Analytical Essay on Ethical Issues of Violence in Video Games

Abstract

This paper aims to explore video game controversy, its significance and how it ethically impacts people. The ethical issues of violence in video games, as well as gaming addiction will be evaluated and determined if they are ethical issues or not. Influence of video game controversy in other countries will be discussed as well.

Video Game Controversy

1. Introduction

In 1971, the first video game ever released was the simple tennis inspired arcade game named “Pong” [1]. Ever since “Pong’s” inception and tremendous success, video games have become an international phenomenon within the entertainment industry. People play video games for various reasons, ranging from stress relief, thrill, and challenge. The motives are endless. Thus, it is crucial to note the possible ethical impact that video games can have on people as video games continue to establish their place within society. Throughout recent years, video games have amassed heaps of controversy in the media because of ethical issues such as: gaming addiction, and graphic violence. Ultimately, most believe that each aspect of video game controversy is linked to violence in video games. However, this negative portrayal of video games has led to many misgivings about what they have to offer the world beyond play. This paper aims to examine the positive and negative ethical issues of video games and whether the controversy they have accumulated globally is justified.

This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the significance of examining video game controversy and its separate ethical issues. Section 3, 3.1, and 3.2 are the main body of the paper and argue both the good and bad of video games, and ethical approach as well. While section 4 presents conclusions about video games in general.

2. Significance and Impact

As mentioned in the introduction, video games have become a mass entertainment medium and in fact, about 60% of Americans play video games every day [2]. This illustrates the influence that video games have in society, whether for better or for worse. Thus, it is crucial to analyze how the ethical issues of graphic violence and gaming addiction influence people and are dealt with globally.

3. Violence in Video Games

Controversy surrounding video games began in 1976, as public outcry caused a game named “Death Race” to be banned from being sold everywhere [1]. The nature of the game was described as violent because it involved running “gremlins” over to get the highest score possible. Logically, it may seem that giving a game like this to a child would be ethically questionable, because they would get rewarded for running over and taking the lives of “gremlins”. This is the narrative that the media has been projecting ever since the banning of “Death Race”. After horrible misfortunes in the news, the media often turns video games and the video game industry into a scapegoat, blaming them solely for the actions of others. For example, in 2013 an 8-year-old boy shot his grandma reportedly after playing “Grand-Theft Auto IV” (GTA). Both the media and the police blamed the creators of the GTA video game, saying that it would “awards points to players for killing people” [3]. However, after the investigation was completed, it was concluded that the shot was accidental and that the boy thought the gun was a toy. The media continued to blame the creators of GTA, instead of asking how the boy found that gun and why wasn’t it under lock. Clearly, the violence in video games isn’t to blame for other’s actions, because in fact, countries with less shootings have higher video game use [4].

Next, this brings up whether the media and public are justified in continuing to correlate video game violence with real life violence. Scientific studies searching for that correlation were increasingly conducted after the Columbine mass shooting that occurred in 1999 [5]. For instance, one of those studies explicitly claimed that long-term exposure to graphic video games would result in “aggressive action against others, expectations that others will behave aggressively, positive attitudes towards use of violence, and the belief that violent solutions are effective and appropriate” [6]. Their procedure for the study was to ask a group of 143 students their gaming habits, and what games they liked the most. Additionally, it is important to remember that this study was conducted after mass media hysteria (bias), with small sample sizes, and never accounted for other, more influential variables such as environment or mental health [5]. Their results may have been empirical, but they only found an association between aggression and video game violence, but no evidence for a causational relationship. Essentially,