Do Video Games Promote Violence Essay Example

Today’s world lives on technology, people spend most of their day with different devices. These technologies are not just for the purpose of help with work, but It is also used for entertainment purposes. Devices such as televisions and phones are most popular for entertainment. Nowadays, seeing people anywhere without their phones in their hands seems odd. Putting all the social media, movies aside games are also considered extremely entertaining for people. In the older generations, if you wanted to play a game the first things that would come to mind would be street games or some board games. But in this generation, it’s video games that are more popular. Anyone from children to adults plays such games for entertainment. Like all things, even video games have it’s good and bad sides. It brings joy in many people’s life and behaves as a stress reliever sometimes but too much of it can turn into an addiction. Even though, addiction is a serious issue there are deeper issues that are caused by video games. The most important and dangerous issue can be violence. It is known that certain games promote violence through the graphics of games, increased aggression by it, and crime linked with video games.

One reason why video game promote violence is through the graphics and the way it is played. But how can a game that makes people joyful have violence? The answer for that would be the images that a game contains. All games have certain tasks that the person playing is supposed to complete, doesn’t sound like a problem, right? Well, these tasks for each game are different and some of the tasks contain violence. Many games include different kinds of weapons for the tasks and the tasks include images and actions of killing other players. Scores in this kind of game are given by the number of kills they have, meaning the number of people they kill. Some other games include some other crimes. For example, there is this one game about thieves and police, where gamers get to choose who they want to be. If they are police, then they are supposed to find the thief and if they are thief then they are supposed to steal and get away from the police and break out of jail. One day I saw a family friend’s kid playing this game and he was showing it to me. When I asked him if he likes to be the police or the thief in the game he replied, “I like to be the thief all the time, it’s way more fun running away from the police and stealing things”. This does not seem like an appropriate game for kids, considering the way they can take it and what would they learn from such games.

Another reason for games promoting violence can be the increased aggression caused by it. Things that people see in their everyday life have an effect on them, many psychological studies show that Games can have a psychological effect on the people playing them. If the things someone sees regularly and go through their mind, make them do things and sometimes make them lose control of themselves. The Article Violent Video Games Can Increase Aggression published by American Psychological Association gives information about studies that were placed to find out the effects of video games on people. In the study, college students were the participants who were supposed to play violent video games for a certain amount of time while being an understudy. Dr. Anderson who conducted this research study said, “In the short run, playing a violent video game appears to affect aggression by priming aggressive thoughts. Longer-term effects are likely to be longer lasting as well, as the player learns and practices new aggression-related scripts that can become more and more accessible for use when real-life conflict situations arise". When a person witnesses’ violence, even in video games they think about it resulting in changes in their behavior. Just like little kids want to act like the superhero they just watched in the movie, what people watch changes the way they act. Playing violent games can also result in the gamer being violent. Psychologically, Human emotions can be the result of what their eyes see. 

Lastly, the connection between certain crimes can be the reason for violence promoted by video games. In the past couple of years, there have been some cases in which people that have committed crimes such as, murder, theft, or physical confrontation were reportedly influenced by video games. Games such as Grand theft auto, call of duty, and Fortnite are considered some of the most popular games. While one of these games requires you to survive as an object, and the other needs you to steal and sell drugs to make money, but one thing that is essential for all three of these games and that is that you need to kill other players or electronic controlled enemies.  These are all serious crimes in the real world, but in the game it’s entertainment. Most people can understand that concept, but some don’t. Maybe because they’re mentally ill or because of the way they were treated as a kid they manage to use what they learn in games and use it on others. A great example of this was in an article I was reading of murders that were linked to video games. One of the stories was of a man named Devin Moore who was found by police asleep in a stolen vehicle. Seconds later he was able to pull a gun off of one of the officers’ holsters. Then decides to shoot both officers in the head and drive off in their cruiser. When arrested he made the statement “life is like a game. Everyone got to die sometime”. It was also reported that he purchased the game Grand theft auto-playing it non-stop.

In conclusion, No matter how amazing video games are they should have their own limits. Games are a great stress reliever and calm, there are also games that don’t contain violence. Not all games promote violence, but some do. Playing games isn’t a bad thing, but certain games should have some age limit and a fixed amount of time per day for a player to prevent it from creating violence. Knowing the effects that certain video games with violent images and tasks have on the gamer says how much violence is promoted by them.