Do video games promote violence? Short answer? No. It’s not the parents either.
It’s the person playing the video game.
Each person has their own likes and dislikes. We prefer a color or style of shoe over another just the same as we prefer fishing or ripping someone’s head off in a virtual world.
There’s no issue with it directly – there’s clearly a fascination for serial killers and it shows in today’s mainstream media. We watch crime based Netflix shows, we play first person shooters, we drool over the news just looking for anything to make our days more exciting. Our day to day lives sometimes feel recycled, so we crave something fresh each day to liven up our hopes and spirits.
Mass murder media is not mirroring the desire to seek and kill others, but a platform to release pent up aggressions or distract ones self from another issue in their day. The connection of violence in games and in our actual lives is nonexistent – until someone actualizes it.
Our ideas perpetuate our actions, and we release that throughout our day. Everyone has a different reason for why they do what they do. Action and violence in video games is merely a visual representation of an action, cause and effect, that is pronounced enough to cause stimulation in our brain, so we click that button. It’s fun to click that button. The world has already proved that violence is not necessary for stimulating ourselves, by popular indie games such as the famous Stardew Valley by ConcernedApe, who serves as an inspiration for individuals all over the world in the gaming community.
Video games are fantastic for putting us in another world. We can achieve literally anything in a video game, as long as someone creates and manages it. Violence is created by those who feed off of the life of the game and disconnect from their own, but the blame is on the individual and those responsible for the individual when the connection between video games and reality is formed. This is why we have age restrictions on our video games, movies, and other mass media. With age should come maturity, and those who take part of the gaming community need to realize that they are accountable for their own actions.
It is important to treat everyone with respect and humanity – this is the source to reducing violent crime all over the world, not limiting the potential of digital development. This poses other issues, such as vertical and horizontal development, which poses a deeper question of innovation and its effect on our world.
By thinking outside the box and utilizing what we have at our feet, we should be better at protecting what we currently have before moving forward. Our gaming society has become lazy at the highest levels, focusing on spitting out replica games left and right while adding a slice of original design (looking at Ubisoft), or pickpocketing the gamers for every cent it’s worth (EA).
But that’s neither here nor there, so I take my leave. Thanks for reading.