Game Developer magazine editor Patrick Miller examines the renewed debate surrounding violence and video games, in this reprint from the February issue.
As our industry is dragged into yet another round of scapegoating, I am discovering that the conversation about violent video games is rigged against us from the start, and that we collectively need to change the terms of the conversation before we sit down to talk with anyone.The question is the problemIf someone asked you, "Do violent video games cause people to be more violent?", how would you answer? Well, science is a good first bet, but it's difficult to draw a scientifically valid chain of causality behind the act of playing a violent video game, an individual's corresponding physical response (increased heart rate, higher blood pressure, and so on) and psychological response, and then use the results to connect all those factors to something like an overall uptick in mass shootings.
When it comes down to it, we simply don't understand enough about the psychology of individual people, or the sociology of people in the aggregate, to answer this question definitively. So, instead, we rely on our intuitions and our past experience to guide us. Have you ever consumed a media work that made you feel something? Probably. Did those feelings incite you to do something bad to other people? Probably not--but perhaps you might imagine it could incite other people (children, mentally ill, and so on) to do so."Gamers" are other peopleIn general, we don't think of ourselves as "Book-Readers" or "Movie-Watchers" or "Music-Listeners." But playing games is marketed as an identity; if you play games, you are a Gamer. This is likely left over from the days before everyone carried around smartphones, but it persists because people still make plenty of money selling to Gamers.
I'm not a businessperson, but I imagine that creating a dedicated audience that defines themselves primarily as "people who buy what you're selling" is pretty amazing (even if that means energy-drink vendors show up to professional conferences and sling tall-boys around).
But when you've defined your consumers as "different from everyone else because they consume your product," it's easier to blame them (and you) for things that go wrong, because you've conveniently defined them as "different." (This is one reason why we generally don't use the word "Gamer" in Game Developer, by the way; it is exclusive, not inclusive, and it paints a picture of a person that many people who play games simply cannot relate to in order to sell stuff to people, which does the medium as a whole a disservice.)Games are defined by violenceWhat is a violent video game? The tautological answer is "a video game with violence in it." But Angry Birds is basically about avian suicide bombers, and no one calls it a violent video game, so the answer must be something else. Video games suffer from an unfortunate rhetorical shift because our genres typically describe what we do, and that kind of makes us look bad when our most popular genre has (first) "person shooter" right there like it's an aisle at Blockbuster. Sure, as a consumer, it makes sense to group games that are similar in action, just like how movies group by what viewers feel (movie genres are typically defined by emotions and setting themes; "science fiction comedy," for example). Unfortunately, that means we have a big shelf of games about shooting people in the face.
If we broke down the NPD Group's list of 2012's top-10 best-selling retail games in terms of violent games vs. non-violent games, then it doesn't look great; there are five games out of the top 10 that would be violent games. But if we described that top 10 in terms of movie genres, we'd have two war movies (Call of Duty games), a historical action movie (Assassin's Creed 3), a sci-fi action movie (Halo 4), a post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller (Borderlands 2), and a kiddie superhero cartoon (Lego Batman 2) up there with three sports documentaries (NBA 2K, FIFA Soccer, Madden) and a dance movie (Just Dance 4).
We should be talking about controversial games, and discuss their messages and merits--including their questionable, gratuitous, or excessive uses of violence--but that shouldn't hold the medium hostage any more than Django Unchained should be able to hold film hostage. We should talk about how the companies that sell games which involve shooting people in countries that the U.S. is currently at war with to secure its access to oil are forging cross-promotions with the ones that sell guns and Hummers, but that shouldn't require industry reps across the spectrum of games to meet with a government task force.Great (power, responsibility)So how do we recast the conversation about violent video games? We can refuse to participate in conversations that insist on pigeonholing the medium, but only if we're also advancing other conversations in its place; first, by ditching the word "Gamer" and all of its respective marketing connotations; second, by defining our games in terms of content and theme; third, by making games that use violence with purpose and calling out games and creators that don't. Game developers have in their hands the power to simulate experiences that no other medium has ever had before, and that power should not be dismissed with "Oh, they're just video games."
This article was originally published in the February 2013 issue of Game Developer Magazine. This issue also features a Mark of the Ninja postmortem, an in-depth look at building better touchscreen controls, and more. You can subscribe to the magazine here, download our iOS app here, or buy individual issues here.
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Comic Book Nerd? Cineast? Rock Music Fan?
We do think of ourselves in these categories very often, all these categories are just examples of categories which not only describe a reading/watching/listening habit, but also a certain kind of relation to the subject. A relation, that can be described as a person that has certain reading/watching/listening habits, that define him/her partly as a person. The term "Gamer" is used in a similar fashion and is not more exclusive then the term "Cineast".
"f we broke down the NPD Group's list of 2012's top-10 best-selling retail games in terms of violent games vs. non-violent games, then it doesn't look great; there are five games out of the top 10 that would be violent games. But if we described that top 10 in terms of movie genres, we'd have two war movies (Call of Duty games), a historical action movie (Assassin's Creed 3), a sci-fi action movie (Halo 4), a post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller (Borderlands 2), and a kiddie superhero cartoon (Lego Batman 2) up there with three sports documentaries (NBA 2K, FIFA Soccer, Madden) and a dance movie (Just Dance 4). "
There are several problems with this, first of all, games aren't movies, every comparsion on this level doesn't make sense, but even if we ignore this, "historical action movie", "sci-fi action movie", "post-apocalypic sci-fi thriller" or "kiddie superhero cartoon" aren't "movie genres", they are movie descriptions, you mix form (action) content (history, sci-fi, super-hero) and the target audience (kiddie) till you end up with an over-differentiated description of a movie, that has nothing to do with the term "Genre".
"We should be talking about controversial games, and discuss their messages and merits--including their questionable, gratuitous, or excessive uses of violence--but that shouldn't hold the medium hostage any more than Django Unchained should be able to hold film hostage."
Agreed, but then we should acknowledge, that Django Unchained isn't amongst the Top 10 of the most successful movies, it is not even close (currently No. 18 US, No. 30 International for all movies launched in 2012). It's a fact, that games glorifying brutal (gun) violence and torture are much more successfull then movies showing the same things.
These same genres are typically the same for television and similar for books. So I would love to see game defined more by their thematic genres rather than their gameplay mechanics. I think it is this gameplay mechanic definition that tends to pigeonhole game players into certain classifications and prevents them from branching out to other gameplay styles.
To earn a "comic book nerd" card one generally needs a FAR higher dedication to the art than to earn the "gamer" title.
Games aren't movies, that's the problem, games are defined by it's gameplay mechanics.
You can easily describe "Starcraft" easily as "Warcraft in a Science Fiction setting", "Mass Effect", "The Witcher" and "Fallout 3" all belong to the RPG genre, because that's the gameplay mechanic that shapes the game much more, then it's thematic setting.
Take Science Fiction as a thematic genre for example: If you start to put games together in thematic categories, you end up with "Halo" being in the same category as "FTL" and this hardly makes any sense.
Chances are high, that somebody liking "Halo" would at least be interested in "CoD" because of it's gameplay mechanics, but I think, even if it's not impossible, he/she wouldn't automatically look at "FTL", because it's set in a Science Fiction setting.
Games aren't books, comics or movies. These media have found it's own approach for thematic genres, Metropolis, Flash Gordon or Frankenstein helped defining, what Science Fiction meant for the particular medium, I don't know any game that had the same meaning for portraying Science Fiction in video games.
Yes. Absolutely yes.
- how wide spread violent games (violent cartoons, movies, etc) are in countries other than the usa
- how wide spread is gun violence in countries other than the usa
now compare those results with numbers from the usa.
if you find that violent video games (violent cartoons, movies, etc) are as and/or more pervasive in other countries and the gun related violence is much much less... you kinda have your answer.
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but i think that games do play a part in building the gun enthusiast community ala call of duty, medal of honor. hell, EA tried to run cross promotions with real world weapons manufacturers. if you fetishize something, people are gonna want it. even though those people don't hunt or otherwise have much use for such things.
it's really interesting to me that when lapierre (of nra) talked about the problem of games, he mentioned all kinds of games but none of them featured prominently labeled real world weapons. he didn't mention the biggest shooter in the world.
anyone think that's coincidence?
follow the money.
games play a part. it doesn't create murderers but it contributes to the culture. and if your culture allows you to easily get your hands on real world weapons (unlike, say, japan)... there will be repercussions.
it seems like people who talk about this issue just abstract the living shit out of it but it's all pretty simple.
EU & Canada, same games & movies, way less murders / gundeaths / violent crimes. 2 possible conclusions: It's not the games & movies, or Americans are way more susceptible to them..
Wrong, EU has way less murder and gundeaths, but when it comes to violent crimes in general, the EU and the US are pretty close to each other. Take a look at this OECD study:
http://www.civitas.org.uk/crime/crime_stats_oecdjan2012.pdf
Especially the UK with it's very strict gun laws has a massive problem with violent crimes. As much as I am for banning all guns in all countries worldwide, it will help to reduce the number of gun deaths, it won't make violent crimes go away.
Scotland having the most assaults does not surprise me that much though ;)
Thanks for the info, I stand corrected. The US still has a alarmingly high murder rate still though. 3rd after Mexico & Estonia.
Maybe it would be a more fair comparison to average all European countries, or use the results from smaller parts of the US.
Interesting thought, but is it so, that less dense populated areas have lesser violent crimes per 10000 citizens? I don't know, aditionally, there are less populated areas in UK too. Besides the UK has 260 people per square kilometer (germany 229 people per square kilometer by the way, not much of a difference) and the by far the most dense populated country in the EU, the Netherlands has 497 people/square kilometer, but the crime rate in the Netherlands is much lower as in the UK. So I would say, there isn't per se a relation between population density and the violent crime rate.
that's probably true but LETHALITY makes a huuuuuuuge difference to the society. i keep coming back to the day of the sandy hook attack. the very same day, there was some nut jub who went on a rampage in china and knifed up a scores of children at a school.
dead children at sandy hook: 20
dead children in china attack: 0
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but in regards to the general level of violence - that may just be the baseline for humanity anyway.
in regards to the topic at hand, the trick would be to compare the violence rate between free democracies inundated with violent media vs. such societies that have no (or lesser) access to such media.
that's a much harder study to pull off because "free democracies" kinda means you have access to the same media. would be hard to find countries that meet the one criteria and not the other.
i guess we can compare with when media was far more restrictive and tame (or in our case, before video games) but i believe that when that comparison is made, violent crime rates are going down.
at the end of the day, i'm sure that there's some nut job that will be inspired by modern warfare to go wipeout a small community in real life. but such a person would probably be set off by an episode of the a-team too.
i.e. games will not prove to be the lynchpin.
I remember Columbine High School, and the rise of many more, do you?
Statistics proof that USA has more murder and much more executions compared the the EU.
The last one is not a wonder, the first one is really shocking - USA has 5 times more homicide compared to the EU, and USA violent crimes is 27 per 1000(thousand) - the EU has 95 per 10.000 (ten thousand).
Probably you have a problem?
And read history. People were killing people long before videogames.
Look at the millions killed in WW2. No games to blame those deaths on.
Just because a few school shootings have been sensationalized over the past decade or two doesn't mean much in the bigger picture except that the media and its sound bites are much more prevalent and school shootings equal ratings.
Consumers in Europe play the same games as we do in the US so comparing violent crime rates says nothing about the relationship between violence and games except there is none. I mean you only proved my point.
No one said anything about the US being less violent than Europe or Japan so I think you misunderstood the topic.
Homicide Rates per 100,000 citizens in the United States 1976-2010 (any considered Death Race the first "violent video game"... running over "gremlins" with a car)
1976 - 8.8 (Death Race)
8.8
9
9.7
10.2
9.8
9.1
8.3
7.9
7.9
8.6
8.3
8.4
8.7
9.4
9.8
9.3
1993 - 9.5 (Doom)
9.0
8.2
7.4
6.8
6.3
5.7
5.5
5.6
5.6
5.7
5.5
5.6
5.7
5.6
5.4
5.0
2010 - 4.8
But if we want to look at some other numbers (and we want to consider violent video games to be more in line with "modern" first person shooters we would probably look at the years 1993(9.5) to 2010 (4.8)
so, draw your own conclusions, but if we were to look at correlations of the numbers, one COULD argue that since the advent of the modern first person shooter/violent video games violence (specifically homicides) has decreased.
Some other tidbits:
Murders committed in 1993 with firearms 17,075
Murders committed in 1995 with firearms 13,673
Murders committed in 2005 with firearms 11,346
Murders committed in 2010 with firearms 11,078
population increased from 1993 to 2010 by 16% (there are more people)
number of murders with firearms from 1993 to 2010 DECREASED 35% (less people have been murdered by guns)
sources:
http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/H-Research_Notes/SAS -Research-Note
-9.pdf
http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/transparency.jpeg
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbse&sid=31
http://www.nij.gov/nij/topics/crime/gun-violence/welcome.htm
http://factcheck.org/2012/12/gun-rhetoric-vs-gun-facts/
And Michael: Doom saved America! ;)
Could the catharsis of gameplay, also be placating people already in violent cultures? And also are these cultures too accessible to vulnerable individuals?
*edit*
Doesn't this also raise the question of men/women, men vs women how that reflects in games (as well as demasculinization through slow cultural shift) also ..
As awfully tangental as it may sound .. we medicate people to placate them with marijuana, why then is violence media used differently? If we force people away from harful substance when abused, why do we treat media differently?
I think this also raises strong issues about the news we ingest, and laws governing it should be stronger. Likewise I think this demonstrates a strong need for better education.
I'm only 23, but I imagine there was a time when not everyone read fiction, when few people valued music, and when only the bold went to the picture shows. While not everyone reads perhaps as much as they should, most everyone listens to music and watches movies. Video games are the new kids on the block, so it's only natural they they become the first source of blame.
I don't think there is an immediate solution to the problem. Maybe damage control like Mr. Miller suggest would help alleviate some of the pressure, but the value of video games lies in play. More people need to play video games; more people need to become gamers, not less. The more that people understand video games then the less heat video games will receive from cultural implications.
If we want to be an exclusive subculture, we're free to do that. It's a big group, after all, and there's a lot of money to mine from it. But if the greater culture misunderstands us and distrusts us, that'll be no one's fault but our own.
As I said it is a feedback loop: Evan Solnik explains story to game writers and designers with the words
'story is conflict'. Encyclopedia Britannica's definition "conflict, in psychology, the arousal of two or more strong motives that cannot be solved together. [...]" Conflict always indicates a win/lose state. Stories and games with a win/win state or a 'you can not win' story/game are not part of this story definition.
What about 'just by happy' state? Those games are fun, too.
There are other stories and games out there. Stories, that are not conflict based.
Game do not have to be competitive - they can focus on flow or emotions instead.
You may call such games a 'not a game'-game, but rather I like to play such a game, than another violent shit.
We can solve all that 'violence in games discussion' easily.
By -> Make better games
And this will improve (American) global popular culture.
It is your decision, your turn now to make the change.
And I agree.
Violence does not mean bad game, like in any art form.
I've never been sickened by playing a video game, but the new show The Follower has done just that to me. We're talking self-inflicted ice pick through the eye into the brain, skinned and tortured dogs, some still alive, all being shown graphically. Never mind the running contests that a lot of the cop/forensic TV shows (Bones, CSI ____, etc) have to show the most realistic corpse possible. They look realistic.
At least when I sit down to play a video game, I know it's fake. With TV these days, they're so "good" that it's damn hard to tell.
And yet, where is the call to discuss violence on TV? Am I just not seeing it, or is it really not there?
If you look at children's programming, books & movies, they all became a Lot less violent then they were in the 80's & 90's.
I've never, ever had a tv show check my age before it will play. And while we won't watch CSI, Criminal Minds, etc. while the kids are around, not all parents do, or care enough to pay attention to what their kids are seeing.
Also, most video games are less realistic than TV shows/movies depict. Even shows that are less intense than The Following show a lot more than what video games do. (most shows on broadcast TV are less violent than The Following, even Criminal Minds pulls punches and leaves a lot to the imagination when actual violence is done).
Take your average war scenario. The soldier lines up the cross hairs, pulls the trigger. In a video game the target might yell and fall over. In TV/Movies blood sprays and pools on the ground.
I agree that TV violence probably has a lot more influence than video game violence, with the one caveat that with TV violence you are just an observer, standing by while other people do violence, and in games you have to make the choice to do the violence your self.
However, this also points out that video game violence is a pressure release valve, allowing people to purge off tension, while TV violence doesn't.
So, in a way, TV violence is like watching porn, and video game violence is like masturbating. One only just builds pressure, and one releases it... So, video games are better than television.
The reason why video games are a problem is for the same reason cell phones area problem is for the same reason guns are a problem. The DIFFERENCE is how much they influence our behavior through interaction with. We can look at phones and say "yep obviously something not right with this picture", but at the same time how many people buy a phone just to play games on it? They tend to be socially interactive~ at leats sometimes .. and they tend to be useful for credible reasons.
Games coupled with computers, not really. And you may think it's some thin correlation, but the gamer culture is not one that is being drawn closer for any reason, but being seperated, and with less and les meaningful interaction.
Going from Monopoly and Chess to AD&D to "pure violence" games is a very recognizable cultural trend, and this isn't socially evolving behavior~ this is rejection. It would be one thing if this was innovating to some more elevated understanding, but it's not.
Part-time Pac Man to Tetris to Angry Birds and fruit ninja, demonstrates no change at all. The fact that these are so widely recieved demonstrates a much larger and seperate culture that simply want to pop bubble wrap.
the simplest argument is reality vs. fantasy. We most certainly process the two differently. Can we tell we're in a fantasy playing a game? Yes. I don't think this is in doubt. Maybe young children and some mentally ill can't.
Does it have some subtle corrosive effect on the human psyche? Not according to Michael DeFazio's stats. We've worried over the power of various media since we started inventing them. I remember when self-appointed defenders of virtue got Bugs Bunny cartoons hacked up because of concerns over the violence in them. All that did was tick off a generation of kids.
This isn't any different. Same song, new target: Us.
http://www.gun-control-network.org/Gun%20homicide%20rates.jpg
It doesn't.
If there's a gun lying around the house somewhere in full and open view of your children, then something went wrong with your parenting.
And gangs will always be there, especially around poor areas, and have done since records began.