video games | Matt Keats

It seems today that the media can be blamed for an array of almost anything committed within the modern world.
Obesity? Violence? T.V. will take the blame!
Taking a look at such articles, it is clear how blatantly the media tries to lay off such tragedies, on to things such as video games and television. Does the article itself, not say the subject “felt racially discriminated against, and believed he had been financially “screwed””? Apparently these variables have been ignored, as he “played violent video games including Call of Duty for up to 16 hours at a time and friends believe it could have pushed him towards becoming a mass murderer.” Despite the lack of sources, is there any proof that ‘Call of Duty’ drove him towards these murders any more than being financially ‘screwed’ may have?

On a personal note, my friends and I have had all night Xbox parties (excuse the geek-ishness), playing similar games, and I’ll have you know, shockingly, none of us have committed a single murder.

In all seriousness though, if we were to take violent shows and video games, even television as a whole, away, would we see a revolution, a dramatic change in the actions of society? Would the world rejoice in peacetime? I’m sorry, but what level of C.O.D did Hitler reach before he committed mass genocide? Perhaps Captain Cook and the crew had just finished the latest episode of ‘Dexter’ before slaughtering the Australian Aboriginals. My point is that violence has always been apparent within society, long before the invention of television, let alone violent video games.
What, you might ask, allows people to blame the media for such things? Well it’s a little thing called MTV! What? No, sorry, it’s the ‘effects model’. Basically, a theory saying, this (video games) causes, this (violence).
So, it seems the ‘effects model’ is incredibly flawed.

Focusing on one of nine flaws pointed out from David Gauntlett’s article, the ‘effects model’ makes no attempt to understand meanings of the media in question [1] . Many games, in my experience, particularly The Fallout series, portrays morals and rationality, giving the player choices to make. This creates an extra dimension within the game, giving reason and credibility, where the violence on its own would obviously seem drastic and unneeded.

Image from: http://www.fallout.fm/

So while video games are an easy punching bag for the onslaught of blame, the ‘effects model’ seems to be somewhat broken, leaving such accusations wildly unjustified. While violence within video games and television may be a factor there are always numerous contributing factors to, in this case, violence.

Thanks for Reading!

Refrences:

David Gauntlett, 1998 – Ten things wrong with the ‘effects model” in Roger Dickinson, Ramaswani Harindranath & Olga Linné, eds, 1998, Approaches to Audiences