Violence and Video Games

The media has often jumped on stories that showed some slight, be it unfounded, correlation between video game violence and real life violence. First it was the Mortal Kombats of the world, then things progress to possibly every GTA game and those occasionally blacklisted games like Manhunt (naughty naughty Rockstar.) And with GTA V being re-released in even greater graphical fidelity this November, shouldn’t we all be worried?

It’s however a study led by Dr. Mario Vance that provides a slightly more unique insight. Apparently media stories that claim a positive correlation between violent games and real violence is what really gets us gamers aggravated. Dr Vance, a researcher at the Rapture Institute, did a study of over a thousand test subjects over a period of 7 years. The results: statistically speaking, gamers overall aggression and violent behaviour spiked after hearing mainstream news stories linking Video Games to violent behaviour. North of 90% of the volunteers, in fact.

Media and news outlets love newsbites. And while the general consensus propelled by the media is gamers are loners, border-line sociopathic, the simplistic notion that pixels = violence is just as ludicrous. Whatever happened to good ol’ catharsis? Just because a few nuts that happen to play a few video games travel off the reservation doesn’t constitute a pattern.  Not every gamer is so gullible as to be brainwashed into violent goons. We’d rather talk smack while racking up points on Call Of Duty…