Jackie Reader
Rhetoric 150 40418
November 24, 2004
Violent Games
Teenage violence has always been a problem in the United States, but only in the past six or seven years have video-games been put in the spotlight for the cause of violence. Ever since the Littleton and Jonesboro shootings violent video-games have been put under the microscope and really had parents and educators scrutinize and criticize what games children play. As violent ‘point-and-shoot’ games become more realistic parents, and educators are putting up red flags to stop these games from getting in the hands of children, and rightly so. But the older video game population, people that are over the age of 18, are finding it hard to not be criticized themselves about the ‘violent’ games they play. Not all people are deeming video games bad though, and some are even using them as a tool for teaching. But what are some of the good and bad effects that video games have on children?
On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went into Columbine High School armed with guns, knives and up to 99 bombs. They killed 12 of their fellow classmates and one of their teachers, and in the end killed themselves. There were a lot of different reasons that Klebold and Harris brought guns into their school and killed their classmates, but two years after the massacre relatives of the victims were seeking damages from computer game makers, claiming that their games helped to bring about the killings. There was a total of 25 companies’ named, including Sony America, Nintendo, AOL/Time Warner, Atari, Sega of America, and many more. The group asked for $5
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billion in damages from the companies, alleging that their games created the conditions that made the massacre possible. The lawyer acting on behalf of the families, John DeCamp said the legal case they’re fighting for is to try and change the marketing and distribution of violent video and computer games that “turn children into ‘monster killers.’” After investigating into the Columbine shooting, it was found that one of the killers had a sawn-off shotgun in his lap that he called ‘Arlene,’ supposedly named after a character in Doom, a computer based, first person shooter game where you play as a lone space ranger shooting various aliens and creatures with a wide variety of weapons. Nothing yet has been solved, but the families dropped their case against Square Soft Inc. two months after the lawsuit without explanation (BBC News, Internetnews.com).
For years the military has used video games in boot camps with new recruits to train them for combat on the range. David Grossman, a retired military psychologist and West Point instructor, believes that violent video games train kids to kill in a similar fashion the way the military would train their raw recruits. Basic conditions for the way the military trains new recruits, Grossman says, is by “brutalization, classical conditioning, operant conduction, and role modeling,” and that each of these methods have parallels to the way players interact with many computer games. Kids are “brutalized” by the over-exposure to violence at a young age where they can’t yet distinguish between representation and reality. Grossman also claims that, “every time a child plays an interactive ‘point-and-shoot’ video game, he is learning the exact same conditioned reflex and motor skills” that the military uses for training and that such ‘practice,’ he claims, helped to prepare the Littleton and Jonesboro shooters for what they would do in real life.
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By that, he means to “reflexively pull the trigger, shooting accurately just like all those times [they] played video games…The result is ever more homemade pseudo-sociopaths who kill reflexively and show no remorse. Our children are learning to kill and liking it.” Many take the same distaste in video games as Grossman, but his views have flaws. There is no room left for meaning, interpretation, evaluation, or expression and he assumes that every person feels that way with no conscious or subconscious activity on the gamer’s part. But his model only works if we assume that all game players are not capable of rational thought and ignore important differences in how and why people play games (Independent School).
Leland Dawson is a 19 year old college sophomore that has been playing video games since he was five. He works at Circuit City near Pontiac and in his free time likes to hang out with his girlfriend or play video games. The most frequent games he plays are sports games, like Madden Football 2004, but he also likes to play first person shooters and fighting games. While working at Circuit City, Dawson knows what has to be done when he sells video games. He has to check the ID of the person buying the game to make sure they’re old enough to purchase the game, depending on the rating that game gets. If a parent wants to buy a game for their child, he can explain to them what the game is about. Dawson also knows about the rating system for games, as he explained it to me in more detail. There is a board called the Entertainment Rating Software Board. Every time a new game comes out they are sent a copy of screenshots, clips taken from parts of the game, and shown to the people rating the game. In addition to getting the screenshots, they also receive a ‘detailed questionnaire’ explaining what is in the game. The reviewers
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look over the screenshots and depending on what’s being shown to them, they give it an appropriate rating. The different ratings games can start from EC, early childhood, to AO, adult only. So if Dawson were to sell a game to a child that was trying to purchase an M, mature rated game, Circuit City could be fined upwards to $23,000 for the franchise alone, and he would most likely be fired. Dawson couldn’t even get through the cash register to sell a game to someone underage though; the computer system they use would kick him out if the person buying the game wasn’t 18. But parents can still buy their children mature or teen-rated video games. Some games weren’t meant for kids, Dawson says. If a parent wants to buy their 11 year old child Grand Theft Auto Vice City, supposedly one of the most controversial video games on the market, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. Grand Theft Auto, or GTA as fans call it, is a game were you play as a character that roams free in a city but gets caught up with the mob, drug dealers, porn stars/makers, and are given an arsenal of weapons on which to make runs and/or drop offs with. But many more controversial games are on the market such as Man Hunt, it’s exactly what the title says, you are hunted down by a group of men and instead of being killed, you must kill the group to win the game. Or Leisure Suit Larry, where the main goal of the game is to sleep with as many women as possible, with full frontal nudity scenes around every corner. So why aren’t these games being talked about by parents and educators? Those games didn’t sell well, says Dawson, because they don’t sell well it’s not controversial. Parents are ok with violence, such as GTA, but when there’s any kind of pornography involved, parents put up the red flag. “People who are naturally violent are attracted to violent things,” says Dawson. But violent games don’t
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cause violence, Dawson continues, it all comes down to the individual person. “Violent video games cause aggressive play. If we don't distinguish between aggressive play and aggressive behavior, we lose the whole value of play - which is to do things in fantasy that you don't actually have to carry out in reality,” argues Professor Geoffrey Goldstein from the University of Utrecht. Goldstein was Professor of Psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia and a visiting Professor at the University of London and is now with the Department of Social and Organizational Psychology at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands.
There are violent actions happening with children all over the US, there is no proof or any solid evidence that video-games are the cause, or even a factor in child violence. There are plenty of ways to stop kids from playing violent games, but really the parents should be the ones to make the right decision and know what their kids are playing, knowing that even though they can play aggressively, it’s not aggressive behavior.

Sources:
• “Columbine families sue computer game makers” BBC News Online http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1295920.stm (1 May, 2001)
• “Current Research Perspectives” COMPUTER AND VIDEO GAMES COME OF AGE: A NATIONAL CONFERENCE TO EXPLORE THE STATE OF AN EMERGING ENTERTAINMENT MEDIUM http://web.mit.edu/cms/games/index.html Thursday and Friday, 10 and 11 February 2000
• Dawson, Leland Personal Interview November 23, 2004
• Entertainment Software Rating Board http://www.esrb.org/ 2004
• “Make Meaning, Not War: Rethinking the Video Game Violence Debate” Independent School 63 no4 http://www.nais.org/index.cfm (Summer 2004)
• “Video Game Firms Seek Dismissal of Columbine Suit” Internetnews.com staff http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/print.php/805431 (20, July, 2001)

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