2.5 Games and Violence
1. There are many answers, none of them sufficient, as to why video and computer game are so often violent – sometimes graphically (as in most FPS games), sometimes cartoonishly (as with most of the classic Nintendo franchises), and sometimes on large, semi-abstract scales (as with most strategy games) with both military and civilian populations at stake.
2. As someone who abhors (real) violence, I sometimes question why I play so many violent games. As someone who feels that even the most necessary war is folly and tragedy, I wonder why I am drawn to war and (military) strategy games. Some of the justifications for violence (graphic and not) in games include:
a. “Most of the players are boys and young men.” This is increasingly untrue, to the point that it should have lost its credibility by now. On the other hand, it continues to be true that 30-something male gamers spend the more money on games per capita than other audiences. Of course, this still fails to explain why games for men should have to be violent. I, for one, don’t believe that men are necessarily violent or only drawn to violence.
b. “All games are about (violent) conflict.” Though not completely true, the case can be made that a lot of our sports are “sanitized” gladiatorial combat (American Football more than most), and that many traditional games (like chess) are, at heart, wargames. Conflict is important to games, and most games have a winner and a loser. This is one of the differences between structured games and unstructured (or less structured) play. Free play doesn’t always involve conflict, and rarely has a “winner.”
c. “That’s the way it has always been done.” The history of computer and video games is rooted in kinds of play that emphasize conflict, violence, winners and loosers, and “Good” versus “Evil.” Tabletop wargaming was one of the first genres adapted to computer play (partially because computers handled the complex rules and interactions of wargames well), and computer gaming is deeply indebted to Dungeons & Dragons, which itself started as an attempt to make a wargame based on J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. There are also practical reasons why many early action games were shooters: it was something early computers and arcade games could do easily that you couldn’t do easily with a traditional board game.
3. It should be clear by this point that games don’t have to be violent. It is probably also obvious that there will continue to be violent games. Do games cause violence? The evidence is mixed, but mostly indicates that no, they don’t. If anything, excessive gameplay of any sort at a young age may impede development of social skills, but Doom was no more responsible for Columbine than The Catcher in the Rye was to blame for the murder of John Lennon. New media, especially popular ones, are regularly blamed for issues that are more broadly societal. Games, comics, tv, radio, film, novels and Socratic debate have each, in their turn, been blamed for “corrupting youth” and described as inherently bad or unhealthy.
4. At the same time, individual works in any medium can be part of a larger social or societal problem. If games can educate, inform and enlighten, then they must also be able to miseducate, spread lies and misconceptions, and reinforce bad ideas and bad habits. It becomes the responsibility of those creating games (as well as of those who buy them) to be conscious and critical: not to censor or sanitize, but to think about what games say, what arguments they make and way.
5. In that vein, I am in some ways more concerned about sex in games than violence. Violence in games is the subject of an open, if often polarized, public debate, and many people have commented on the US’ national culture of glorified, graphic violence – that is, the larger social issues. On the other hand, open sexuality in games, including normal, healthy adult relationships, is almost completely taboo: even games that let the player’s character have sex and (incredibly rarely) children are more self-censored than Production Code era Hollywood film. Partially as a result, there’s a lot of (barely) implicit sexuality in games, and substitutions of violence for sex (because a female character killing someone (an “enemy”) and then striking a sexy pose in a skimpy costume is, for some reason, completely acceptable.
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