ROUND three
Do video games encourage violence?
Tom
I remember watching WWE wrestling when I was younger, and at the start
of every episode, they would always display the same disclaimer: ‘these stunts are
performed by professionals, do not try these at home.’ Did that stop us from attempting
to ‘Stone Cold Steve Austin’ each other on mattresses in the lounge room?
Absolutely not.
While these video games often have disclaimers and don’t explicitly endorse driving on the footpath
and through shopping malls, games like Grand Theft Auto could be seen as normalising this sort of
behaviour. While this isn’t just a video game issue, as society has become a lot more desensitised to
violence through various forms of pop culture, with so many games based on violent themes and
objectives, it can’t be ignored that they are probably contributing to the problem.
There have been so many cases of people blaming video games for violent behaviour. Along
with ‘Guns don’t kill people’, the saying ‘if GTA makes me a car thief, does Surgeon Simulator
make me a surgeon?’ has almost become a household staple saying in America. Many studies
have been done about the relationship between violence and video games, but most recent
research indicates that there is no correlation between the two. The same study found that
violence is more likely to be linked with other influences such as upbringing, social situation
and peer pressure. I can see violence could be a problem when particular games are
played by someone very young and more prone to emulating figures they see, but this is
why games have ratings.
Nik
While having differing views on the topic of whether video games are bad for you, both
authors could agree that, like with everything, moderation is key. The future of gaming
technology has the potential to influence society positively (for example the use of flight
simulators for aviation students*** and virtual reality for remote surgery), but only time will
tell how future generations will harness this potential.