Does the desensitization of violence in video games encourage people to commit violent crime?

For years almost all forms of media entertainment have come under scrutiny and prosecution as a cause for real world violence.  In recent years video games have been the main focus of attention in the case that violent and aggressive media causes similar behaviour in real life.  However the whole debate has been rather shallow up to now, do violent video games really desensitize and as a result cause violent crime in the real world?

 

Jack Thompson campaigned against violent game content for years and believed them to be the source to mainly terrible crimes over the years…(more information)

 

However Karen Sternheimer (of the American Sociological Association) completely disagrees with the theories that people like Thompson supports and believes video games are just the new scape goat for people to assign blame to the horrendous acts commited by youths. Furthermore she also considers there to be racist undertones within this theory:

 

“White, middle-class killers retain their status as children easily influenced by a game, victims of an allegedly dangerous product. African-American boys, apparently, are simply dangerous.”

 

On April 30^th 2008 the Daily Mail reported on a stabbing that took place at the midnight launch of controversial game GTA4. A 23-year old man was stabbed outside the Gamestation store in Croydon while waiting in line for GTA4. Many witnessed believed the incident to be a publicity stunt for the game as "It was a scene straight from the game itself”. Although it is not stated whether or not the game was the reason for such an attack it is very possible it wasn’t just about someone influenced and desperate for a violent game as many people have been attacked and even killed at late night launches for popular products.

 

Also the violence alone cannot be the main cause for certain acts, other content such as drug use, glorification of criminal activity, etc have also been looked into for causing violence and make far more sense.

 

Even certain governments take the content in games far more seriously then others, like Australia who do not even have a “mature” or “18” rating for games. There content rating system only goes as high as 15 so as to limit the amount of “adult” content in games. Fallout 3, a game set in a post apocalyptic Washington DC after the world has been ravaged by nuclear war. The reason why the game was band was not because of its violence, its disturbing theme of the apocalypse but because of the use of real world drugs. Although the drugs don’t share the same names they have near identical visual look.

 

(Examples of video game crimes normally stem from people from unstable backgrounds)

(Jamie Bulger case- although not a game it is a key example of how the media may cause violent behaviour, although their backgrounds also make more sense for such an act.)

Of course video games are not the only form of media that has suffered critisim, movies have been a favourite of critics for the causes of violence. One example of this is the Jamie Bulger case where two boys killed a young child as a result of supposidley watching the film Childs Play 3 numerous times. Many opinions of several scare mongerers was that the film influenced the children to kill Jamie Bulger. However it is also understood that that both Jon Venables and Robert Thompson had very traumatic family backgrounds which more then likely contributed to the act they commited.

 

 

Ever since the release of games like Doom video games have been the target of much critisim and the popular theory that the violent media encourages its audience to violent crime. However over recent years that theory has been dismissed again and again by scientists and other specialists; the only real support for such a theory only comes from the news mediums looking for a story and an explanation for such horrible acts.