Adkins 1 Dylan Adkins Instructor: Malcolm Campbell English 1102 September 26, 2013 Violent Games: Violent Life

Walk back to my apartment right after a class with an annoying professor, I head straight for the Xbox because all I want to do is shoot someone in Call of Duty to get all of my frustrations out. Two hours later I am still playing, madder than I was when I first started playing and much more aggressive. This has become the norm not only for myself, but many young people today. With this in mind, I intend to argue that there does seem to be a correlation between violent video games, especially first-person shooter video games, and violence in young people. The first video game that you could play at home was released in 1975 it was called Pong. It was a huge hit and everyone rushed to get the new and exciting game. From there home consoles and personal video games evolved dramatically in a very short amount of time. This innovation is epitomized in1993 with the release of Doom, the first first-person shooter vieo game. The purpose of this new genre of video game was to make the person playing feel as if they are actually in the game doing all the activities the character is doing. In more recent years first-person shooters have become so realistic that at times it is hard to decipher whether you are playing a game or actual doing it yourself. Some modern video games even make the controller vibrate and blood spray in your face when you are shot or injured. Video games would never be the same after the

Adkins 2 release Doom and all other first-person shooter games quickly became one of the most popular genres of video games. Video games have been link to many domestic terrorist attacks over the years, the most recent being the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Brandon Kiem, a PBS reporter, claims that Adam Lanza, the man who killed 26 women and children in Newtown, was a frequent Call of Duty player. This was not the first time that violent video games played a part in a terrible school shooting; in 1999 two students from a Colorado high school killed 13 fellow students and teachers. The two students responsible reportedly played a lot of violent video games including Doom and Mortal Combat. Kiem also reports that the first person shooter games alone are a $5 billion dollar industry and that these games are enjoyed by millions of people everyday. Although it has become a harsh reality that violent, deadly attacks can be caused, or at the very least enhanced by violent video games this is not a typical result. However, according to a 2000 Senate hearing, young people who played violent video games are nearly 20% more likely to react aggressively when provoked than those who did not play violent video games on a regular basis. There has been very little biological research done concerning violence in video games and the way your brain reacts, but a study at a university in German has recently discovered that parts of the brain react differently in people who play video games and those who do not. The University of Bonn did an experiment on 40 people between the ages 20 and 30, half of the participants played violent video games and the other half had no contact with video games whatsoever. The text primarily consisted of pictures of disasters or terrible accidents being shown to the participants. Both groups brains

Adkins 3 reacted similarly when it came to the part of the brain that dealt with strong negative emotions, however, the video playing game subjects brains barely responded in the part of the brain that controls fear and aggression at all. First-person shooters do not respond as strongly to the real, negative image material because they are used to it from their daily computer activities. One might also say that they are more desensitized than the control group, according to lead author of this journal Dr. Christian Montag. This desensitization may very well be the reason that young people seem to be more prone to act violently, in the most extreme cases by kill innocent people, than generations of the past. More and more young people are simply trying to live life like a video game and have the mentality that there will not be any real consequences for any of their actions that nothing the do can actually kill them. There are some arguments that violent video games do not actually make its players more violent in real life. Elizabeth Carll, Dmitri Williams, and Kevin Kieffer, members of the American Psychological Association, conducted an experiment to see what happened to violent video gamers over an extended period of time. This study was based on a particular violent role-playing game called Asherons Call 2. The study consisted of 213 participants with an average age of 28. 75 of the participants played AC2 while the others were used as a comparison group. The participants had never played the game before the experiment began but by the end many were playing over 5 hours a week, the minimum time participants had to play the game. After a month of game play the participants had not become more aggressive. For aggression, I found really nothing, Says Williams. This is in terms of the acceptability of aggression as a way to solve problems, how often they got into arguments with a spouse or boyfriend or

Adkins 4 girlfriend, or how often they got speeding tickets. We used both attitude and behavioral measures. These results show that the majority of people may not respond more aggressively after game play but there are certain situations where some people may get consumed by the game and have a very different result. James Fox, a professor at Northeastern University, told Daily News that video games do not cause people to be more violent but instead people who are violent tend to be attracted to violent forms of entertainment. Fox claims that playing these violent video games is a symptom of a deeper social or mental illness. He claims that violent video games have just been a scapegoat for media and the general public rather than an actual problem. I do believe that some people with violent attitudes do seek out violent entertainment but can someone really say that without these video games horrific murders still would happen? People with social issues or other mental problems are now living out violent acts while they play these violent games, and without this other persona that they have from playing video games a lot of violent games, and without this other persona that they have from playing video games a lot of violent crimes may not have been committed. Violence consumes everyone from the time they are born in this generation and violent video games are one of the major contributors to the violence young people are exposed to. People taking on a second persona with such realistic attributes begin to consume young people and in some cases makes it difficult for people to draw the line between reality and fiction. I believe that it is necessity that video games become more restricted and take on a less realistic and less violent gameplay before more people become even more violent.