Video Game Violence Essays - Violence In Video Games, Windows Games

Video Game Violence Doomed: Are Teens Taking Video Games to Far? A sniper perched high in a eagles nest zooms in through his scope to the head of his enemy, pulls the trigger, the enemy falls to the ground headless. This is a image that is common in the world of war, and now in the world of video games. Teens all over the world have become completely addicted to first person fighting games. With technology as great as it is today game makers are able to designed games that are so real it is truly scary. Millions of teens ( mostly male) play games in which they walk around various levels picking up weapons and killing ruthlessly their opponent. In the same day, we have teens walking around schools killing classmates ruthlessly. As an avid video game player I admit I have played many of the shootem up games. I completely agree that these games are fun and tend to feed the male ego. I also have played games that are too violent. Games wherein enemies bleed everywhere and almost nonstop. Games that you can see the opponents facial expression before yo ur shoot them between the eyes. I have even played a game in which there is a secret level that is modeled after Columbine. Do these violent video games influence teen violence? Probably the first violent video game was Death Race, which spawned in the 1970s. The object was to drive and kill as many pedestrians as possible. Early games such as Missile Command and Space Invaders both had to do with the destruction of the planet. (Violence, 375) With the onset of Nintendo the video game world exploded, going from one home console to a 6.1 billion dollar industry. In the 1980s video game companies designed games for every audience but many had a similar plot of violence. In a 1982 TV Guide eighteen popular video games were reviewed, fourteen of them were violent. There has always been some sort of violence in games. In the 90s two of the probably most influential video games of the decade were introduced. Doom, and Quake they were first person shooters in which you went level by level slaughtering your opponents. With the onset of the internet, the companies who made Doom, Quake and others made their games available for anyone to download trial versions via the internet. Along with downloading the video games, gamers where allowed to play other players across the world. Another huge game that had plenty of violence and gore in it was the arcade smash Mortal Kombat. The public finally realized how violent video games were when this game was released in 1994 for home consoles. The publics concerns led to congressional hearings in order to set up a rating system for video games similar to the rating system used in movies and television. ( 375) After the hearings a definant rating system was set on all games in order to prevent young children from viewing the bloody violence seen in games. The rating systems ranged from; E for everyone, T for teens and M for mature. Today violence is apparent in thousands of video games. The question now is, where does the American public stand on this issue? If one where to utilize a search engine and look up the words Teen Violence they would find numerous articles, journals, and publications stating several opinions on the issue at hand. They all come down to two arguments: those that feel that video games directly correlate to teen violence; and those who oppose the idea that any video game or media tool could cause such actions in a young adult. Proponents of the idea that video games could directly cause teen violence hold one core belief: video games encourage/promote teen violence directly, and that inherently violent children are only encouraged further by such intensely violent games. The American Medical Association (AMA), in a statement before a House subcommittee in 1994, stated this: like violence depicted elsewhere in the media, video game violence has a horrifying potential to coarsen society, promote acts of violence against real victims, and desensitize children to the real thing (Violence 195). Their report mentioned some