The fruit of a weekend's worth of reporting...

Video game violence argument ignites in the wake of Grand Theft Auto 4

Grand Theft Auto 4, a video game released on April 29, 2008, hit store shelves surrounded in a cloud of controversy regarding its violent content. Mainstream critics of the game spoke against the liberties the game places in players’ hands, including the freedom to steal cars, run down pedestrians, hire prostitutes, and murder innocent civilians.

Some of the main critics of the game, like CNN’s Glenn Beck, say that the violence in games like Grand Theft Auto eventually becomes manifest in our children. On his show, Beck made the argument that violence in games desensitizes people who play them.

“Killing each other is actually not a natural human instinct. Senior officers found if they trained the soldiers by putting a human silhouette on the bulls-eye during target practice, they could condition the men to shoot more easily… It took 75 years and countless billions of dollars to train our soldiers to kill. Today, 60 bucks buys your kid the same thing.”

Although the game’s release triggered Beck’s argument, Grand Theft Auto 4 was making waves even before it was sold in stores. In the days leading up to its release, Grand Theft Auto made the news when the Chicago Transit Authority pulled its advertisements from bus stops. Take Two interactive, the game’s publishers, filed a lawsuit against the CTA on May 5, 2008, claiming that they had violated a $300,000 campaign agreement without any explanation.

Of course, Grand Theft Auto was not the first video game to stir up controversy. Death Race, an arcade game first released in 1976, gave players points for running down pedestrian “gremlins”. Although the game was based on a film starring Sylvester Stallone and David Carradine, its violent content provoked a major public outcry and inspired the very first organized protests over a video game.

The more recent Mortal Kombat, released in arcades in 1992, caused an uproar that eventually provoked the creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board, which is still the standard for rating games today.

Violent games also came under fire in 1999, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold of Columbine High School killed 13 people before shooting themselves. According to their parents, both Harris and Klebold were fans of the game Doom, a first-person shooter in which players must use guns to kill evil creatures.

As many people continue to speak out against violence in video games, others maintain that games pose no more of a social threat than movies or music.

“The older generation is still under the impression that games are toys, that all video games are for kids, or that video games are dangerous,” said Leigh Alexander, associate news editor for video game news site Kotaku, “there’s a lot of misinformation…. The responsibility is definitely on the parents to understand the kind of media that their kids are consuming.”

Others who believe that violence does not have directly adverse effects on players say that ultimately, games are only meant for entertainment purposes, and that parents should be able to tell whether or not their children are mature enough to play them.

Christopher Zamora, a 16-year-old gamer from Chicago, said that many teens are mature enough to understand the difference between real life and a video game.

“You’ve got to realize that it’s just a game. It’s not that serious. You’re not going to go out and shoot people or do what you see happening in the game. You just know it’s a game and do it to have fun, not for the violence.”

While there are opinions on both sides of the table, the question still stands as to whether or not violence in games actually correlates with violence in real life.

Lawrence Kutner, Ph.D, and Cheryl K. Olson, Sc.D, are co-founders and directors of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media. In 2004, they started a study on the effects of video games on teenagers. The $1.5 million study was funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and included more than 1200 middle school students.

Olson said that the results of the study were surprising and unexpected.

“About 44 percent of 7^th and 8^th grade boys were playing Grand Theft Auto video games a lot. For kids who play at least one M-rated game a lot versus kids who play other games, there was an increased risk of common aggression or school problems. The higher the proportion of mature games, the more at risk they were for common teenage problems.”

Olson also noted that the study only illustrates a correlation, and that it does not cover whether or not video games actually cause violent behavior in teens.

“Odds are, if your child is otherwise healthy, an occasional violent game isn’t going to hurt them at all. One thing we found is that a lot of kids said they got their anger and stress out by playing violent games. It’s probably a healthy thing in moderation, but we just don’t know.”

Until definitive research is conducted, the true effects of violent games on teenage minds are still yet to be determined. Until that time comes, Olson says that only parents can take action to monitor and protect young minds from potential harm.

“Sometimes content that parents object to in a game isn’t apparent right away. If there’s something you object to, you can spot it and talk to your child about it.”

To Alexander, the only thing more important than completely controlling your kids’ experiences is to understand that doing so is impossible.

“As much as parents want to, they can never completely control what their kids see and do... your hope is that you just have a good enough relationship with your child that he or she is doing those things safely, and if he is doing something inappropriate for his age, that he feels comfortable discussing it with parents.”

SIDEBAR

In order to best regulate what kids are playing, it’s important for adults to be aware of how the ratings system works. The following are some tips for knowing what’s okay for kids to play.

- Check the rating. Each game is labeled with a comprehensive rating that identifies any objectionable material in a given title. Check out this graphic for more information.

- Know your kid. One of the reasons why it’s so difficult to pinpoint the cause-and-effect relationship between violent behavior and video games is that each child is different. When buying a game for a child, keep in mind whether or not he or she is mature enough to play the game.

- Put the games in an open area of the house. This method, according to Olson, lets parents see exactly what it is their kids are playing, and it minimizes their time spent playing it. Placing games in a more open area also reduces the chances of kids playing inappropriate games.

- Take advantage of parental controls. Game systems like the Xbox 360 contain parental control features that automatically regulate which games kids play and how long they play them.

- Think ahead, and think realistically. Adolescents are crafty. They’re capable of doing inappropriate things without a parent’s consent, and to a point, there is no way one could possibly take control of a teenager’s explorative mischief. That is by no means reason to give up on the task of parenting, but understanding a son or daughter and preparing for the unexpected goes a long way.