The American public no longer regards video games as the demons they once did. As far back as 1976, video games like Exidy’s Death Race caused mass outrage with the most primitive digital depictions imaginable of violence and sex. After seeing the game in a 60 Minutes segment, people were so horrified that you earned points by running over stick figures that Exidy recalled the game from arcades.
It’s a pattern that’s repeated through the years, from the '90s Senate hearings looking at the content of games like Mortal Kombat and the all but forgotten Night Trap through the Rockstar Games scandals of the last decade surrounding Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt 2. As the medium has swelled to a nearly $80 billion global industry and technology like Microsoft’s Kinect has transformed video games into medical aids, games have settled into their role as a rapidly growing form of human expression. The Supreme Court of the United State laid down the law in "Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association": Video games constitute speech, just like books, movies, music, and art of any stripe.
However, the horrific and frequent gun violence that plagued the United States in 2012 has brought the relationship between people, especially children, and video games back into the limelight. On the national stage, President Barack Obama and a bipartisan coalition of senators led by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) passed the Violent Content Research Act of 2013 that calls on the National Academy of Sciences to engage in new studies to determine if violent video games have a "direct and long-lasting impact" on children."
The national dialogue is far removed, however, from the intensely heated conflict that exists at the smaller, more personal scale. On the one hand you have the millions of Americans who play games, whether on a console or a smartphone, and have been raised in a time where such things are ubiquitous. On the other is a (generally older) population whose exposure to games has been limited to the most visible examples of the medium, including billion-dollar series like Call of Duty and notorious time sinks like FarmVille that paint a limited portrait of gaming's full range.
Kyle Moody, a teacher at the University of Iowa and vocal advocate of gaming, recently published of his correspondence with an anonymous woman ("A Deeply Concerned Parent") that exemplifies the misunderstandings and fears that color the debate surrounding video games. After hearing Moody discuss his course on video game journalism on the radio, ADCP contacted him to discuss her extreme concern about video games’ role in society and particularly in her own son’s life. She described in detail the frustration inherent in raising a teenager with no interests beyond playing games, to the point that his academic performance was suffering.
"Video games, with their immediate gratification and the feeling that you've 'accomplished’ something when you get to the 'next level,’ must be one hell of a lot more fun than trying to solve algebraic equations or bothering to prepare for a test in American Studies," lamented ADCP. "Games can really suck you in; algebra and history do not, at least not most of us. It would be hard enough, even in the best of worlds, to convince a teenager that algebra and history matter; faced with the seductive appeal of myriads of increasingly slick video games, it's damn near impossible."
ADCP laid the blame for her son’s academic and social problems at the feet of games, game makers, and educators like Moody who have been seduced by the pleasures of entertainment, like the desensitized characters of Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World. Moody, in turn, responded to ADCP by asking why video games and not addictive behavior was the root of the problem.
"You’re not wrong to be concerned about the time your son spends playing video games," wrote Moody. "But let me ask you this: If there were no video games here, wouldn’t there be some other stimulus that could threaten his time by diverting his attention away from, wait, what did you call it? 'What I feel are much more worthwhile and ultimately rewarding pursuits.’ What if it was skateboarding, sports, painting, poetry, theater, or some other form of cultural expression? How is this argument you are making different from the many times that cultural industries have evolved to offer new ways of viewing the world? You’re an educated person, so I’ll assume you can locate the historical analogues. Perhaps by learning more about video games you can have a conversation with your son about why he likes them."
Moody’s response to ADCP illuminates an immediate problem: Video games are addictive, but their addictive properties are not exclusive to the medium. Scientists have been studying human beings addiction to raw information for more than a decade as Internet use has become a fixture of modern living. "It’s like a dopamine squirt to be connected," Dr. John Ratey of Harvard explained to The New York Times in 2003. The sense of achievement associated with gaming is not unlike what fuels exercise addiction as well as gambling addiction. In this regard, ADCP’s fears about video games are understandable. Like anything else, they can become the focal point of unhealthy behavior all too easily, a point Moody is quick to emphasize. As Moody says again and again, though, that’s hardly the fault of video games.
Moody doesn’t go very far in exploring the myriad educational and even health benefits that video games offer. Video games actually encourage problem solving and memory skills in young people. "[Children] have to discover the rules of the game and how to think strategically," explained Professor James Paul Gee of Univerity of Wisconsin-Madison in 2005 following the release of author Steven Johnson’s now famous Everything Bad is Good For You. "Like any problem solving that is good for your head, it makes you smarter."
Even video games that can horrify with their grisly depictions of violence have benefits that individuals like ADCP are unaware of due to an unwillingness to engage the material. Assassin’s Creed II, for example, includes exhaustively researched historical information about Renaissance-era art and politics. Some studies have even found that rather than heighten aggression, violent video games ease those feelings. In their 2010 study, "The Hitman study: Violent video game exposure effects on aggressive behavior, hostile feelings, and depression," Dr. Christopher Ferguson and Dr. Stephanie Rueda found that, "Results do not support a link between violent video games and aggressive behavior, but do suggest that violent games reduce depression and hostile feelings in players through mood management."
And rather than distract people from "more worthwhile and ultimately rewarding pursuits," some studies are finding that video games can help improve people’s quality of life for longer. Drs. Anne McLaughlin and Jason Allaire of North Carolina State University published their study "Successful aging through digital games: Socioemotional differences between older adult gamers and non-gamers" this March. In it they found a notable and repeated link between gaming and feelings of emotional wellbeing in people over the age of 63. Those who played games regularly – roughly 61 percent of the 140 participants of the study -- reported that they felt both emotionally and socially well off. Those who didn’t play games more regularly reported feelings of depression.
As McLaughlin and Allaire say in their study, however, their results point to the need for more study. They don’t know for sure if it’s the games that improves mental health in seniors, or simply the mental activity they stimulate. Just as Moody says that games can’t be blamed wholly for bad behavior associated with, neither are they wholly responsible for the good. Video games are just tools, outlets for people to express themselves in as vast a variety of ways as anything else. They are still relatively new creations, and the unknown can frighten anyone, hence the uproar that’s followed games for years. The same uproar and indignation that followed rock and roll in the '50s and novels in the 19th century.
This is why the Violent Content Research Act of 2013 is ultimately a good thing. It will lead to, ideally, a deeper understanding of how we interact with games. For parents, children, players, academics, and everyone else with a vested interest in a gaming future, the most important thing is to maintain perspective.
Source : ign[dot]com
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