"Who are you?" may be the first question to pop into your head open seeing me display half my name proudly upon my topic title. "No-one" would be an accurate answer, but "no-one yet" will hopefully be even more accurate.

It is a long article, of which I plan to post something different each week. I took a while writing it, so a few words acknowledging your reading would be appreciated.

The violence in games/around games/caused by games is a popular bone of contention, and one that has certainly been picked up and dropped many a time when controversies rear their head. But is there any true basis to this? Can games really influence someone in such a manner?

The trouble with these questions, is that they are usually queried and answered by people with extremely heavy bias. You have your asker, determined to demonise something (that most of the time have little actual understanding of the subject) to win the support of "anti-techies"; and you have your recipient, someone clad in metaphorical armour on a metaphorical lone peak under the impression they are fighting the last stand.

I myself have used video games as an activity of leisure for close to 15 years now (I'm 22 to save you checking my profile). Back in the days when the Amiga was king of the land and Mortal Kombat was around the corner. I had a variety of games from Worms to Wizzy's Quest, and many other games each displaying all the genres of the spectrum in between.

A time when I was just as likely to come across a bloodfest to a flowerfest thanks to a lack of a classification board. Am I deranged killer with a penchant for photographing dead cats that I have nailed to my wall?
No.
Have games allowed me to use such a bad taste rhethoric?
Quite possibly.

Yes these games were very tame in comparison to what we have on offer these days, but our visions were also untampered. Today we have scaremongering, more vivid news footage, more lenient guidelines for what falls into "after the Watershed" criteria. We are slowly becoming more and more exposed to the world that we live in, for better or for worse.

So in comparison, can we say with a straight face that games fuel a violent side of us? That despite the media hardening us and our children to the horrors of the world we can still be influenced so easily? I say (surprisingly) yes, to some extent we can.

Games are entertaining, and for the most part fun. However there are instances when the game ceases to be fun. When you've died for the twenty-second time, when an opponent fish tails you on the last corner or when a platform disintegrates just at the wrong time.

You suddenly have what I call a "rage spike". You have a desire to punch a wall, to throw your controller, to drive to the developer's HQ and stuff the game down their throat screaming "You think this is fun?".

And then it's gone.

I'm a docile person, in a day to day basis I exhibit great patience (and I really have to put effort in sometimes) and have never had a rage fit; not even sworn out of temper. And with this in mind, I can fully understand how a game could influence someone to act on these impulses - to be brainwashed by what they see as well.

Anger isn't a coin; it isn't "heads you're promoting free love", "tails you're riding the atomic bomb straight into the eyeball of everyone who casts you a funny glance". It's a scale, with thousands of possibilities in between.

There are some of you that can acknowledge a broken controller even a smashed console in the face of "game rage". There are some that go further.

Would these things have happened if you weren't at the console's demand? No. Is it to blame? Partially.

It's a lack of understanding that causes these moments, when it goes too far and real people get hurt. It's because we have a "fingers in the ears" mentally - neither side can accept the others points. Our minds are made up even before discussion, and that is no way to conduct ourselves.

If you raise a concern about a videogame giving you certain thoughts, it is met with "I told you so" from one side to scorn from the other. "You're not a real gamer", "Don't be an idiot" I've heard.

Do games cause violence? Yes. Do movies? Yes. Do books? Yes. Does walking down the street, listening to the birds chirping? Hell yes.

But with understanding, it can be sated if not eventually completely destroyed. But until both sides of the argument listen; it's going to stay as a battle of points, and there will be new statistics created for both sides to score points from without the reasons behind it being addressed.

The same arguments can be extended to sex in videogames; but when I see lingerie adverts on Nickelodeon that are far more revealing than any game, it's a moot conversation piece and one I can use only as a final thought before I close (which has also caused me to tack the second half of the topic title on).

Very well written and thought out article.
I do have to ask a question, and I apologize if this comes off as bring rude. Why have you written this post? If this is just to vent, or to express your views to the rest of us, then great; I enjoyed reading it, and I hope to see more interesting articles from you.

Not much to discuss here. No one can honestly deny that gaming causes violence. The question is: how much does it cause? Is it more than movies, books, breathing? No one can completely answer that, because it's very subjective. Since no one can prove them wrong, gaming is often used as a target for people to point their fingers.

I just try to ignore him.

Pingieking:
Very well written and thought out article.
I do have to ask a question, and I apologize if this comes off as bring rude. Why have you written this post? If this is just to vent, or to express your views to the rest of us, then great; I enjoyed reading it, and I hope to see more interesting articles from you.

First; thank you, and I'm glad you enjoyed it.

It mainly is just to express my views, and I have many a topic surrounding the games industry and the various happenings in it. I do intend to write more, if not only to provide another point of view (because I myself find different opinions intriguing, no matter who writes them) that hopefully remains unbiased. I'll probably aim to do it once a week.

I'm also hoping that from this, it will bring a different style of conversation through. I realise the topic has probably been done to death, but I felt I had something worth expressing nonetheless.

I enjoy writing, and even if only one person reads and enjoys I am more than satisfied.

atol:
Not much to discuss here. No one can honestly deny that gaming causes violence. The question is: how much does it cause? Is it more than movies, books, breathing? No one can completely answer that, because it's very subjective. Since no one can prove them wrong, gaming is often used as a target for people to point their fingers.

That's part of what my points cycle: Games do cause violence, but no where near the extremes that are portrayed.

What I find amusing, is that games are demonised, even to the extent where the background of an offender will be searched to see if at any time he had any affiliation with games at all.

This attitude is self defeating, and one that will creep over to every medium we engage in for entertainment if "victories" are scored within this one.

Valdric_gundam:
lolwut?

Fantastic contribution, I applaud the effort it took you to express your mind so fully.

atol:
I just try to ignore him.

"Him" as in...

I'm sorry but I can't take you seriously or give your nicely written article much thought because I just keep thinking of this.

atol:
Not much to discuss here. No one can honestly deny that gaming causes violence. The question is: how much does it cause? Is it more than movies, books, breathing? No one can completely answer that, because it's very subjective. Since no one can prove them wrong, gaming is often used as a target for people to point their fingers.

I use games to calm be down so i don't get violent, so i guess it has the opposite effect on me

TL;DR

No, no! That's a terrible brain! This man seems nice, and he speaks good English! You listen to him!

-------

Joking aside, this is very well thought out. It's nice to see someone just enter the forums with some actual research done in the topic at hand. I look forward to reading more if you stay stoic to your once a week commitment.

It may also be notable to point out that while video games, books, movies, etc. do all promote violence on varying degrees, video games currently stands as the most recent (and therefore in some cases frightening) form of media that depicts violence to date.

Before the creation of the ESRB parents were perplexed as to what exactly it was they were purchasing for their children. Sure, it may look safe it's nicely packaged box sitting on the shelf in the store, but when you suddenly walk in on your child playing Goldeneye on the N64 and chuckling quietly as he empties a room with ease, it easy to understand why certain adults would grow concerned.

And from that, it's also easier to see why some adults would pick that up and run with it.

"Oh, your rating system is all well and good, I understand that when purchasing a mature game for my son who is 14, that is akin to allowing him to see a 14 horror flick with blood and gore. But you never told me the game contained sex. Had I known I was purchasing porn for my child, I would have never considered purchasing it."

Anyway, that's just my little addition. I think you covered most of that anyway in your topic/article. In which case I may be insulting your intelligence in a way. If that's the case feel free to mutter something about my Mum under your breath, I promise I can't hear you through the Internet.

Really.

pretty spot on basically most everyone already has there minds made up on the subject.
Although it doesnt gives us much to discuss.

KhaineII:
*Snip*

Very well said as well. New things tend to be picked on by the establishment, and videogames have only been in the mainstream culture crowd for a 2 decades or so. Sadly humans fear things they don't know, and they're also not very good at getting to know new things. I think that the "targeting games as root cause of evil in society" will continue until the last generation has died off and our generation takes over. We will then bitch at whatever new type of media that we don't understand.

Funny thing is that as a studying physicist, this pattern I see in society has been repeated numerous times in the scientific community. New, radical, great idea shows up, young physics praise and embrace it while old physicists called it stupid and non-sensical. Old physicists die, the idea now becomes mainstream (assuming that it was experimentally proven), and the cycle repeats.

George144:
I'm sorry but I can't take you seriously or give your nicely written article much thought because I just keep thinking of this.

Cody211282:

I use games to calm be down so i don't get violent, so i guess it has the opposite effect on me

Rules always have exceptions.

KhaineII:
TL;DR

No, no! That's a terrible brain! This man seems nice, and he speaks good English! You listen to him!

-------

Joking aside, this is very well thought out. It's nice to see someone just enter the forums with some actual research done in the topic at hand. I look forward to reading more if you stay stoic to your once a week commitment.

It may also be notable to point out that while video games, books, movies, etc. do all promote violence on varying degrees, video games currently stands as the most recent (and therefore in some cases frightening) form of media that depicts violence to date.

Before the creation of the ESRB parents were perplexed as to what exactly it was they were purchasing for their children. Sure, it may look safe it's nicely packaged box sitting on the shelf in the store, but when you suddenly walk in on your child playing Goldeneye on the N64 and chuckling quietly as he empties a room with ease, it easy to understand why certain adults would grow concerned.

And from that, it's also easier to see why some adults would pick that up and run with it.

"Oh, your rating system is all well and good, I understand that when purchasing a mature game for my son who is 14, that is akin to allowing him to see a 14 horror flick with blood and gore. But you never told me the game contained sex. Had I known I was purchasing porn for my child, I would have never considered purchasing it."

Anyway, that's just my little addition. I think you covered most of that anyway in your topic/article. In which case I may be insulting your intelligence in a way. If that's the case feel free to mutter something about my Mum under your breath, I promise I can't hear you through the Internet.

Really.

Thank you for reading, I must admit when I saw "TL;DR" my annoyance flexed slightly.

You raise two good points, ignorance and bent standards, two points that fuel the issue.

Misinformation can be terrible, I see it day to day where IFAs (Independent Financial Advisors) give "advice" to pension scheme members. Advice that is complete rubbish, and only given as it offers the longest working hours and thus more money.

This misinformation given to the member will cost them quite literally tens of thousands of pounds when they come to retire. All because they put their faith into someone who supposedly knows the topic at hand.

Apply that here, and people put faith into individuals like Jack Thompson, because he seems to know what he's talking about. Where all he's seeking to do is earn more recognition, more money.

And while people's ignorance is taken advantage of, problems will always be created when there are none. I remember when Pokemon was blamed for a child's suicide because "critics" didn't approve, and misinformed people trusted them.

Bent standards can potentially cause further damage. Movies can display sex, but games can't? Can we blame it on the interactivity element?

Only if we follow the former.