“I think that people who write these sensationist headlines are probably people who have never played a game in their lives. Only 5% of games have an 18-rating. 95% of content is perfectly family-friendly. Games have been made by everybody - male and female, young and old – and those same people are actually playing games. It’s strange to me that something that has such cultural and economic and social impact is portrayed as the Dark Arts.” - Ian Livingstone (from Horizon: Are Video Games Really That Bad?, 2015)
About a month ago the BBC had composed a
season of programmes on the subject of all things digital. They include documentaries about
Ada Lovelace,
Bletchley Park, the future of AI and some archive stuff, including stuff related to the
BBC's own contribution to computing history.
One noted highlight was the dramatization of the making of
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and the shit storm that happened during its development.... and when
that hack went viral. What's worth noting about it is that it starred
Daniel Radcliffe as
Sam Houser, it had no authorization from
Rockstar Games (who
tried to sue the BBC for trademark infringement and failed (thank goodness as it would have ruined the visual setting if they had to remove all the logos)), and... it was done very well.Only the BBC could have turned such a story into a drama. Both protagonists (Sam and anti-video game lawyer
Jack Thompson (played by
Bill Paxton)) were treated equally. Sam is a British artist working in America who wanted to make games that'll be as artistic as films - think,
Top Gun,
Pulp Fiction,
Boyz n the Hood. Jack is a devout Christian lawyer from Florida who was alarmed by cases of gun violence involving teenagers and (erroneously) thought that video games like
Grand Theft Auto alone was the making them do it. They see their triumphs (Rock Star making
San Andreas and Jack meeting like-minded experts to build up his case and getting endorsement from
Hillary Clinton) and their disasters (the implementation of that sex scene and its discovery, Jack been
disbarred for his out of court publicity of his cases).
The next night followed it up with a
Horizon special called "Are Video Games Really That Bad?". It was a survey of research involving video games, from studies proving that violent games do increase aggression in players to studies proving that avid players have better visual processing than non-gamers (they can keep track of more moving objects, like enemies in a shoot-em up).
Now, what is happening here (with the making of these two programmes) is a sign of something significant. For decades the mainstream media has had a generally disapproving attitude towards video games in general. This was mostly because (for a long time) the stereotypical gamer was a young boy who had little of a social life and wanted to do nothing except play his favourite game - usually something violent (with a small dose of misogyny).
But within the past decade (mostly thanks to the
Nintendo Wii) that attitude has changed. Thanks to the Wii changing the demographic of gamers overnight, the argument that all gamers are young boys who don't have "a life" no longer holds water. Now the media has to be more careful when referring to gamers in general, otherwise they might accidentally offend their older and female readers/viewers by calling them something that would be more accurately used if referring to drug addicts or
men who are very familiar with the term "sexual harassment."
Video games have become an industry that generates billions of dollars, $25.1billion in the US in 2010 alone (at the same time, the recorded music industry only made $16.8billion globally). Like many creative industries, it became the subject of tax relief in the UK in 2012. They have become a major economic and cultural force in the world that can't be ignored.
Like all industries, they had rocky starts, began with products that are laughably primitive by later standards and later created products that were widely diverse to give everyone something they would like.
Let's look at the car industry, for example, It began with hand-built "horseless carriages" that barely outran a horse and left the driver all exposed to the elements. Today cars come in all sorts from the
Tata Nano to the
Bugatti Veyron.
Video games began as primitive monochrome "move a paddle" affairs that required enough electronics to fill a cabinet. Today games can be played everywhere and come in many sorts, from
massive multi-players set during World War II to simple games you can play on your phone while on the train or bus.
Also, during the early years of something new they will be people who object to it and blame it for bad stuff. The car faced this in the early-20th century. They were considered by many a nuisance - especially in the countryside, where they had the tenancy to startle horses. The US state of Pennsylvania even had a law that states -
“Any motorist who sights a team of horses coming toward him must pull well off the road, cover his car with a blanket or canvas that blends with the countryside, and let the horses pass. If the horses appear skittish, the motorist must take his car apart, piece by piece, and hide it under the nearest bushes.”
This
Punch cartoon from 1901 kind of sums up this attitude.
The same can be applied to video games. As video arcades became popular there was worry that kids would spend more time there than school, leading to disastrous academic consequences. Then came
Death Race - the first ever game to be accused of encouraging violence. Despite the primitive stick-figure graphics, the idea of kids driving virtual cars to run over virtual "gremlins" for points alone was enough to begin the decades long argument that video games were a bad influence for kids (assuming that only kids play video games).
As the video games industry began its growth from its humble origins in the 1980s, the worry about the amount of time kids played games (and their content) led to the first studies regarding it. But it wasn't until the early-1990s that the debate went crazy - when
Mortal Kombat (with its near-photo real graphics) was released. As an echo of
what happened to American comic books in 1954,
Mortal Kombat (and other similar games) were subject to a senate hearing in 1992-3. It had a similar outcome - within a year the regulatory body
ESRB was set up to dampen down the moral panic.
However, as the 1990s rolled
a number of incidents involving teens causing massacres appeared in the news, and with the increasing levels of realism in video game graphics, a number of vocal people put two and two together, resulting in the situation depicted in
The Gamechangers (set in the mid-2000s).
Although video games have stirred controversy for many reasons (from sexist imagery to addiction) the number one thing video games have been accused of is turning players into no-remorse killing machines. Its no surprise due to the popularity of games that feature violence and the added fact that the player is actively doing acts of virtual violence, which makes the debate more unique compared to similar arguments against other "passive" mediums. This is why the "video games cause violence" argument is the focus of this post.
To me the idea that violent video games cause violence in the real world is a prime example of what I call
lazy logic. A worried parent hears news about a teen committing a violent crime. That parent sees kids playing games that involve such violence. Puts the two together and thinks video games are the cause of crime. They don't bother to check for other variables that could be responsible, such as economic situation, lack of alternative means to amusement, or (particularly in America) ridiculously easy access to weapons. They just focus on the one viable based on their very limited research.
Looking at
this infographic (detailing the 20 types of
cognitive biases) people who think video games alone are to blame for violence are victims of anchoring bias, confirmation bias, conservatism bias, a bit of availability heuristic, salience, some bandwagon effect and stereotyping, and a bit of blind-spot bias too. Even (especially in the case of Jack Thompson) some clustering illusion and overconfidence. That's half the whole board. That this can apply to other examples of lazy logic, such as thinking that people with skin rich in
melanin are going to rob or kill you or (
something I take quite personally) believing that vaccines cause autism.
But it isn't all the parents fault for such cognitive biases. The media can be blamed for moulding them, as this dramatization demonstrates....
from Bart Simpson issue 98 (Bongo Comics, 2015)
Lazy research creates lazy logic.
From the time school makes them write up their own essays, students are taught not to relay on just the first source of information they find. That's anchoring bias. In real life
Kent Brockman won't say he did a Google search. News readers usually don't do their own research (they rarely have the time) and relay on the guys who write the script on the
Teleprompter -
with disastrous consequences. Although the journalists who write articles for print and web have more time for proper research (like this one) they are also prone to the same bias as their on-screen counterparts. Despite this, we trust them fool-heartedly that they did the research before hand. And, if you consider that they look up each others work as "research" it creates a vicious cycle of bias. Social media makes it worse. Taking their testimony as truth (usually without checking their references) commentators post the links spreading the half-baked "truths" further. Just look what happened to
Sunil Tripathi in 2013.
Okay, so the people who campaign against violent games are subject to lazy logic and multiple forms of cognitive biases. But what about the scientists who do the studies that prove that games create aggression? Surely they are impartial in the argument, like good scientists before doing an experiment should, right? Sadly, scientists are humans too, and are prone to the same biases and social pressures as anyone else. There is a lot of history in science of "experts" not believing in evidence that contradicts pre-existing notions and looking though a lot of such evidence to find the one piece of "evidence" that proves that notion. A good example of this is
Francis Galton (The father of
eugenics) who measured the size of peoples heads in the lazy logical reason that big heads equal high intelligence (we now know that this is bullshit). And its still true today. Just look up the debate between string theory and quantum gravity (watch
The Big Bang Theory).
Anti-game activists have cited the results of many studies dating back to the 1980s to prove that video games cause violence. They were so many that in 2005 the
American Psychological Association produced
this statement concluding these findings, giving the argument massive authority.
Lets look at these experiments. In many of these experiments what happens is that a test subject plays a game (violent or non-violent) for a short amount of time (say 15 minutes). Then the test subject is made to play a simple non-violent game with a competitor (who may be real or not). If the test subject wins or the competitor loses the test subject can punish the competitor. This punishment can be a blast of loud noise in headphones, electric shocks, made to eat spicy chilli, dipping their hands into icy cold water or other means like these. The test subject can choose the severity of the punishing, and this is what is used to measure aggression in the test subject. The results of such tests show that playing a violent game (by a small degree) increases aggression in the player.
One duo (
Bushman and Anderson) went a step further. They got a group of 257 college students and split them into two groups. One were made to play a first-person shooter while the other were made to play a simple non-violent game. Then the people of both groups were wired up to life sign monitors to measure their emotional levels (like a polygraph test). They were then shown footage of real actual acts of violence (not clips from Hollywood films). According to their results, the people who played the violent game showed lower stress levels when shown the footage than the people who played the non-violent game. This was considered proof that playing violent games "desensitizes" players to real world violence.
In 2003
Anderson wrote this brief for the APA -
Violent Video Games: Myths, Facts, and Unanswered Questions. Read it. Its very damming. With the APA backing up the argument the anti-game movement pushed on, leading to the creation of a number child protection laws in a number of US states, including California, which became the subject of
this supreme court hearing, which will be referenced later.
It seemed that the gamers were going to loss for good...
Although the Wii didn't directly change the debate, its introduction serves as a turning point in the debate's history. After 2005 studies were done that disproved many misconceptions about gamers.
And then came a bombshell....
The 2008 book
Grand Theft Childhood by
Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson was based on original research that pointed out the the non-significant trend that adolescents that don't play video games at all are most at risk of violent behaviour. It also said that research that show that video games are beneficial have been downplayed or given little media attention. More crucially it criticized previous studies proving the increase in aggression, due to (mostly) researchers confusing signs of aggression from normal teenage behaviour. The authors conclusion is that “parents, politicians, researchers and child advocates probably worry too much about the wrong things, and too little about more subtle issues and complex effects that are much more likely to affect our children”.
Since then, studies that prove the benefits of video game have been given more airings to provide a more balanced argument. Also, a number of experts have seriously questioned the "video games cause aggression" finding, citing one massive contradictory observation....
Although video games have become more graphic and violent since the 1980s, at the same time rates of youth crime have
fallen. Yes, compared to popular belief (and the recent increase of incidents with mad men with guns in America) incidents of crime involving adolescents have fallen in the West in the past 20 years.
In the US from 1993 (a year after the release of
Mortal Kombat) to 2013 (the release year of
Grand Theft Auto V) youth violence
fell by 83%.
In the UK (according to
this 2013 article from The Guardian) their has been a fall in property crime, despite the economic downturn. According to the data the fall began at about the same time the
iPhone was introduced, indicating that the smartphone is giving young people enough distraction to occupy their boredom. Boredom that would have led to acts of actual vandalism (not to be confused with acts of cultural vandalism, like this one).
One voice for this counter argument is
Christopher Ferguson. Look him up gamers, he's on your side. Want proof? In 2014 he wrote
this damming article as a response to
this article by
Bushman.
The basis of his counter-argument is the
routine activity theory. This theory came about when it was noticed that despite increasing prosperity and implementation of social welfare in western countries after World War II crime rates increased. The theory is that crime isn't the direct result of poverty, inequality or unemployment (the classic reasons fro crime). Crime is in fact something that is caused by opportunity. The increase in affluence increases the opportunities for crime. In the case of violent video games, the players of such games aren't committing crimes at all because the game is occupying them, denying them the boredom that would have given them the opportunity to act out their aggression they gained from playing violent games. Ferguson cites the evidence that crime rates briefly fall as soon as a popular violent game is released as proof of this theory.
“People sometimes get a bit sort of pent up when their playing certain games. But, those high emotions happen when you are watching a football match or when you are arguing about politic. That kind of stuff evaporates in a matter of minutes.” –
Ian Livingstone (from Horizon: Are Video Games Really That Bad?, 2015)
So what is causing the increased aggression detected in all the earlier tests? One plausible answer is something very familiar to gamers who have trouble completing a level - frustration.
In 2014
Andrew Przybylski of Oxford University carried out an experiment like the earlier one with one crucial difference - the games the test subjects played. The game he choose was
Tetris. Half his test subjects played normal
Tetris while the other half played
Tetris's evil twin - Bastet. Both games are the same, except for more crucial devilish thing - while in normal Tetris the selection of what piece comes down next is random. In Bastet this selection is done by an algorithm designed to give the player the
worst possible piece. After playing the game the test subjects were given the typical icy cold water challenge. Then they were asked how long should someone be given this treatment. People who played Bastet suggested an average of
7 seconds more than people who played normal
Tetris. In earlier tests using a violent and a non-violent game comparative variable, this would be evidence of increased aggression. But in this test, this increase came form people who were playing a game with
no violence at all! What can be concluded from this experiment is that acts of violence alone don't cause increases in aggression. Przybylski suggests that the real cause of violence in the real world is motive. This makes a lot more sense. Having built-up aggression alone doesn't make you do violent things. You need a motive to act out that aggression, such as frustration from not completing a level, desire of an expensive item that you can't afford or just plain boredom (yes, boredom is a motive, and the most common one that leads to acts of vandalism (including cultural vandalism)).
Lets use this idea to explain one incident that has been used as anti-game propaganda. On 7th June 2003 in
Fayette, Alabama 18-year-old
Devin Moore was arrested for allegedly stealing a car. While in the police station Devin got hold of an officer's gun and shoot him. He then shoot two other officers and fled the scene in a patrol car parked outside. He was apprehended hours later and convicted for murder. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection in 2005. This case was the one used by Jack Thompson in his lawsuit against Sony (for making GTA available on Devin's PlayStation) in
Strickland v. Sony, and was dramatized in
The Gamechangers.
First two things worth noting is the location and the fact Devin is an African-American. Anyone with some knowledge of modern American history will know that Alabama is noted for been one of the offending states during the era of racial segregation. Noting that, what actually happened gets a bit more clearer. Then note that his dad has said that he had trouble disciplining Devin in the past, meaning that Devin is a typical teenager who has authority issues.
So you got a teen who has authority issues who is of an ethic group that constantly get harassed by the police. You can now see that there is a clear motive to kill those officers. Its the same one anyone who has been harassed by them develops (without the need of a games console). But the final nail is that Devin was accidentally given the opportunity to act out his revenge - the unguarded gun. If the officer had been more careful and kept his gun guarded from his detainee the death of those three officers will never have happened. And the thing is the circumstances of the incident could have led to any person with a history of police harassment to do the same thing Devin did (regardless of experience with GTA).
And before anyone cites Devin's "life is a video game" quote, I like to point out that he said it after been on the run for several hours in the stolen patrol car. After doing such a thing you tend not to have enough time to think what you going say very carefully and most quotes from criminals after just been caught are usually the first thing they could think off. I think it came to him while in the car when he realized that what he was doing was similar to something in GTA.
The idea that motive is the device that releases aggression and opportunities allow such motives to activate such releases makes a lot more sense than blaming a single "smoking gun" factor as the cause of violence. This idea can be applied to all incidents anti-gamers have used to prove that games cause violence. For example,
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were victims of bullying before they took advantage of America's easy access to guns and took their revenge in
Columbine High School in 1999.
And here's one more piece of evidence. In 2006
Rene Weber scaned the brains of people playing shooter games and found that, although playing the game activated the
amygdala (part of the primitive brain linked to aggression), playing the game also activated the
anterior cingulate cortex (the part of the brain used to suppressed emotion). This suggests that most gamers are in control of their emotions while playing than popular myth suggest and (and this is my interpenetration) gamer can tell the difference between fantasy and reality.
All this evidence confirms that I have thought for years - the argument that violent video games cause violence in the real world is total irrational reactionary bullshit invented by the media for the purposes of selling newspapers in the 1980s. Like the other piece of bullshit newspapers then said about only gays get AIDS, anyone who continues to preach this nonsense is a moron and deserves what's coming to them.
Although I am not a gamer, I have played GTA many times. I have shot at parked cars to make them explode. I have fired bazookas at the police from a rooftop. I have driven trucks through traffic with careless abandon. And after all of that I have never developed the urge to do such things for real - because I have already done them virtually. With this personal experience I came to the conclusion that instead of causing violence, video games provide an outlet for violence preventing it from happening in the real world. The
routine activity theory confirms this theory. Adding the motivation and opportunity trigger theory that explains all crime and the results from brain scans, you have to conclude that the argument that video games cause crime is distracting us from the true reasons for the violence - such as ridiculously easy access to guns.
With all the counter-evidence that has been building in the past decade they are calls for the APA to retract its 2005 statement. However, in August 2015, the
APA reviewed the evidence again and came to the same conclusion as before.
Despite this, in 2011 the case
Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass'n resulted in a significant milestone in the debate - the Supreme Court ruled that video games had
First Amendment protection, like many other forms of media. This decision will hamper any future attempts of anti-gamers creating game-targeted laws.
However, looking at the results of a national telephone survey made before the decision was announced, 57% of American voters agreed that the states should have the “right to regulate the sale of video games [that are violent] in order to protect minors; the same way states regulate tobacco, alcohol and pornography.” while 39% agree that “parents should make the decision” about what video games they purchase for their children, and what constitutes “too violent.” Those voters agreed to the statement that “states do not have the right to decide that some video games are too violent for [minors], any more than they have the right to decide what literature or fairy tales are too violent.”
But what is revealing is that men are more likely to agree with the "its the parents responsibility" stand, while women are more likely to think that "the government should step in." Also (not surprisingly) young people are more likely to agree with the stand that the government shouldn't have the right to say what is “too violent for kids.”
With these results
one commentator has said that "these results [by the supreme court] put the Court on a potential collision course with the public."
Its been four years since that survey, and (knowing human nature) little will have changed in public opinion by now. Although the scientific evidence is in the gamer's favour, a lot of people in power today are from a generation who were not exposed to video games until later on in their lives - as the subject of damming moral panic news items, leading to some bias in their judgements. The idea has become so engrained in our culture that it'll take generations for the idea to finally die out and be limited to the ramblings of "flat-earthers".
Until then, we will have to witness a number of insanities, such as the
video game burning event in Southington, Connecticut in 2013, which was a reaction to the
Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
Remember that car dismantling law from the 1900s?
I can think of a law that is enforced today that can be seen in a century from now in the same light as that one. In Germany (thanks to the
BPjM) if a game features a character bleeding it has to bleed green blood. Many won't see this law as funny, because today it kind of makes sense, using the logic of our time. It creates a bit of obvious artificiality while playing to remind the player that he is playing a game. Its worth mentioning here.
Today the idea of a law forcing motorists to dismantle their cars if they encounter a horse on the road is seen as a ridiculous over reaction towards new technology from a backward time. Would people a century from now see the attitude that video games cause violence in children in the same way?
I think so.
Now, if you excuse me, I got virtual cars to steal in San Andreas.
They an't going to crash themselves.
(I have done this a million times and I can testify that
I have never done this (on purpose) in the real world.)
UPDATE: In March 2016
The Guardian has published an article (written by
Rich Stanton) about this subject that is worth reading, about the flaws in the research. This quote from it sums it up...
“There have been 25 years of research in this area and, for the most part, it’s not very good research” - Dr Peter Etchells of Bath Spa University
CLICK HERE TO READ IT
In March 2017 a German study was published that proved that playing video games has no long-term effects on a player's empathy. This is the first to look at the long-term effects of such media consumption.
