Violence in Video Games: Why all the Fuss?!

In my day to day life, I enjoy sewing, reading, baking and cuddling puppies. While playing video games, I enjoy decimating bodies with C4, stabbing spears through people’s vertebras and repeatedly introducing my Galil assault rifle to people's faces. 

We gamers are more than used to switching personas. I’d never knock someone over in the street, but you can bet that as soon as I get on that horse in Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, it becomes a frickin’ ten pin people bowling bonanza (I struggle to get those words out my mouth...) I quite literally go out of my way to knock people over. I don’t care if every guard from Rome to Scunthorpe is on my tail because I just punched a bard right in the goolies, if there’s a guy standing surreptitiously on his own in the middle of the street… that bitch is mine.

Is this because video games skew my moral perception, blurring the line between my idea of right and wrong? Are video games making me more violent? Is the real me deep down inside actually a sociopathic bitch? Nope to the power of three. We do it because the functionality is there. Gamers always like to see how far they can push things. (And because it’s funny to watch people fall over in any medium, obviously.)

People have got to remember that how you act in a video game has no bearing upon how you'd act in real life. I mean, heck, I spent an hour nursing a bumble bee back to health with a teaspoon of honey when I found it sitting exhausted in the middle of the pavement! Yet, when I get on Red Dead Redemption, I like lassoing deer and then shotgunning them down so I can sell their pelts in some stupid, tiny mountain outpost. I do it because I can and because I am more than capable of distinguishing right from wrong, like millions of other gamers.


So instead of everyone being impressed that you can actually hogtie a bandit and drag him halfway across Mexico behind a horse or lay him in the path of an oncoming train (I'm actually too chicken to do that...) people become outraged that this functionality is available. Don’t panic, oh non-gaming public! Developers aren’t all sadistic psychos and gamers aren’t all potential murderers just looking for inspiration; violence adds a sense of realism in many ways and like sex (we'll talk about that later...), has its place in the gaming experience. 

But the most important thing to remember is: games that have violence in them are not for children. Just because it is a video game doesn’t mean it’s safe for Jimmy Junior to sit down with for twelve hours. There are video game ratings for a reason, just like movies (However galling I find it to be asked for ID when buying Final Fantasy….) and these are to protect youngsters who shouldn’t see some of the stuff that’s out there. Games with violence in them are for a mature audience; people who can deal with seeing and 'participating' in violence. They have moral boundaries that won't get warped by playing games with violent elements in them. Kids on the other hand, are more impressionable and need to have their access to such games restricted until they are mature enough to handle it.

I'm trying to think of a witty one liner to end this post with but my brain has started to ooze out my ears and the only thing I seem capable of doing now is eating coconut chocolate and watching The Borgias.



I actually wasn't joking about
cuddling puppies...