probably don’t play games, target them for causation of real life crime? Some people say that video games are training people to be killers. The reality is that they don’t. As I’ve already stated, many of us play video games for the escapism from reality. We like to get away from our lives so that we may live vicariously through fictional characters. Sleeping with a bunch of strippers without the threat of a real STD or killing a bunch of innocent people is something you can only do in video games because we know that it isn’t real. I’m not too sure how many people on this planet play games in order to live out real life fantasies, but the reality is that if people like that do exist, at least they’re being criminal A-holes in a universe that causes no real damage to the lives of real people.           
            So tell me why violent movies, novels, and music aren’t on this list of entertainment devices that train killers? Is it because they’re passive experiences? Most likely. But you can’t possibly think that video games are training people to heartlessly gun down the innocent, do you? I mean, the plastic triggers on a controller are nothing compared to a real gun. I served six years of my life in the military and I was trained how to shoot military grade weapons that were specifically designed TO kill people. Let it be known that before I ever joined our countries finest I played many violent games and yet none of them prepared for what the real thing had in store. I didn’t walk into basic training knowing how to take apart an M16. Call of Duty didn’t teach me how to load it, arm it, or even fire it. So I’m failing to see the correlation here. Videos games haven’t trained anyone to kill any more than watching football has taught people how to be professional athletes.

            Other people may say that video games have desensitized people to violence. I may agree with that. But how have games desensitized a person any more than movies have? Watching a person getting brutally murdered in a movie is different than playing the guy who is brutally murdering someone in a game, yet I’m pretty sure Ted Bundy didn’t have GTA, so what’s his excuse? But where does morality come into play? I’ve played games like Modern Warfare 2 that had me toting through an airport as a terrorist whose primary task is to murder a bunch of innocent passengers. I know I had the option to skip that scene, but I wanted to know why. I felt so terrible about that scene that I went through it without firing a single bullet (not until they made me anyway). I felt that it was morally wrong to do and that shouldn’t have happened considering I’ve been so desensitized, right? Now try having a gamer do that in real life. Put a gun in his hands, have him point it at an innocent person and order him to pull the trigger. Assuming it’s not a ‘him or me’ scenario, most people would be extremely conflicted and I highly doubt anyone would actually pull the trigger. We gamers may have the ability to kill hookers and rob banks in Grand Theft Auto, but we know it’s fake and something we would never do in the real world.

            Other people may claim that gamers are conditioned to believe that there are no real consequences in real life because you can get away with it in video games. That is not true. We are sane people who can tell the difference between right and wrong, fiction and reality, and good or bad. I’d argue that mentally unstable people are the ones you should worry about playing video games. And not just any mental condition, but severe conditions that make it so the person literally has a hard time deciphering the difference between fiction and reality. Children should also not be exposed to extremely violent games, however, that is up to the parent to take care of. I would never let my children (I do have two) play the games I do, not until I know they’re old enough to understand them. Even that might be hard if they are exposed to this stuff at a friends house, but still, raising your children with good morals will trump anything they can learn in one hour of a violent game.

            People need to stop pointing fingers at video games, guns, and Marilyn Manson. They need to point the fingers at the true culprit, the people themselves. What kind of up bringing did the man who shot up my local movie theater during a midnight showing of The Dark Night Rises have? What was his mental state like? Is he a sociopath? I mean seriously. I could look at anything in his past and point a finger to something that could’ve caused his actions. The truth is, he made the decision to do what he did and I find it hard to believe that a video game whispered into his ear and told to him to go through with it. But what about mass murderers who share the video game connection? I’ll just go ahead and say that they were all probably wearing shoes and slept in a bed at night, so why not blame those things? I don’t think we’ll ever truly know the answer, but what I can give you at the end of the blog is this, a little food for thought. If video games were so bad and were the cause of the heinous crimes we see in the world today, then why haven’t a larger percentage of the millions of people who are classified as gamers committed their own acts of rage and violence.

            Fight for what you believe in people. Video games are much better than those who don’t play them would have you believe. Gamers have excellent hand eye coordination, puzzle solving skills, intelligence, and less stress. Those who do think games cause violence seem to fear the unknown which I suppose is normal. But please don’t be so quick to judge just because the world has a few bad seeds. At PAX East this year I attended Story Time With Cliffy B and he said something about this topic that I will never forget. He told us that he’s been to many gaming conventions and never once witnessed or heard about violence breaking out. He then stated, go to a local NFL game and you’ll see the difference. That’s a paraphrase because he said it almost six months ago. But still, there is a lot of truth in that. Now if you don’t mind, I have a store to rob…in Grand Theft Auto.