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Video game violence has been targeted by politicians throughout the
country as a scapegoat for many of society's problems. This is hardly a
new development, but what is new is the emergence of two more major players
in this whole issue: A politician from Illinois who is trying to restrict
the sale of M-rated games, and a psychologist from Europe who is
questioning the validity of what few studies there are that have found
links between aggressive behavior and video game violence.
THE PSYCHOLOGIST
A unique perspective on this issue comes from Jeffrey Goldstein, a
psychologist and college professor from the Netherlands who is a member of
the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological
Society. Goldstein has researched and witnessed many studies on the
effects of violent video games on children. In most cases, boys enjoy
violent video games more than girls, so boys end up playing them for the
studies. According to Goldstein, "The result is a study of gender
differences disguised as a study of video games." Goldstein also notes
that most of these studies don't point out whether their subjects show
aggressive behavior prior to playing the violent games.
Another flaw in the way these studies are conducted comes from their
basic definitions of aggression. Aggressive behavior is defined as "an act
in which another living organism is hurt." Goldstein says, "Violent video
games encourage aggressive play, not aggressive behavior. That's an
important distinction, because it's extremely rare for someone to get hurt
during aggressive play." Goldstein also says that many of the times when
the people conducting these studies mark down a subject as "showing
aggressive behavior," they are simply making "fighting sound effects" with
their voices while playing the game.
This revelation just goes to show how absurd these studies are in
principle. Aggressive behavior is hurting another living organism, but
making sound effects while playing Mortal Kombat doesn't hurt anybody any
more than a three-year-old playing with a toy fire engine and making siren
noises.
THE POLITICIAN
Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan has proposed that the ratings of the
Entertainment Software Ratings Board should be enforced at retailers.
Voluntary enforcement by retailers will almost certainly never happen on a
wide-scale level, but Ryan hopes to make it Illinois state law that
children under 17 can't buy Mature-rated games. If the law is passed in
Illinois, it could eventually be adopted in other states throughout the
country.
Ryan's staff conducted an investigation in which 32 children (all
between the ages of 13 and 15) were sent to buy M-rated games, spread out
over eight different retailers. All 32 children were able to buy M-rated
games, thus tragically exposing them to horrible levels of violence that
aren't really worse than what they can see on network television. Ryan's
staff should have also sent the children to R-rated movies because they
would have gotten similar results.
Doug Lowenstein, the president of the Interactive Digital Software
Association or IDSA, notes that no one from Ryan's office contacted the
IDSA before making the announcement. Lowenstein said, "I wish Ryan had
talked to us before he had a press conference." Unfortunately, showing
enough decency to let the industry's self-governing body respond is not how
most politicians operate. In the alternate reality that exists in the
politicians' mind (where perfectly normal children are turned into serial
killers by exposure to violent video games), knee-jerk reactions and
scapegoats are the orders of the day, not fairness and examining all the
facts.
In the past year, the IDSA has been spreading the word about the video
game industry's ratings system so that parents can make educated decisions
about what their children should and should not play. These are just some
of the IDSA's (completely voluntary) efforts:
-They have purchased print advertisements that explain the ratings system
in various video game magazines, as well as more mass-market publications
like Newsweek, US News & World Report, Good Housekeeping, and Parenting.
-They have produced a video starring golfer Tiger Woods that thoroughly
explains the ratings system and is currently up and running at many stores
like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster Video.
-They have printed and distributed over 5.5 million brochures explaining
the ratings.
-All new TV commercials for video games say the game's rating out loud in
addition to displaying it on the screen.
-The rating system itself is the most in-depth of any form of entertainment,
because it points out specific things in games that parents might find
objectionable.
What else do the politicians want? Do they want the IDSA to magically
appear at every video game retailer in the country and hold kids' hands as
they make game purchases? Where do you draw the line? Clearly, the
American video game industry needs more people like Jeffrey Goldstein and
less people like Jim Ryan if it hopes to avoid taking the first step
towards the way things are in Germany, where the government places very
tight restrictions on violence in video games.
Real violence certainly effects people in various ways, but the key word
there is "real." The only real violence that children ever see in the
media comes from news programs and documentaries, and even that isn't very
common. God forbid any "violence in the media" yes-men should ever accept
the possibility, but the fact of the matter is that people are much more
likely to see real violence in real life. No matter how realistic or
unrealistic it is, video game violence is not real. A child witnessing
video game violence is not witnessing any real people actually get hurt.
If someone can't tell the difference between real and not real (or right
and wrong), then violent video games are the least of their worries. To be
blunt, they were probably screwed up in the head long before they ever
played their first video game. Any attempts to blame video games for any
crimes that they might commit is nothing more than an easy escape route for
people who don't want to think about the root causes of violence in society.
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