By Jay Morton
Video games make me better. I have been playing video games for as long as I can remember. I learned my alphabet playing Talking Teacher for the Commodore 64. My parents always seemed to encourage my love of gaming, but were sure to regulate my intake of violent video games, which was easy enough since guns and gore never seemed to interest me as much as blue hedgehogs or chocobos. Over the last five years or so I began to develop a love fighting games. I’m particularly fond of 2D fighters such as Street Fighter, Everything Vs Capcom, Darkstalkers, and the concisely titled Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus. These games are not about violence to me, they’re about martial arts. Martial arts were founded on principals of self mastery and discipline. In order to play a fighting game you need to find a character that fits your style of play. Once you’ve settled on a character that feels natural you learn their strengths and weaknesses so you can determine their most effective use. After that you learn how every other character plays so you can develop tactics specifically for countering their techniques. Finally, and most importantly, you learn about your opponent. Fighting games are social games. The best fighting experience is had playing with another person online, or, even better, right beside you. Different people will use the tools at their disposal in unique ways and develop their own style of play that you must then adapt to in order to succeed. There are enormous communities of fans that surround fighting games, with everyone coming together to discuss new strategies and techniques that even the game developers themselves never imagined. Fighting games are games of strategy, cunning, and self-discipline. You can’t get away with angrily button mashing if you’re going against a skilled opponent.
“But you foolish halfwit,” you exclaim excitedly, having believed to have me caught in a trap. “What you’re saying confirms our professional deductions that video games promote violence! Violent games teach people to kill strategically and hurl fire balls or Wolverine at innocent civilians!”
I actually haven’t seen anybody try to toss very sharp Canadians at people as a result of their supposed violent training at the hands of video games, though I imagine that if it were to happen it would have more to do with alcohol than anything else. Video games are just games. Nobody blames Risk or Clue for murder. I could describe the game of Chess in a way very similar to fighting games. Hell, there’s even a Street Fighter chess set. Chess has been teaching people effective battle strategy for hundreds of years. Strategy, cunning, and self-discipline are also valuable life skills that are useful in everyday problem solving. These skills are universal. Most people who read the Art of War are either business men or Batman writers, and not warrior philosophers (unless they are in fact Batman). These skills can also be acquired through action games, RPGs, and even the dreaded first person shooter. In the end, these games are making me a stronger more capable human being, and one who is very entertained and educated through stories of heroes and villains, moral choice, risk, and drama. I learn about who I am through video games. I’m driven to protect who I care about. I prioritize smaller goals that lead up to larger quests. I am a capable leader and follower. I have a desire to develop my skills and abilities through knowledge and assessment. In the radioactive wastelands of Fallout 3 when most people are going around causing everyone grief, I’m handing out bottles of purified water, defending villages, and helping orphaned children find a good home, and I have never once killed a hooker in order to get my money back in a Grand Theft Auto game. If I’m living vicariously through the lives of virtual people, I’m a relatively benevolent person. I consider video games to be the culmination of all art forms including visual art, animation, music, literature, and theater, bound together in a unique form of entertainment that is only complete when the audience takes control and personally unfolds scripted events into a unique experience that can never be duplicated by another person. I understand the benefits of gaming on my psychology, and yet somehow as congress tries to blame the actions of a few damaged people on the art I hold so dear to me I feel personally insulted, and am left to wonder why I take these accusations to heart as if they were aimed at me.
I’m not a big fan of this gun violence/video game violence debate that’s been off and on for a couple decades or so and seems to be brought up every time someone makes a regrettable life decision. Frankly, all of this talk about anger and violence is what’s making me angry and violent. Observation suggests other people are pretty edgy in regards to this subject matter too. Gun owners are sticking to their guns, and gamers are sticking to their lonely basements. Meanwhile, Elvis Presley is off in space shaking his head and Stan Lee is chuckling to himself, “Ah, sounds like my old nemesis Dr. Wertham is up to his old tricks again” as for the umpteenth billionth time widespread media is being blamed for the poor choices of a few damaged people rather than the people who made said bad choices. After all, something had to have been guiding them down the path of evil, and it certainly couldn’t have been neglect, despair, or vengeance, so it must be that blasted skull-stomping deviant Mario corrupting the minds of all those he comes in contact with.
When folks look for behavioral patterns in people who perpetrate mass shootings, the thing that seems to jump out at people with guns blazing and buster swords swinging is the fact that they all play violent video games. This is an example of Occam’s Razor failing humanity’s unending endeavors to understand the world they so elegantly misperceive. The theory of Occam’s Razor states that when presented with multiple possible solutions to a problem, the simplest solution is most often the correct one. You can look it up. I of course learned about it from a series of detective novels about a wizard in Chicago, so it must be true. The point being that if these miscreants perpetrated acts of otherwise senseless and perceivably irrational violence, and they all had video games in their possession, then it must have been the video games that caused them to lash out. There’s a pattern at work, it’s the simplest solution, and it gives people a common foe that’s much easier to understand than the minds and feelings of other human beings. Video games desensitize people to violence, add fuel to the fires of their rage, and make people kill other people for the sport of it. Case closed. At least that’s the argument I’ve been hearing my whole life.
Since I’m writing this article little research aside from personal experience and logic, I can’t really say for sure whether or not frequent exposure to violent images makes people more tolerant of violent images, but let’s say it does, which it probably does. Those are images. Video game graphics are patterns of light playing out on a two-dimensional surface to give the illusion there is a bald space marine being eaten by aliens, or an earthworm parachuting from a booger. It is light and sound simulating patterns of virtual reality and virtual violence. Most people understand that video games are not real and those who do not should be closely monitored for their own safety. Even though people formulate strong personal associations with their in-game avatar and say things like “Oh crap, I died again” when they get shot down rather than “Oh crap, Master Chief died again” I imagine watching light patterns “explode” with a “headshot” and then “respawn” elsewhere on the “map” is a very different experience from actually sharing a room with a fresh corpse, the smell of cordite, the eerie silence following a sudden cacophonous noise, the sudden cries of pure emotion as witnesses cower in fear or are otherwise overcome with grief, and a lifetime of consequences that will follow you for the rest of your life. But pffft what do I know? That’s just baseless conjecture. I just kind of assume the experiences have subtle differences in the way they would affect a person’s psyche. I suppose if people were desensitized to violence the line between reality and fiction would blur.
Desensitization is determined by the lessened impact of external influences and lack of empathy in regards to the emotions of others. It amounts to numbness in extreme cases. Based off of personal observations I’d say that video games desensitize people to video games and very little else. If you sit someone down who is not used to video games and have them play Bomberman Ultra, an oft-times intense E-rated gaming experience about adorable robot arsonists, there’s a good chance they will fly into a state of panic and react to the game almost as if they were literally running around a maze trying desperately not to make a mistake and blow themselves up, while a veteran gamer will probably frolic calmly around the board as they roam around collecting power ups and new costumes that enable them to dress their bomberman like a lucha libre fairy cowboy (unless it’s an eight-player local game, in which case there will likely be lots of jumping around and screaming and nervous animals looking for shelter from the chaos.) I’ve been playing video games for decades, and while I’m used to the sight of polygonal brain matter splashing onto the camera, it doesn’t make me react any less distraught by scenes of real violence, or Alex Murphy being blown to bits by gang bangers prior to his resurrection as Robocop. Growing accustomed to mayhem is something that will be experienced due to prolonged exposure to any game from Madden to Half-Life, but, speaking for myself, that doesn’t take away from the nauseating impact of cruelty and ignorance displayed on the news. Then again, I don’t watch the news very often, and when I do all I see are reports on weather, traffic, and homicide. I will tense my shoulders and audibly growl at the indecency of certain individuals when I overhear reports of violent crimes, while people who are used to having these tales of tragedy on as background noise are at the least not visibly phased. Ironically, one day as I was playing Marvel Vs Capcom 3, my mom walked into the room and watched for a moment before saying, “It just makes me want to hit something” while I looked at her nervously in confusion, since to me MvC3 feels like a rhythm game, such as Dance Dance Revolution with its emphasis on memorizing button patterns and keeping a steady rhythm, crossed with hacky-sack. In the mere seconds after she entered the room it appeared to be somehow demoralizing her and she needed to be medicated, but I kept quietly to myself and kept an eye out for strange behavior (Of which there was none more so than usual.) I don’t know if it was the visual depiction of graphic man-juggling that prompted this reaction or her preconceived notions of what violent games represent, but there was clearly a difference in how we perceived what was happening on the screen. All I can get from this is that the news has desensitized my mother to news, to which I form a much stronger reaction; and that I may be desensitized to video games, to which my mother reacts as if there really is a man with a bionic arm bouncing a giant floating head off of the walls. I’m not going to suggest censoring the news any more than I would suggest censoring video games more than they have been. I think the media has suffered enough indignities. I don’t know how someone would get clear concise data on the subject of desensitization, but I think they study would need to be conducted using people of all nations, creeds, and ages over a lifetime to really get a sense that nobody understands how people work.
But, let’s say years of fragging strangers over the internet does make the impact of actual, y’know, DEATH so tolerable that looking at a fresh bloody body slide down the wall leaving a trail of blood is about as mundane as C-SPAN. Does desensitizing people to violence make them more violent? People need a little more of a push than frankly not giving a damn to commit murder. As any procedural crime drama will tell you, it takes motive.
Anger is a great motivator, and video games do make people angry. Ask anyone who has played God of War and they will tell you in the utmost detail how much they wanted to destroy the entire world as they tried to climb out of Hades for the thirtieth time only to get poked in the ankle and sent back to start. Play Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) without showing signs of aggression or mentally swearing. I dare you. Red ring of death? Campers? &#^@ #%@&ing MARIO PARTY? There is no end to the frustrations and disappointments gamers face. It’s enough to make people swear a cuss and throw a controller. Hundreds of studies have been done to analyze how video games increase aggression, but no conclusions have been reached regarding the connection between video games and the long term behavioral patterns that lead to stupid decisions and violence. In fact, the most one can conclude from these studies is that video games make the people who play them experience emotions in the same way any other stimuli would make them react. Playing a video game that places the player in a tense situation makes them as anxious as if they were placed in a tense situation. Cooperative games inspire cooperation, while competitive games make people competitive. Studies have been done that show people will have the subject of the video game on their mind after they have played a particular type of video game (Schutte, N. S., Malouff, J. M., Post-Gorden, J. C. and Rodasta, A. L. (1988), Effects of Playing Videogames on Children's Aggressive and Other Behaviors. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 18: 454–460.) If people play games with guns, they may have guns on their mind afterwards. If people hear the word “cupcake,“ they may picture a cupcake and slowly begin to crave sweets. If a new Spider-Man movie comes out, I will probably re-read my entire comic book collection. If I watch Argo, I may start wishing Ben Afleck would spend a lot more time behind the camera than in front of it. Most of everyday advertising is about exposing the consumer to stimuli so they’ll be thinking about it and potentially becomes a customer through subconscious manipulation. Believe me, pop-up ads inspire more violent tendencies than video games.
People react to things. Little do people know that emotional reactions are not experienced exclusively by gamers. In fact it may surprise you to learn that just about anyone can experience them. It’s a thing that happens. Anger in particular is among the emotions many people will face over the course of their lifetime regardless of their hobbies. If the team you’re rooting for is in the lead by two points and is thirteen seconds away from the Super Bowl, and suddenly the opposing team scores a field goal, depending on your degree of investment your reaction may range from knocking over your nachos in a fit of rage to forming an angry mob and starting a riot. Parking tickets suck. Bossy supervisors and naggy coworkers are a pain. Having your laptop crash one paragraph away from the completion of your college thesis could be stress inducing. Finding your husband cheating on you with your twin sister after your father’s funeral may cause some internal discord. The list goes on. Things happen. Things build up. Considering how many emotionally scarring events happen on a day-to-day basis, if video games were a bigger threat to humanity than everything-else-ever, then based on the millions of violent video games that are sold daily, shouldn’t there be more video game related crimes as a result? Why aren’t there Pokemon themed costumed super villains running around wanting to be the very worst like no one ever was? How many times has someone snuck into a pet shop in a cardboard box and started eating all of the snakes? As of September 2011 over 22 million copies of Grand Theft Auto IV (www.vgsales.wikia.com/Grand_Theft_Auto) were sold, and so every single one of those people should be serial carjackers leaving a trail of pedestrian paste behind them, right? If I walk around with a pebble in my shoe, as my discomfort persists over the course of the day my patience, tolerance, and disposition may begin to fade and my language and actions may be affected as a result. That doesn’t mean I’m going to start blowing people up.
Even the average homicidal jerk doesn’t just kill for the hell of it. Everyone gets so focused on the latest massacre that they seem to ignore the countless heinous crimes committed every day that have nothing to do with video games whatsoever. Crimes fueled by vengeance or greed. Reality shapes people far more than virtual reality. There are more factors in life that make people who they are than video games (unless you play World of Warcraft or League of Legends, in which case I can be fairly certain you’re too preoccupied with nerddom to cause any major harm to humanity.) If people want to understand what makes people tick I would recommend analyzing actual people rather than the media they consume.
I could get offended. I could get angry. I could think about hurting someone. Then I have the choice to follow through with acting upon those thoughts and feelings or channeling those emotions into something more productive, like writing a blog, snuggling kittens, or strapping action figures to rockets. Even if video games desensitized you to violence and sparked an irrational anger in your lizard-like Hulk brain, there is a choice that must be made before harm is done unto others, whether that decision is made consciously or subconsciously. People who let their emotions get the better of them without thinking things through, people who have no alternative outlet for aggression (like say, oh I dunno, arts and crafts, sports, therapy, friendship… video games?), people with so much despair they can’t see any other path to take than to harm others, or people who are just assholes give in to those primal urges of violence. They have to make the choice to commit to violence, or merely allow their emotions to control them. They have to plan the plans, buy the weapons, and then do whatever it is they do. Video games aren’t planting subliminal messages in gamer minds to make them hurt people for fun. They aren’t even a necessary step in harming someone, nor is “playful whimsy” a common motivation for homicide. The psychopaths who do go out and hurt people are psychopaths and would go out and hurt people regardless of whether or not they played a video game and thought “oh that would be fun” because they are psychopaths who hurt people. They are damaged individuals. Even in the frequently proposed circumstances in which a child plays Grand Theft Auto and decides to go out with a gun and rampage about because he saw it in a game, there are many other factors to consider in why that child made such an ill-informed moral decision, like their actual upbringing and perceptions of reality acquired from years of experience living in reality. It wouldn’t be the video game’s influence that shaped them, it would be the lack of other influences.
Experiencing violence will put violence in the forefront of your mind. However, that alone isn’t enough to convince me that video games manipulate people into acting upon that aggression. You can’t blame video games for murder unless violent video games are the only moral compass a person is exposed to throughout their entire lives. People are the sum of their experiences. If all they experience is bloodshed and carnage, whether virtual or otherwise, then that is all they will be. That’s just the way they will perceive the world. Someone who grows up in a community of thieves and backstabbers is going to be very wary of people because the sum of their experience dictates that people are not to be trusted. Someone who grows up in a society where people don’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom is going to be really upset with you if in your good nature you decide to put your hand on their shoulder. Some people juggle geese! There is a reason for the ESRB rating system. It’s designed to prohibit the influence of violent images on a young impressionable psyche until they are older and have more years of experience and understanding what is socially acceptable in reality. Anyone with a conscience is not going to go out and murder innocent civilians for shits and giggles. It is a parent’s job to instruct a child first hand and teach them what is acceptable behavior. That’s the responsibility of the community; of family, friends, teachers, neighbors and every other human being on the planet Earth that they encounter. The acceptance and support of family and friends, and a sense of purpose, are usually enough to keep people grounded. If someone snaps and acts as a triggerman for an unforgivable tragedy, then I would say that those would be the first factors to look at in their lives. Video games don’t kill people: decisions do. Nobody blames the actual mail for mailmen going postal. There are clearly other things at work influencing who human individuals are. You can regulate video games all you want, and slap as many warning labels as you want on them, and it won’t make any difference if individuals don’t receive the validation they need in reality they will find a way to take it.
That’s such a great segue into gun violence that we should transition to guns now. I don’t like guns. I like guns even less than Yoda likes being reminded he’s voiced by Ms. Piggy. My great dislike of guns comes from a fundamental fear of death most living creatures share, which is what from my point of view guns represent: the power of death. When I was a youngin’ of, say, eight or nine, I spent a week with my Uncle in the sophisticated land of rural Idaho, where one day he decided to teach me how to use a rifle. I was terrified. It was as big as I was, and black, and heavy, and even though that had been the first gun I’d seen in person I knew damn well that if that thing faced me and went off I would not exist any more. We shot at pop cans while he sat behind me bracing me so the recoil didn’t take my fragile young bird-like limbs right off, and it was one of the most emotionally uncomfortable days of my young life. Today, I have little problem with firearm heavy video games. I get a sense of accomplishment from my ability to strategize and adapt quickly to new situations, and a sense of personal growth and confidence in myself as my accuracy becomes precise enough that I can hit a tiny enemy pixel peaking around a corner a virtual kilometer away. If however I happen to learn that someone I know owns an honest to goodness real life gun my muscles tense instinctively and my senses immediately go into defensive mode and start scanning for danger. Say what you will about guns being tools of self-defense. They are designed to puncture holes in living creatures so that they stop moving one way or the other. They do not deflect other bullets. They do not heal the sick. They don’t turn water into wine. They end things. At their most non-lethal they can be used as a threat. A deterrent. Something to inspire fear. Something that makes people question whether or not they value their goals more than their life. Then maybe the offending burglar or ex-husband backs away and everyone goes home unscathed. Otherwise, they can be used to hurt other people before they hurt you. That’s not a particularly friendly solution. Circumstances aside, that’s just trading someone else’s well-being for your own. It’s not patterns of light creating illusions to your perceptions. It’s real. It’s violence. Yes, violence can be done with other tools like knives, chainsaws, tire irons, bobcats on a stick, etc, but that argument doesn’t make guns any less designed-to-kill. In fact, guns seem to be a pretty efficient tool for wide-scale mayhem. Any common argument against the restriction of firearms can be fairly easily countered with logic and reason, but it doesn’t get us any closer to addressing the real issue that has people literally willing to kill for their right to bare arms. The real issue to consider is power.
Guns are powerful, and have a strong effect on people. There is plenty of appeal. People love guns! First of all they’re aesthetically pleasing. I’m a particularly tactile human being. When I got my Nintendo DS several hours passed while I simply enjoyed the pleasure of holding the unopened box because I loved the weight, shape, and texture of it. Guns are heavy, and designed to fit comfortably in your hand. I don’t even like guns and I can spend hours on Google images admiring the shape and finish of magnum handguns. People who don’t know anything about cars can admire the beauty of a fine motor vehicle as well as anybody. Guns aren’t really much different. Second, they kill things dead. If someone comes at you for any reason, you can stop them. Just like that. There’s a strange sense of security and comfort that comes from that power over someone else’s life. Humans are soft, fleshy, vulnerable creatures that can’t do a whole lot against predators with teeth and claws. Humans do have the know-how to create tools to make up for our offensive shortcomings, and that’s what we have been doing since the inventions of the club, the spear, the bow and arrow, the gun, the tank, tactical nuclear armaments, and the Kuratas Giant Battle Mech: making ourselves feels secure. It’s compensation. It’s superiority. People are very competitive in nature. They love being better than others. Superiority is another benefit of power. Superiority means you’re more likely to thrive in your environment and defend your territory. Humans are very territorial creatures, and the confidence some animals need in order to feel like they can protect their family and their territory comes from having the suitable tools for the job. What happens when you take that security away? You get angry video blogs from gun owners saying that if the second amendment is taken away from them they’re going to shoot people. You get the feral violence of a cornered opossum in the form of a quasi-intelligent bipedal ape-descendant with more than just teeth and claws to gut you with. Superiority at the top of the food chain is also something required by predators in order for them to survive. In the wild, predators outclass their prey in terms of strength. Some animals are designed to hide, some to run, and some even have their own threat deterrents like barbs, poison, or super-stink, but in the end if something with suitable offensive capabilities had the opportunity to drop them flat they could. Criminals are no different. They hunt with what they have and take what they want, be it your wallet, your life, or just your mere innocence, from those they deem weaker than them. Predators don’t go looking for a fair fight. They go for the kill. In this case taking guns away would limit the effectiveness of the predator, forcing them to focus on one or two specimens of potential prey rather than a movie theater or school full of potential victims.
In my unprofessional opinion, video games are awesome and guns should be eradicated from history so that nobody remembers them and nobody will miss them, but I’m firmly anti-time travel and the eradication of guns isn’t going to do anything but make shooters a whole lot less interesting. That’s just me being an angry poop. Why am I so personally invested in this matter? Why am I so strongly affected by this debate that I would spend the last few days reading everything I can find and writing up this editorial rant? It’s because I can imagine people blaming my own mental condition on something as stupid as video games, and that ignorant deduction is frustrating to me because they would be neglecting to take into consideration that the collective sum of my experiences has made me cranky. There may very well be people today who see a correlation between the video games I play and my increased aggression, when it’s my increased aggression that influences my aesthetic choices in entertainment more than the other way around. When I was 11 I was involved in a freak accident that broke my arm in seven places and caused me to develop a form of post traumatic stress disorder called Panic Disorder. The primitive reptilian portion of my brain constantly reacted to every source of external stimuli as if I were about to be murdered in the most painful way imaginable. I grew up believing down to the core of my being that I was going to die for no reason and never see it coming. That did not instill the zen sense of peace and acceptance in me that one might expect from a child in their formative years. I am 25 years old, I’ve dropped out of college three times, I am chronically unemployed, I live with my mother, and my strongest source of personal fulfillment comes from creating and experiencing art. I’ve been in therapy long enough to know that I am the only one who has the power to decide how I react to the world around me. Every time I fail to step outside into the world, take advantage of an opportunity, or overall make something of myself, I take the full brunt of the responsibility because I know I can do better and that I am the only one holding me back. I feel an extreme sense of guilt over my failures because I know I am capable of making a positive contribution to the world. I just haven’t figured out how. I tend to scream and throw things now and then when things don’t go as planned. There’s an unpainted patch of spackle on the wall decorated like Hello Kitty because of the hole I put there after a frustrating phone conversation with the financial aid office at my local community college. My bedroom door was punctured by my elbow after my cat snuck up on my while I was thinking over a job application. My anger isn’t caused by video games. They are there as an outlet so that the anger caused by my dissatisfaction with life, which I am taking every positive step towards amending, doesn’t go in an unproductive direction.
Someone once told me that people don’t kill themselves because they don’t want to live. They kill themselves because they want things to change.
Blaming something is different from taking responsibility. People aren’t asking the right questions about why someone would go out and hurt someone else. Video games aren’t manipulating people into using heavy weapons to affect change in their environment. The real questions we need to be asking are why people are so dissatisfied with the quality of life that they would take such drastic actions to do something about it? What can we do to validate people and help them lead enriching lives? If you want to learn something by researching video games, try figuring out what it is that makes them so compelling and try to translate it to the real world. They give us goals. Help us acquire skills. Make us feel like we live in a world that is strongly affected by our choices. For some people, they make us better.
“Every moment gives us a chance to become more than what we are.”
Ryu, Street Fighter III: Third Strike
