A Brief Look At Video Games And Violence

workWarning: This article contains adult humour. Like a drunken uncle in the middle of the night, the topic of video games and their link to violence has returned in an unattractively stained-flourished. However, this time President Obama has started a new ten million dollar study into video game violence which I believe to be a response to the semi-recent Newtown shooting as it was discovered that Adam Lanza had played Call of Duty once or twice. This also prompted a UK newspaper The Sun to publish a print with headlines like "Killer€™s Call of Duty Obsession" and "BlackOps Bunker" which proved to be an incredibly offensive and misleading headline to us as a gaming community. Luckily, sensible papers like the Telegraph and the Guardian published their own articles explaining why blaming Call of Duty is detracting attention away from the real issue and most likely, had nothing to do with the tragic events that took place. This story is nothing new when it comes to the media€™s endless battle against videogames and the individuals who play them. I am in no way condoning what someone like Adam Lanza did, but people have to understand that the only reason the title was even mentioned is because video games have become part of mainstream culture. As an example how mainstream culture changes would be the 1999 Columbine Shooting. The Columbine Shooting is where Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed twelve students, one teacher, injured twenty-one additional students and eventually took their own lives. In the 90€™s Metal music was very much in the public eye and even though both played FPS€™s like Doom, and Eric Harris had even created the (now) eerily named "The Harris Levels", which are modded levels in Doom and Quake - no mention of any videogame motive was made by the media. It was far easier for news teams to blame the artist Marilyn Manson as both Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold listened to his music which many would dub: disgusting or violent. This led Mr. Manson to cancel some of his shows in respect for the victims which was lovely, but needless as he did nothing to contribute to the shooting. As I touched on above, we€™ve seen in the last ten years more video game related stories hitting the papers. I remember a few years ago the BBC ran some form of morning panel show about the airport scene aka. No Russian, in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. While one of the members in the €˜for€™ video games group was speaking, some mother interrupted him crying out that the scene had seriously disturbed her thirteen year old son. The audience erupted in applauses completely oblivious to the fact that the game carries an age rating of eighteen which, unfortunately no-one picked up on. There€™s a reason it€™s not for children, it€™s not like parents would show their children hard-core porn just because their kids wanted to see it. When I speak about this portion of the video game violence argument by saying children shouldn€™t play eighteen rated games, people usually reply with: €œWell as a journalist, you should be for free-speech and equality. Everyone has the right to play what they want.€ But freedom of speech works in theory, but not in practise - technically I have the right to shout offensive jokes through a megaphone in a crowded KFC, but I don€™t because apparently you have to use your right to have free-speech with respect for other people. Which when you look at it, isn€™t free at all. Everything offends everybody, I could make a cat joke and upset someone who loves cats, I could make a joke about religion and anger some religious fanatic. My philosophy is everything should be okay to say, or nothing should be. Who makes these arbitrary lines in the sand that say what€™s fair to say and what isn€™t?
 
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Contributor

Thomas James Hunt is a British Video Game Critic who is a rather unpleasant character in the journalism world. So brace yourself for some nasty behaviour in the form of articles.