Works Cited

Calvert, Clay, and Robert D. Richards. “Precedent be Damned -- It’s all About Good Politics & Sensational Soundbites:  The Video Game Censorship Saga of 2005.” Texas Review of Entertainment & Sports Law 6.1 (2005): 79-155. SLUth. Web. 4 Oct., 2015.

DeCamp, Whitney. “Impersonal Agencies of Communcation: Comparing the Effects of Video Games and Other Risk Factors on Violence.”  Psychology of Popular Media Culture 4.4 (2015): 296-304. SLUth. Web. 30 Nov., 2015.

“ESRB Ratings Guide.” Entertainment Software Ratings Board. Entertainment Software Association. Web. 6 Dec. 2015.

Holland, Sarah Stewart. “Memories of a School Shooting: Paducah, Kentucky, 1997.”  The Atlantic. The Atlantic Monthly Group. 17 Dec. 2012. Web. 6 Dec. 2015.

Ivory, James D., and Sriram Kalyanaraman. “Video Games Make People Violent—Well, Maybe Not That Game: Effects of Content and Person Abstraction on Perceptions of Violent Video Games' Effects and Support of Censorship.” Communication Reports 22.1 (2009): 1-12. SLUth. Web. 3 Nov., 2015.

Mott, Garrett Matthew-James. “Game Over for Regulating Violent Video Games?  The Effects of Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass’n on First Amendment Jurisprudence.” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 45.2 (2012): 633-655. SLUth. Web. 1. Dec., 2015.

Osborne, Patrick. “Evaluating the Presence of Social Strain in Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto IV.” Studies in Popular Culture 34.1 (2011): 109-132. SLUth. Web. 1 Oct., 2015.

Sauer, James D., Aaron Drummond, and Natalie Nova. “Violent Video Games: The Effects of Narrative Context and Reward Structure on In-Game and Postgame Aggression.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 21.3 (2015): 205-214. SLUth. Web. 1 Dec., 2015.

“A Timeline of Video Game Controversies.” National Coalition Against Censorship. NCAC staff. 31 Oct. 2010. Web. 1 Dec. 2015.

Williams, Dmitri, and Marko Skoric. “Internet Fantasy Violence: A Test of Aggression in an Online Game.” Communication Monographs 72.2 (2007): 217-233. Web. 1 Oct., 2015.

Zhao, Juan. “Corruption of the ‘American Dream’ in Death of a Salesman: A Thematic Analysis of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.” Cross Cultural Communication 6.3 (2010): 122-126. Web. 6 Dec. 2015.

Conclusion

All the evidence that I have shown in my previous posts together points towards the conclusion that video games do not cause violence.  Whether it is because other risk factors are more influential, or because adults showed no increase in aggressive tendencies after playing a MMRPG for a month.  Since video games have proven to not cause violence, censorship seems like a non-issue.  However, it is, but then the government has been recently holding that, like books and movies, video games are an art form that deserve the same freedom of speech rights as any form of speech.  Overall video games have proven to not cause violence and we, as a society, should accept them, and stop trying to ban, or get rid of them.

Further Support

In a study done by Whitney Decamp, she discovered that the effects of violence in video games on children is moderate when viewed with video games being the only factor in aggression, or violence.  When other risk factors are taken into consideration, the effects of the violent video games decrease greatly.  The data came from a census taken in 2008 of eighth grade classrooms in Delaware.  All public, and public-charter, schools were included in the survey, and less than 1% of the students declined to take the survey.  The census was used to collect data about video game playing tendencies and other factors, and then Whitney Decamp used the other these other factors to see what risk factors were influencing a child’s aggressive tendencies.  Her conclusion was that these risk factors that I mentioned, which include factors like witnessing violence at home, lack of parental monitoring, lower levels of parental attachment, etc., influence a child’s likeliness to act violently more than video games do. (Decamp)

Rebuttal to Opositon

In a study done in 2007, people of slightly varying ages were tested to see the effects of a violent video game on aggression.  The general result was that massively multiplayer role player games (MMRPGs) don’t cause a moderate, or large increase in aggression.  The test was unable to show small increases because the sample size wasn’t large enough (Williams 12).  This study uses the fantasy game Asheron’s Call 2 (AC2) for the test because the game has a large amount of violence and is easy to learn to play.  The test had some people play AC2 for a month and had another group of people who didn’t play any video games for that month.  The control group, the people who didn’t play video games, and the other group, the people that played AC2 for a month, had fairly similar amounts of aggression at the end of the month.

This evidence can be used to say that the content doesn’t affect aggression. But what about the story, like the GTA IV article suggests?  GTA IV is using a corrupt version of the American dream in order to justify the horrible actions performed by Niko Bellic.  In an article I read about the “American dream” in the play Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, the “American dream” is shown as “…a genuine and determined belief that in America, all things are possible to all men, regardless of birth or wealth; if you work hard enough you will achieve anything.” (Zhao 3).  This version of the dream is what GTA IV is getting the player to buy into.  However, this article goes to explain how the play The Death of a Salesman shows how the dream has become misguided or corrupt.  The character of Willy, the main character of the play, works hard his whole life and has nothing to show for it.  He isn’t liked, and he has no money.  As the article states, “What he [Willy] has truly failed is his family life and his married life.  That is the corruption of the true ‘American Dream’.” (Zhao 5).  The reason that this opposes the argument presented in my previous post about GTA IV, is because it shows that the version of the American dream being presented in the game is corrupt to begin with.  Meaning that Niko Bellic is following a misunderstanding of a concept, and not the real thing, taking you out of the action and back into the real world.

Opposition

One of the biggest points of opposition to my argument is games like Grand Theft Auto.  If I try to argue that games are unrealistic, GTA is there, and games are becoming more realistic in general.  If I argue that violent characters in video games are acting violent for a good reason, GTA is there to stop me.  I read an article by Patrick Osborne about the rhetoric used in GTA IV, and how this rhetoric influences aggression.  This article states that the story of GTA IV, where Niko Bellic comes to America hoping for the American dream, but is forced to go to a life of crime in order to achieve his goal.  The plot of the game is designed to justify Bellic’s actions, which, according to this article, is a bad thing (Osborne 14-16). 

This is reasonable, Niko Bellic does some terrible actions in GTA IV, and because of the game’s sandbox style the player makes the choices he/she makes because of the influence of the cut scenes and the hypermediacy, “…the games representation of other media…” (Osborne), in the game.  GTA IV’s media is designed to show the lower class as “slaves to a capitalist market,” (Osborne 16).  The overall opposition to my argument that video games don’t cause violence is that games like GTA IV encourage the player to make violent decisions in the game, and that this causes the player to be more likely to commit violent acts.

Society's Views on Censorship of Video Games

There was an article that I read about content abstraction and its effects on how people view censorship.  First, content abstraction is a fairly self-explanatory term, it basically means how abstract, or not specific, the content someone is talking about is.  So, in this study, 122 undergraduate students were asked about violent video games, and censorship.  Some students were asked about a specific game, while others were simply asked about violent video games in general.  The students were also asked about these video games affecting either a specific person, someone else on campus, or anyone else in the United States.  This study found that there was a correlation between how abstract the concept they were was, and how much they were for censorship.  Meaning that the people who were asked about violent video games in general, and how they affect the entire United States, were more likely to say that censorship was a good thing, but on the opposite end of the spectrum, students who were asked about a specific violent video game affecting a specific person were more likely to say that censorship wasn’t needed. (Ivory)

This shows that people might actually like some violent video games, but when talking about violence in video games as a concept, instead of a specific game, it sounds worse, and people will be more open to the idea of censorship.  This doesn’t apply to everyone though, some of the cases from earlier were started because of specific video games.  However, at the same time, the specific violent video game related incidents were used as catalyst for legislation more than the reason the person is for censorship.

First Amendment Rights

The three laws I mentioned from 2005 in Illinois, Michigan, and California all deal with the same general issue, video games being protected under the first amendment.  In all three cases, the law held up that video games can’t be banned in the way those three governors were trying to do.  In a similar, but more recent case, California signed a new bill into law that caused the Supreme Court to finally step in for a major ruling.  The general idea is that the Supreme Court believes that video games, in its current state, is protected under the first amendment, and that it is a form of expression for kids, which is why it cannot be restricted (Mott).  However, one of the judges on this case, of Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, cautioned, “In considering the application of unchanging constitutional principles to new and rapidly evolving technology, this Court should proceed with caution.  We should make every effort to understand the new technology…We should not jump to the conclusion that the new technology is fundamentally the same as some older thing with which we are familiar.” (Mott)  This quote from one of the judges shows that there is still a chance that, with technology developing further and further, the Supreme Court might make a ruling that disagrees with the ruling made in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association.  So, even though video games are currently safe under the first amendment, they might not always be.

People against Violent Video Games

In 2005 the governors of Illinois, Michigan, and California, separately created similar laws with the purpose of limiting the access of minors to violent video games.  In all three cases the federal court stepped in and got rid of the laws quickly after they were passed.  In Illinois two laws were passed regarding violence and sexually explicit material in video games.  “…Violent video games…” were not to be sold to minors, anyone under the age of 18, under penalty of $1,000 fine.  This law was ruled to violate the first amendment according to the U.S. district judge at the time, but not only did it violate the first amendment, the law was also void for being too vague in regards to the definition of a violent video game.  The law about sexually explicit material was very similar, but also isn’t very relevant to my current point.  In Michigan a law that was essentially a combination of the two from Illinois was passed.  When it passed, politicians used the media coverage to say anything to seem like they were doing the right thing by protecting the children.  The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) challenged the law in Michigan because, just like in Illinois, it restricted first amendment rights, and was also vague.  Finally, in California Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law that did similar things as the previous two.  When asked about first amendment issues he said, “‘I myself didn’t have to worry about that.  My staff did.  There’s a difference.’” (Calvert)  The concerns about the violations of the first amendment in this bill were so extreme that the U.S. District Court Judge put a preliminary injunction on it before it could go into effect. (Calvert)

The First Court Case

People being angry about video game violence goes all the way back to 1976, with the arcade game Death Race.  The game had the player using a car to drive over “gremlins” (National Coalition Against Censorship) that made a disturbing sound when they were run over, and the characters were replaced with tombstones once they were killed.  It is fairly clear that people were upset by this game because of how graphic and “disturbing” it was.  Several other games received similar reactions in the following 17 years, resulting in the creation of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) a year after that in 1994 (NCAC).  The ESRB is a system still used today that rates video games using a series of different criteria including, alcohol reference, blood and gore, intense violence, fantasy violence, etc. (ESRB).  These ratings are used similarly to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) film ratings, meaning that the ratings dictate who can buy the video games.  The ratings range from “Early Childhood” to “Adults Only,” (ESRB) but the first rating that effects a person’s ability to buy a game is the “Mature” rating.  To purchase a game with a “Mature” rating, someone must have some form of identification that proves that the person is 17 years of age, or older.

According to the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), the first time that video game violence was brought to court was in 1997, by Jack Thompson.  Mr. Thompson is an anti-video game activist who filed a law suit on behalf of three parents whose children were killed in the Heath High School shooting in 1997 (NCAC).  In this shooting a freshman killed three people and injured five more (Holland).  Mr. Thompson claimed that the shooter “…had regularly played various computer games (including Doom, Quake, Castle Wolfenstein, Redneck Rampage, Nightmare Creature, MechWarrior, and Resident Evil), accessed some pornographic websites and owned a videotape of ‘The Basketball Diaries,’…” (NCAC)  Mr. Thompson lost this law suit for failing to make a legally recognizable claim. In July, 2008, he was disbarred for “…inappropriate conduct, including making false statements to tribunals and disparaging and humiliating litigants.” (NCAC)  This makes his claims less recognizable, but he was the first person to link video games to violence in the courtroom setting.  Now, when school shootings, or any act of violence committed by a child, or teenager, happens, one of the first assumptions made by some people is that the violence was caused by video games.

Blog Description

This blog is here to show reasons why violent video games do not cause aggression, or violence.  I have done research to find different studies, and have used those studies to arrive at conclusions about the violent video games that the studies are about.