Is it fair to blame video games for the crimes of men?
Abhijit Asad
With rising social trends of violent behavior and acts, some people inevitably appear on various media platforms to pin the blame (using largely baseless claims and, on occasion, highly dubious ‘research’) on the assertive influence of violent games and movies on young, gullible minds. In fact, it’s startlingly similar to how all people of certain religious faiths are demonized as a whole for the actions of a small percentage of violent individuals or groups. As a devout gamer who has been playing violent games and watching violent movies since infancy, yet grown up to be a quiet and peaceful individual, I feel obligated to speak up about the highly unfair judgment that is imposed on us in this way.
Here’s the biggest deal about violent video games — they are not real, nor have they ever claimed to be real.
Arcade time-wasters aside, video games, violent or not, have in fact come a long way since their early days. Barring a few extreme examples (one particularly controversial game called ‘Hatred’, focused on killing innocent civilian noncombatants, comes to mind, although it didn’t become very popular), commercially available violent games typically have the player killing evil entities, be they zombies, monsters, aliens or criminals (Nazis have been regular villains in more games than I care to count, for example) in order to achieve a greater goal (up to and including saving the world/universe) or to at least save his/her loved ones. The result is nothing short of a proper cinematic experience, except you don’t remain an uninvolved observer in it. Your actions often result in direct effects on the game’s events, and there are often critical moral choices to be made that affect outcomes in diverse ways. As storytelling platforms, games can now be just as profound as books or films, if not more.
As a result of the motive that is placed before the protagonist(s), the player doesn’t just kill enemies in the game for the sake of killing. It’s done because the plot demands it, and because the player understands that it is the right (or the least wrong) thing to do, given the circumstances of the game universe. The player is an actor, nothing more. And the dopamine hit that a player gets out of playing their part right is not because they are enjoying the visceral rush of murder and bloodshed, but because they are perfectly (and often, innovatively, because there are often multiple paths available) playing an important part in a solid story, a story that can make one laugh and cry and think, just like any good movie can.
Many violent games (e.g. the Deus Ex and Dishonored series) even come with a pacifist way of solving problems, where the player can sneak or negotiate their way past problems and problematic adversaries. Yes, this is a real thing, and gamers take far greater pride in pulling off a ‘pacifist run’ of a game because it takes a lot more skill to pull it off successfully rather than just going in like John Rambo with all guns blazing.
And even when the player does have to go in with guns blazing, it’s never the same as holding a real gun or shooting a real person, because what the player is holding is a controller (or a mouse-keyboard setup, for PC elitists). The weapon they wield is only an image. The enemy that they are killing does not exist, it is an image that represents a moral evil that is out to kill them (and just as it happens in other storytelling media, there are often characters and situations of grey morality, as well as difficult choices between multiple unfavorable outcomes, because a good plot isn’t necessarily all linear with happy endings). There is nothing wrong with stopping evil, and it’s the only reason why I would kill in a game.
As for encouraging mindless slaughter – many games don’t even let the player target noncombatants, and many games outright penalize the player for attacking non-enemies. Even though the player is only an actor, such deplorable acts are looked down upon in most games, which, if anything, motivates the player to play his/her role in the game righteously.
However, addiction to gaming, just like any other form of addiction, is still a very real issue. If someone plays video games for 6 hours a day or longer on a regular basis, it is rather likely for that person to develop a grossly distorted sense of judgment, in the same way a person who watches television or partakes in any kind of recreational activity (except maybe reading books) for 6+ hours a day would be affected. It doesn’t matter if the game in question is Doom or Angry Birds, or if the stuff on TV is National Geographic or something very much depraved. Too much of anything is never a good thing. Sure, water is harmless, but ingesting 20 liters of it in an hour can kill anyone.
Some hecklers have even gone as far as comparing gamers to drug addicts, which is an unfair and broken analogy at best. Not only do drug addicts far outnumber game addicts in terms of percentage and population alike, but also, unlike drug addicts, you can yank a game addict away from the source of addiction without risking issues like withdrawal and medical complications. How many video game rehab centers are there in the entire world? How many patients end up at mental hospitals due to video game addiction? Exactly.
Some argue that a gamer’s view of normalcy is often skewed, affecting their individual traits, such as morality, in a negative way. However, as a gamer, I would define ‘normal’ by the parameters of the game in question. If the game has me fighting as a soldier/special forces operative against an evil dictator who tortures his people (e.g. the Just Cause series), I would consider it normal to be sent on a mission to take him and his armies down, because it is a moral necessity as well as a plot requirement. If East Pakistanis remained squeamish about fighting back against West Pakistanis in 1971 because it’s not ‘normal’ to kill people, we wouldn’t have become Bangladesh in the first place. We did it because the celestial plot demanded it, any definition of ‘normal’ be damned. This definition keeps varying from case to case, story to story. Sometimes, the player also has the option of behaving very unpleasantly and committing rather dastardly acts in certain games, but even that is a presumed and acted role, not the player’s own persona, and the game’s events unfold around those choices accordingly, illustrating cause and effect with a brilliance that can only blossom through an interactive medium.
At the end of the day, we are descended from animals and are animals ourselves (albeit rather advanced ones), like it or not. As the apex predator at the top of the food chain, violence is in our blood, so it’s not unnatural for WWE/Mortal Kombat to strike familiar chords within our heart. However, that doesn’t necessarily make them lust for violence or become violent as a result. This detachment from what’s real is what truly defines entertainment as entertainment at the end of the day.
If someone fails to differentiate between entertainment and reality, it’s the fault of the individual, not the fault of the medium. Casual Googling can produce a pile of evidence supporting claims about violent games and gritty films and heavy music promoting violence and hardening people’s hearts, but there are also megatons of evidence around us where people play violent games, watch hard-boiled films and listen to heavy music all their lives without ever committing any violent acts in real life. But it is always the bad cases that get highlighted when a subject is under scrutiny, and this scenario is no exception. It doesn’t help that people are too quick to jump to conclusions either.
The most important thing about violent games is that no one forces anyone else to play or watch violent/morally complex games or films (because not everyone needs idealism or deep plots), and there is always the Candy Crush Saga for their tastes. If someone is squeamish about watching gory films, they have the option of simply not watching them. But to blame the presence of a head for the presence of headaches is just wrong, and it is such blatant and unfair biasing that one must take a stand against.
