VIDEO GAME VIOLENCE

Video games have got increasingly violent within

the last 20 years causing great controversy about
the impact they are having on people today. Video
gaming is a multi-million dollar industry and the
UK is the most popular for it in Europe. Studies
have found that the most people who play games
are over 35 and almost 50% are female.

This report demonstrates the hypodermic needle theory refers to the idea that media is being
injected into the minds of the audience. It is the
idea that when the audience watches something
on T.V. or reads a newspaper article, they believe
what they are being told and might follow what
they see; this is known as Passive Audiences. In
this case it was suggested that Adam Lanzas mind
was injected with ideas of killing people from the
video games he would play, such as Call of Duty,

indicating that this theory could be blamed for

this violent crime.
Examples of these increasingly violent video
games are the Adam Lanza case where he went
to school to commit a mass shooting of his
fellow students. This horrific event was partially
blamed on the violent video games he had been
playing, such as Call of Duty which he was said
to have played a lot. Investigators also found
he had over 83,000 kills on it. Call of Duty is a
first- person shooting game set during the war
and gives the player the ability to use various
dangerous guns. This violent game was claimed
to have given him ideas for his mass shooting
and is blamed for his aggressive and extreme
violent behaviour. This attention to the video
games he played caused a media panic from the
headlines in articles, highlighting his extreme
number of kills and scaring the public about the
dangers of video games. However, after researching into the case, I found out that he had
multiple mental illnesses which I think are a lot
more likely to have contributed to his crimes,
such as obsessive compulsive disorder which
might explain why he obsessed over video
games, weapons and shootings. I think if one
factor was to be blamed for his actions, it would
be the access he had to weapons, especially with
the knowledge of his mental illnesses. In my

opinion, video games are a good way to blame

the many other issues people have in the US,
to give people the belief that these games are
to blame rather than the weapon laws so that
America is not forced to take more serious
action against it.
Some might argue that these killings on the
game were injected into Adams mind, making him a passive audience because he didnt
question whether it was the wrong thing to do;
he just accepted that he enjoyed playing the
game and would therefore enjoy committing
the crimes in reality. More evidence of how
Adam Lanza was an example of the hypodermic
needle theory was that he believed in Nazism
and was publically associated with Neo-Nazi
groups, showing that he believed the information injected into his mind, such as that Nazism
was right or that he claimed Israel was responsible for the 2011 Norway attacks.

Although I think his mind was injected

with violence from the game, I still believe that children are brought up being
injected with the ideas that violence is
wrong from early rules programmed into
them at school or from parents, therefore, people like Adam believe what they
want to believe and even if he hadnt
been exposed to violence from the video
game, he would have become just as
obsessed with violence in a film or in the
news.
Uses and gratifications theory is where
the audience arent injected information
and can determine their own opinions
about the media. For example, a woman
could see an advert for washing detergent showing a woman doing the cleaning and cooking and instead of following
and accepting what she sees like the
hypodermic needle theory suggests, she
questions why there is a woman there
and doesnt follow the old fashioned
view of women being restricted to doing
these household chores and has a proper
job of their own.

This is an example of passive audiences

because the audience dont particularly
react or engage with the media being
injected into their minds, they just
accept what they are being told without
particularly realising it. Passive audiences dont know they are being forced
ideas upon them; an example of it is
that the audience might read a textbook
in school about a maths question that
hints at subtle themes, like Nazism so
they dont know it is happening to them
because you wouldnt expect to find this
within a maths question.
Another example of the supposed effects
of playing violent video games is the
mass shooting involving James Holmes in a cinema during the dark knight
rises. He shot at a cinema screening,
killing twelve people and injuring over
seventy. He was said to have played
copious amounts of the video game
World of Warcraft. Tests proved him to
be sane, so the theories to suggest why
he might have committed this crime

might have been linked to his obsession with

the role-playing videogames, some believe
he played these games so much that he lost
touch of reality. The game World of Warfcraft
includes mindlessly slaughtering characters
to get to higher levels, some believe that the
idea of getting rewarded for killing people
can cause people to become desensitised to
violence and think that it is okay. The graphics used in new video games are so much
more advanced, looking so realistic that it
might be easier to confuse some people between reality and fantasy which is what some
people believe happened to James Holmes. I
think that the fact that Holmes was tested not
to have any psychological problems shows
that there is a possibility of video games
having an actual effect on peoples actions.
I think he might have had obsessive behaviours because he was said to be obsessed
with the game, but after researching the case,
it seems that the video games he played and
the violent films he enjoyed watching such
as Pulp Fiction might have caused serious
problems. I believe that something must have
happened to this man in his life to make him

commit such a horrendous crime and

make him have such hatred to the
world but video games could be partially blamed in this particular case.
This is an example of the reception
study theory because it shows how
some people can interpret the media
the wrong way. He demonstrated the
reception study theory when he misinterpreted the fictional game World
of Warcraft, choosing to have a negotiated response to it, understanding
that the characters murder people,
but deciding that he could use the
fictional characters to adapt to his
own character in reality when he believed that if he could commit virtual
violence, he could be violent in reality. Alongside this, James Holmes told
police that he believed he was the
Joker in the Batman film he shot at.
This misinterpretation of the fictional character caused him to become
delusional, believing that he was him
as he dressed up similarly and shot at
an audience alike the character that
killed many people during the first
Dark Night film. This misreading of
the film shows that there are many
other forms of violence in other types
of media, therefore video games
cannot be singularly blamed for these
crimes.

The idea of the reception study theory

is that there is a hidden meaning or
code in the media that is given out my
advertisers and content producers and
is uncovered and understood by the
audience that read about it. Sometimes
the audience understand the message
the producer aimed to convey but other times it can be misunderstood or
they can reject it, failing to interpret it.
This is an example of active audience
consumption because the audience
are actually listening to what they are
being informed on and reacting to it.
James Holmes was an active consumer because he reacted to what he saw
and misinterpreted it as inspiration to
commit similar crimes.
Active Consumption is when the
audience engages and questions what
they see in the media. It is opposite to
passive consumption because these
types of people dont just accept what
they are being told, they actually think
about it.
Professor Craig Anderson researched
the effects of violence in video games
along with professor Brad Bushmen
and Dr Doug Gentile because they
felt that being rewarded for violence,
looking at a game character from a
first person view and believing you are
them, doing the fighting and paying all
your attention to it because you have

to concentrate completely.
They did experiments where they got
subjects to play a violent or non- violent
video game and they measured their
aggression after by deciding the fate of
the loser. They had a choice to inflict
pain on another loser of a noise blast, ice
water or a shock. Their findings showed
that violent video games increased
aggression by 4-9%. Although it doesnt
increase aggression by a lot, kids who
play violent games are said to be more
likely to react to someone doing something accidental, like pushing them in
a corridor, as intentional and react to it
with violence.
They did further tests with 257 college
students assigned to play either violent
or non-violent video games whilst measuring their heart rate. Then they played
them real clips of violent scenes after
and recorded their responses. Those
who played violent scenes after playing
and recorded stress levels only increased
by 12%, this shows the fake violence
desensitised them to real violence.

addition, violence has fallen in the US by

83% in the last decade so he argues that
video games have contributed to this. His
belief is that people who commit extreme
acts of violence, like mass shootings are
affected by many other factors like family
life, psychological factors, poverty, mental health, being male and their background, therefore video games cant be
purely blamed for it. He thinks that you
could get pent up and angry whilst doing
any everyday activity, such as being stuck
in traffic or watching a football match,
not just from playing video games.

There is a version of Tetris, called Bastet

that gives you the worst possible piece for
the game unlike Tetris which is random.
This has been proven to cause more aggression than the violent games like Call
of Duty or Grand Theft Auto because it
caused the most frustration for people
when they were tested. This is surprising
since both cases mentioned that they
played violent games like Call of Duty or
World of War Craft and not games like
Tetris. This might suggest that the two
Chris Ferguson disagrees with this theo- criminals already had aggression and it
ry and actually believes that video games might not have been triggered by these
reduces violence because they are preoc- games.
cupied by the video game, this is because
research has shown that when a popular
video game is newly released there is
an immediate reduction in violence. In

Professor Rene Weber analysed what

goes on in peoples brains whilst playing. He saw a different area of the brain
was in use that suppresses the normal
emotional response to violence found
in different parts of the brain. I think
that people not reacting normally to
violence is concerning because it could
desensitise them to violence in real
life. The video game Carmageddon has
topped charts worldwide; this game
requires you to drive a car in a race to
complete levels, getting extra rewards
for the amounts of people you kill on the
way. The popularity of Carmageddon
shows that violence in video games sells
and that people enjoy playing them. For
people to enjoy killing people suggests
that the Webers theory of people suppressing the normal emotional response
to violence is true by how they arent
distressed by it.

There are actually rehab centres in South

Korea to help children who are addicted
to video games but Professor Simone
Kuhn thinks that video game addictions
are hard to get and he estimates that only
under 1% of people have an actual addiction. Professor Mark Griffiths thinks that
the reason for a video game addiction is
the rewards system in video games because it satisfies people to think they are
good at something and encourages them
to play more so they gain more awards.
Dr Valerie Voon tested how different
people react to long term and short term
awards by giving players the option of
5 straight away or 10 in two weeks
and they found that people had a preference for a delayed award; this is what
is believed to cause addiction because it
makes them want to keep playing.
Some people think that video games
can be used for the good, such as in
education to learn new skills and embrace creativity, it can be used for the
elderly to keep their brain active and to
stop mental decline with age. The game
requires you to monitor moving objects
and remember their colour. Scientists
found brain growth after playing this
game, called brain plasticity. Professor
Adam Gazzanly believes that games with
multi-tasking could cause brain growth,
multi-tasking, attention span and memory. Fast paced action games helps people

divide and focus attention on surroundings because you need this to be

better at games.
Young surgeons who have been bought
up playing video games are said to be
better at performing key-hole surgery
because they are better at operating
tools with precision. They created a
video game for key-hole surgery that
trains you with performing real operations and those who were better at
the video game were better at the real
surgery so it helped to train people for
the real thing.
In conclusion, violent video games
are more likely to look for threats in
everyday life but have no connection
to violence in the real world. There
have been theories to suggest that they
cause desensitisation to violence and
cause people to become more likely
to look for trouble to react to problems they might face with violence. I
personally think that video games can
increase aggression from a younger
age through desensitisation but I think
that there are so many other parts of
life that increase aggression, through
films, the media and everyday issues.
I believe it takes an already mentally
troubled individual to commit violent
crimes and video games are just one
of the many factors of life that inspires
them to do this. Without video games

even existing, I think with the weapons

people are exposed to, they would commit these crimes anyway. Some people
blame mass crimes on video games and
how they should be more heavily censored which might help, but I think that
when age restrictions increase of video
games become harder to buy; it only
makes young people more interested in
playing the game.
Rather than it being about video games,
it is about psychological factors and extreme violence in video games (although
cant be good for us) are just the governments way to blame crime on something
to make people believe they have some
chance of preventing it and give them
hope that it is controllable. Really, if
the USA in particular wants to prevent
violent crimes, such as mass shootings,
making weapons harder to access would
be significantly more effective.