Violence in Video Games

By Collin T.

The topic of video game violence has become more and more present as the years go by, that’s why I decided to find out more about it. My topic question was “How does violence in video games effect the youth?” to find out more about this I suggested, with some help, to interview Dr. Kimberly Thompson who studies the video games and some of the effects on teenagers. Dr. Thompson was very well prepared for our group with a power point answering all the questions that we had sent to her a couple of days before. One of the main points that she kept on pushing was that the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) has no real regulations and video games are a self regulated industry.

That was one of the most surprising things that I learned others were that video games can effect youths attention span but it is not true for all kids. An increasingly important issue is that kids start to become addicted to video games replacing sports and physical activity with video games of some sort. Interesting enough some people that I interviewed at an EB games store didn’t believe that video games effects them negatively at all one man said that video games are more of a stress reliever for if he had a bad day at work and carries a portable game system with him at all times. It just goes to show that some people use video games as an outlet and not just because they are violent.

Other interesting things that Dr. Thompson pointed out was that some E rated games (Everyone) show up as T (Teen) for other consoles. Also that some games are not that well overviewed on one game on the intro to the game it shows a provocative woman then words flash on the screen “control your desire” this is on an E rated game to me that’s a little inappropriate for children as young as seven years old. How ever it is not just the ESRB the video game companies only send a couple of clips of game play for the board members to look at the board never actually gets to play the entire game. But it is also the parents that need to be more interactive with their children.

Some parents tend to buy M (mature) rated games for their teenagers but that’s not really helping out their child its exposing them to intense violence an average of 145 character in first person shooters dies per hour that seems like the video game companies are in a race to get the most violent games on the market. So far the industry is flooded with an over abundance of gore and killing but the children have become more and more understanding to how the game stores screen for underage children trying to buy games. The kids have found out that if you walk in pick a game and pay for it with confidence that the employees will most likely sell the game to them. Over all it’s a pretty poorly regulated industry.

There are a couple of things that you can do to make sure that your children are not being over influenced. First of all become more active ask questions at the stores and maybe even do some research on the game before hand. Don’t just let your children play anything and try to make them understand that it is only a game and cannot be done in real life because the consequences are too great.