Do video games make us violent

An age-old question and something most gamers will generally deny.

Most people who play video games will usually tell you video games have not affected them in negative ways and that they have not found they are more aggressive after many years of solid gaming.

The inner lawyer comes out whenever these accusations are made and we fly to the defence of our beloved platform of enjoyment.

I, personally, have mixed views on the subject, mostly defending video games.

Obviously the majority of antisocial behaviour comes from issues like socio-economic imbalances, mental health disorders and a poor environment, to name a few initiators of barbaric behaviour.

In many extreme instances in which someone decided it’s time to take a gun and see how many people can be erased, video games are often regarded as the sole and primary cause for the incident, the case of Alaskan Evan Ramsey being one of the most infamous of situations, in which freaking Doom was blamed for his psychopathic rampage.

“I did not understand that if I…pull out a gun and shoot you, there’s a good chance you’re not getting back up.”

“You shoot a guy in ‘Doom’ and he gets back up. You have got to shoot the things in ‘Doom’ eight or nine times before it dies.”

Ramsey was 16 when he went on his killing spree. If you do not have a concrete understanding of mortality at this age, you have severe developmental debilitation (and should not be playing video games), which Ramsey probably had from being the victim of constant physical and sexual abuse at the hands of various class-mates and foster families.

But, no, let’s ignore a life of torment completely (as well as the official motive for the case which was school bullying) and make video games a media scapegoat once more.

It’s so easy to pick on something apparently obvious whilst ignoring profoundly complex taint in society.

Violence is generally a last resort for most humans, a primal solution that is implemented when no other choice seems available, when we are pushed to the edge of sanity.

This is clearly what happened in Ramsey’s case, a young boy was tortured for years on end until his warped sense of reality initiated the unthinkable but only too common in the USA.

Basic developmental psychology states that if whilst growing up you are constantly abused, your mental, social and even biological growth will become warped.

This is the case with many youths who are sparked to gun-toting rampage.

If your mental health is unstable, you really should not be playing video games in the first place. Disassociation and suggestion are only too possible through playing video games if your sense of reality is iffy to begin with.

Most of the cases to do with mass-murders, particularly to do with kids in schools, happen in the USA.

Lax gun-laws, a hoorah approach to using them and the belief that enemies are lurking on every street corner results in the deification of the boomstick, a religion of firepower.

The events depicted in the ‘No Russian’ mission in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II basically happened in real life recently at an Eagles of Death Metal concert in Paris.

More often than not, humans bridge the gap between the atrocities seen in video games and real life and take it even further.

There is no abhorrent act seen in video games that a human hasn’t perpetrated before video games even existed.

Blaming video games as the cause for humans drawing on their banal traits is reductionist, what breeds in the depths of our unconscious is way more powerful than any stimulus.

With that being said, sitting in front of a large screen for hours on end on a daily basis being exposed to very attractive and developed stimulus of a violent nature is nothing short of advanced propaganda and brainwashing.

This is where my argument for the other side comes in.

Whilst our behaviour might not become more violent, our thoughts and fantasies can, very easily too.

I’ve met plenty of fellow geeks who whilst completely placid in decorum, the fantasies they expressed were pretty twisted and were often based off a game they had played.

Of course, everyone is entitled to their own private stage inside the mind, a safe place where stressful situations are recreated with the thinker becoming the bloody victor.

Video games can, however, ignite more heroically viscous realizations, as can Quentin Tarantino films or Death Metal.

The violence we enjoy is a very abstract and comparatively comical depiction of the real thing.

Most stalwart fans of gory video games would be revolted by a real-life situation of terrible injury or brutality.

The violence that most gamers enjoy is limited to the television or monitor and does not extend beyond.

Whilst I can understand the mentally ill or abused being grossly affected by video games, the psychologically grounded gamer will not generally be strongly influenced.

We need to stop labelling video games as platforms for crime and acts of brutality and look at the real causes.

They can be a big influence for anti-social behaviour, but they are just a petty reinforcement to catastrophic thinking patterns that already exist.