Moral Combat: Why The War on Violent Video Games is Wrong

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Published May 18, 2017

In family rooms across America, millions of children and teenagers are playing video games, such as Call of Duty, Halo, and Grand Theft Auto, roaming violent virtual worlds—with virtual guns in their hands. In what sometimes seems like an increasingly violent world, it’s only natural to worry about the effects of all this pixelated gore. But is that concern misplaced? Authors and psychologists Patrick M. Markey and Christopher J. Ferguson say it is.

The media and politicians have been sounding the alarm for years, and with every fresh tragedy involving a young perpetrator comes another flurry of articles about the dangers of violent media. The problem is this: Their fear isn’t supported by the evidence. In fact, unlike the video game–trained murder machines depicted in the press, school shooters are actually less likely to be interested in violent games than their peers. In reality, most well-adjusted children and teenagers play violent video games, all without ever exhibiting violent behavior in real life. What’s more, spikes in sales of violent games actually correspond to decreased rates of violent crime.

If that surprises you, you’re not alone—the national dialogue on games and violence has been hopelessly biased. But that’s beginning to change. Scholars are finding that not only are violent games not one of society’s great evils, they may even be a force for good.

In Moral Combat, Markey and Ferguson explore how video games—even the bloodiest—can have a positive impact on everything from social skills to stress, and may even make us more morally sensitive. Tracing the rise of violent games from arcades to online deathmatches, they have spent years on the front lines of the video game debate and now offer a comprehensive overview of the scientific research on gaming. With humor, complete honesty, and extensive research, they separate the myth from the medium.

Moral Combat is an irreverent and informative guide to the worries—and wonders—of our violent virtual world.

One interesting aspect of the research seeing daylight/media coverage[1] highlights a possible correlation(?) between rates of gaming and levels of societal violence; depending on the amount of time spent engaging with video games it appears that societies become/are less violent as an overall consequence. Interestingly looking at the names on the list nearly all high gaming, low violence Regions are classically Western in outlook, i.e., the USA, UK, Japan, Germany etc., for example.

For this assertion to be true however, video games would generally have to be equally available to have a deeper, dispersed effect on respective populations, which doesn't appear to be the case (even when weighted per [n] of population). Or looked at from a different perspective, the hours put into games themselves are not direct indicators of the degree to which a society may or may not be violent per se, rather its video games and gaming's broader availability.

In other words the degree to which video games, being almost universally non-essential luxury items (even in the West), are available, let alone played, more accurately indicates the degree to which individuals have the disposable income and leisure time to pursue such trivial and non-essential activities, the lack of which (disposable income/leisure time) are more succinct signals of poverty and its gross correlation with societal violence (notwithstanding the degree to which political and/or religious authoritarianism dictate conditions of oppression preventing or limiting the individuals upward mobility - its not surprising that such Regions strike low for gaming but high for violence).

In this context the prevalence of video-games, and gaming in general, are simply reflective of the Nations general socioeconomic well being, factors that have much greater influence of broader societal violence. Without reading through the book and research fully then (and going on what's presented in the media), there is a danger of misattributing causes and effect no matter how good the message or intention of the messenger(s), which in turn risks greater harm to the 'cause' than might otherwise be had.

Markey and Ferguson nicely put forward the best argument that violent games almost certainly have a small effect on increasing violence and quite likely a sizable one on reducing violence, namely that as game sales have exploded violent crime has plummeted. Given that video games absorb a lot of time of the group, young males, that commits the most crime it's a reasonable supposition to suggest that games, even violent ones, have reduced violence.

Discussed are:
The Postal Video Game, Grand Theft Auto (GTA), Mortal Kombat, NES, Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, Carmageddon, and other video games that people have complained about being too violent.

#CoasttoCoastAM #MoralCombat #Batman Ace and Gary #AceAndGary