THE VIDEO GAMES ARE COMING! (hide your kids....)
By Eloin Barahona
Zombie Games or: How Little Eloin shot his first zombies at the age of 8
I was 8 years old when my friend lent me my first M-Rated video game: Resident Evil: Nemesis. As a child I was always scared of horror media, coupled with the fact that my mother forbade me from engaging with said media, I wasn't too fond of things like horror and zombies. The act of borrowing the game was one that I did out of a desire to become more mature and to overcome my scaredy-cat attitude toward horror media; that night I popped the game in, was confused by the controls, and eventually was put off by the then obtuse nature of the game (obtuse to me, an 8 year old boy).
Look at that smile. A real charmer huh?
The game stuck with me throughout my childhood, it occupying my mind for years until I borrowed it again from a cousin and finished the game in an entire afternoon. My mother eventually found out about my affinity for seemingly violent video games and never relented in letting me know of her distaste of violence and gore. She always said that the violence would influence me and lead me to become a violent person; if you ask anyone these days, they'd tell you that aside from the occasional distasteful joke and acts of self-depreciating humor, I am the furthest from violent that you could get.
But many die hard conservatives and terrified parents will tell you that the Call of Duties and Grand Theft Autos and Mortal Kombats of the world will make little Timmy pick up a gun or a knife and go to town on his friends and family. Its always been easy to stick the blame on media whenever a tragedy strikes, to point the finger and fan themselves in distress when its revealed that the latest school shooter owned an Xbox and played Call of Duty or Halo. Its easy to look at all the violent films that are coming out and blame them for the downfall of society and the corruption of the youth, but the answer is something completely different.
The Parkland Shooting
School shootings have become somewhat commonplace for the United States now. Its a sad but sobering truth that we've had to accept as every year a new tragedy comes along to one up the one from the previous year, like some twisted version of Jackass. In mid-February of this year, a young man by the name of Nikolas Cruz killed 17 students in a rampage that once again opened the discussion of gun control to the country. As expected, whenever the subject of gun control was broached, both sides went at each other packs of wolves fighting over meat; the conversation this time was compounded by the fact that many of the survivors of the shooting have taken roles in activism, fighting and pleading for better regulation of guns.
On March 8th, President Trump convened with various representatives from the video game industry in order to discuss the possible influence of violent video games on children and young adults. According to the Washington Post's coverage of the proposed meeting, "Trump has said violent games are “shaping young people’s thoughts.” The president has proposed that “we have to do something about maybe what they’re seeing and how they’re seeing it” (Romm). This statement by the president echoes what many have said in the past about violent video games, sentiments which were unfounded and have been disproven with various studies. For our president, instead of considering the conversation about gun control, he instead opted to scapegoat video games so that his supporters wouldn't get upset. Of course, like many times over, this conversation is one that has had its roots in one of the most infamous games of all time: Mortal Kombat.
Gamers from the perspective of our President.
The ESRB: Protecting Innocent Children since 1993
The year is 1992. A badass new video game has just hit the arcade scene: Mortal Kombat. A fighting game where you pick from a roster of trained martial artists, fictional celebrities, supernatural ninjas, and flesh bound gods. Sounds like an awesome time. But what could make it better? Excessive, brutal, pseudeo-realistic violence that would make Michael Myers blush of course. The creative team of Ed Boon did their damnedest to create the most brutally violent game to exist at the time. And it made them boatloads of money. Lines of teenagers and adults that still played video games poured their quarters into Mortal Kombat machines all around the world, marveling at the incredible attention to detail that went into the most lauded and infamous feature of the game: Fatalities. In Mortal Kombat, a Fatality was a finishing move you could perform on your opponent, almost like a bit of humiliation on top of the loss they just ate against you. This mechanic of the game garnered lots of attention, both positive and negative; the people who played the game enjoyed rubbing their victories in the faces of their friends that they just stomped in game, but the parents and politicians got to distress fanning and decided to have something done about it.
Only a little off the to-never mind...
In 1993, Senator Joe Lieberman held a conference where he showed legislators the violent content of not only Mortal Kombat, but also another violent game known as Night Trap. Both of these games held the attention of legislators during Mr. Lieberman's meeting, and compelled them to push for self regulation in the gaming industry. And so, as to not have the government sticking their hands into the industry, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (or the ESRB) was established, placing the act of labeling the content of games in their hands. This entity of the gaming industry was to make sure little Billy or Susie didn't accidentally get their hands on content that was deemed inappropriate and would make it so that, as Mr. Lieberman puts it, "Few parents would buy these games for their kids if they knew what was in them" (Crossley). As you could see, reader, the gaming industry did a decent job of creating something that would let parents know about which games were appropriate for their children to play. So then if that's the case, then why are we having this conversation again in 2017?
Games and the New Conversation
Well it has to do with the not so subtle statement at the beginning of this blog that pertains to the whole "scapegoating" thing that our President attempted to do during the last horrible tragedy that involved guns. The problem with our President's claim that violent video games were the cause of the various school shootings is that it has been fielded before and has been shown to be something that is difficult to verify. According to Time's article on President Trump's claim, verifying if violent video games are linked to violent acts is difficult due to the ethical constraints in place. Brad Bushman, a professor at Ohio State University, expresses this sentiment in the following statement, “You can’t randomly assign people to play a violent or non-violent game in the lab, give them a gun and see what they do with the gun,” Bushman says. As a result, “you can’t say it’s the cause, or the most important cause,” of criminal actions (Ducharme).
This is a sentiment that has 60 years of examination of research regarding the link between violent actions and violent media. The correlation between violent media and violent actions is so nebulous and unsubstantiated that its easy for anyone to use it as a scapegoat when things like the Parkland shooting happen, and in my opinion, that's just not right.
Put Those Fingers Down. Please.
We as a species like to have a clear cut answer when we're presented with a difficult situation, and in the increased frequency of school shootings, its not hard to feel the desperation for that answer increase day by day. Pointing fingers at non-existent boogeymen like the EEEVIL gaming industry and its horrific, violent video games don't really do us any favors, they just serve to muddy the waters with rhetoric that makes people preachy and distracted from other important parts of the conversation, like gun control, police engagement, and mental health services. I asked some people that I know that live in my neighborhood for some opinions and got three responses that vary in opinion.
I see you there. Stop it. Quit it with your fingers.
Firstly, I have my friend Alex, who, like me, plays a lot of video games.
"I honestly don't think that we should be having this conversation about violent video games again. It just feels like a waste of time. What the conversation should be about is what could be done to make these shootings not so commonplace. We really should focus on maybe regulating guns better, or making it difficult for the wrong kind of people to get their hands on them. Honestly, we gotta get our priorities straight."
Secondly, I have my neighbor Myra, who has a daughter but occasionally plays video games with her husband.
"I don't really think that violent video games are the cause of the shootings. I mean, when my daughter is older, if she wants to play something that may be a little violent, I'd sit her down and explain to her what shes seeing on screen and how it doesn't reflect real life at all. I think its on the parents to keep an eye on what their kids are doing and not for the government to get so involved. I don't think kids should play certain video games at a young age but that's ultimately up to the parents."
Third and finally, I have my other neighbor Irene, who is a retiree that has had children.
"Really they should just get rid of all those violent video games and have kids do something different, like go to church or play outside. All that stuff just rots the brain. Maybe the government has the right idea in doing something about these games but whether or not that'll fix the shootings is anyone's guess."
As you can see, the conversation is split up into many weird ways and there's many sides someone could take on the issue. But really, for me, there's one side that makes sense, and that's the side of video games.
Gaming, Movies, TV, all the stuff that's good and bad.
I grew up playing violent video games, and really, the idea of inflicting physical harm on someone just doesn't appeal to me at all. I was a relatively normal kid that enjoyed his video games, but also enjoyed reading and watching movies. Now that doesn't apply to everyone, I mean, I'm just someone who feels like they've been relatively normal their whole life. There are billions of us on this planet and we are all completely different people with our own understandings of the world. But this whole ridiculous conversation about violence in media just strikes me as insincere and scummy; the fact that our President wants to bring the medium of Video Games to being simply about killing and getting off on it really pisses in my coffee.
I won't pretend like many of the games that I play are equivalent to the most valuable art piece in the Louvre, or the most renowned preserved films in the National Film Registry, but they are works that deserve a deeper look that simply being "video games". As I type this blog post out, many small and big developers are creating works of passion, works that are meant to engage the player on a level that is deeper than just holding a controller and making the guy on screen move. They're creating works that leave you thinking about it for hours, or even days or years on end.
When I finished the 2007 video game Bioshock, I was stunned by the narrative brilliance of its story, the entire thing dipped in symbolism and world building and subtle hints at the larger conspiracy at work. The game aesthetically looks gorgeous with its art-deco style and lack of adherence to any pre-established work and character designs that inspire something in the artist inside all of us. Its a game that is more than just you walking around and killing a bunch of stuff before stopping for a bit before doing it again. Its a world that you visit to learn about the folly of capitalism, consumerism, and even a degree of existentialism. The game has the best use of video game tropes to create one of the most compelling twists in any medium, film or otherwise, ever.
Like a painting made then but brought to now.
Games like that are why it bothers me when our politicians want to point the finger at something and force a solution out of that. Instead of maybe considering the many teenagers that protested in reaction to the Parkland shooting, we're here having a conversation from well over 25 years ago. Instead of helping those that were affected by the tragedy, we're opening up closed doors for the sake of ignoring the myriad of societal problems that underlie the nature of each shooting. We ignore the gun culture and how we've let it drive the conversation in favor of shutting out scary words like "regulation" and just let things continue to happen.
It shouldn't happen. This goes beyond video games. It's about not letting go of the issue of gun violence and trying to do something productive about it instead of wasting everyone's time with pointless, 20 year old conversations. I want to someday introduce my future children to video games. I wanna share these experiences, and let them eventually decide what sort of content they want to consume and how they wanna consume it. I'd like to do it in a safer time though. I'd like to do it at a point in time where gun violence is a rarity, not the norm. The conversation about gun violence should continue. The video games aren't gonna take your kids, people. Put your pitchforks down and lets talk about what we should really do.
Works Cited:
Trump Blames Video Games for School Shootings. Here's What Science Says-Jaime Ducharme
http://time.com/5191182/trump-video-games-violence/
Mortal Kombat: Violent game that changed video games industry-Rob Crossley
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27620071
Trump’s meeting with the video game industry to talk gun violence could get ugly-Tony Romm
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/03/07/trumps-meeting-with-the-video-game-industry-to-talk-gun-violence-could-get-ugly/?utm_term=.99640492600c
Florida School Shooting: at least 17 people dead on 'horrific, horrific day'
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/14/florida-shooting-school-latest-news-stoneman-douglas
