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.