Boundaries Belong In Gaming.

(Adrijus: )

Based on consumer spending, video games have now become the biggest entertainment industry in the United states. The United States are obviously one of the biggest consumers of video games, along with music and other types of entertainment that I won’t get into. To make you realize how big video games have become let me show you an example. According to the Entertainment Software Association, Americans spent almost $36 billion on video game content in 2018.

Their revenue in 2018 was almost as much as what Americans spent on home video, cinema, and music all combined. You may not realize but that is mind blowing, I mean you should put into consideration how much bigger promotion cinema and music get, when put alongside video games.

Now, let’s look at these numbers globally. There are a whopping 2.3 billion gamers world wide, making gaming the biggest entertainment industry in the world. Gaming is globally huge, but it doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon, with a very quickly rising revenue number and wide demographics, it’s influence is truly undeniable, with a clear presence in the music and movie industry as well. Though gaming already is a phenomenon, this seems to be only the beginning of them taking over the world. I mean look, they release thousands upon thousands of games yearly, and esports seems to be only in development, with prize pools being bigger than sports. The rise of streaming and V/R gaming is only adding to it. The global video game streaming market has predictions of growing by 27% a year between 2018 and 2026, according to Zion Market Research, surging from about $800 million in annual sales in 2017 to north of $6.9 billion. Companies having healthy competition with one another to make the best product for more sales is clearly working with an annual increasing revenue of $159 Billion In 2020 alone. I know I may have just thrown all these numbers at you, but these numbers are truly beyond magnificent.

With gaming growing rapidly every year, we may have to ask ourselves a few questions. 90% of video games that are rated E10+, mature, or teen have some kind of violent imagery or sequence. That isn’t the issue in fact, the problem is violence is seen as normal and often even portrayed as justified, without any negative consequences. There’s even a selection of games that relies on violence as it’s main source of promotion, among the likes of Mortal Combat and many more.

I’m not asking you to stop playing violent video games or anything like that, violence has been a huge factor of entertainment since as long as I can remember, but what I am asking is for people not to justify this as normal. It isn’t normal, and you need to consider the wrong-doings of the characters in the game.

You may ask why am I asking you to do this exactly? Well studies have shown that violent video games provoke and promote emotions and feelings of hostility and aggression, desensitize the player to violence, and skew the player’s perception of what constitutes violence. You, yourself can do an experiment. Get a couple of friends and make them play two different types of games. One containing violence the other not, and recording the reaction. The results shouldn’t be surprising. Finally, I’m not asking you to stop other people from playing video games that contain violence or even yourself. I’m just asking you to raise questions and beware of the violence in these games. How real can games get? Is there a line between reality and what can be told as a story in a video game? And to what extent can we draw this line between violence and reality?

(Oliwia: )

So how often will we see violence in a video game? Well i'll let you answer that yourself, what video game have you played that didn't involve some sort of combat or aggression? As Adrijus said, almost 90% of the games out there contain some sort of violence, varying all the way from the Sims to Mortal Kombat. Big surprise huh? Actually players can always find a way to add violent themes to a game like making mods or changing their intentions of play. Who knows, you could even start a sims hunger games.

However, this means that it's not easy to avoid the message of aggression being represented in the games that we play. Your parents probably feel responsible to keep you safe and make sure that what you're playing is pretty kid friendly. We all have a favorite video game and occasionally wish we could be the hero of an epic rpg or fps, however you need to make sure you don't take it too far. Now imagine your mom or dad banning your game altogether? That would suck wouldn't it. Although all hope isn't lost, if you feel like whipping out an awesome quote then let the psychological association and the American Academy of Pediatrics speak for themselves, they suggest that parents take an active interest and monitor the games played by their children. This simple bit of practical advice -- and not an all-out prohibition -- may be the best solution. All in all telling parents to keep an eye on you to make sure you aren't thinking about actually knocking out someone with a downward air attack.

You'll be glad to know studies are showing no correlation between videogames and violence irl meaning you can play as much COD as you like without actually having intentions of shooting people in reality. So if Karen tells you to stop playing smash bros because she thinks you start fighting let her know that a study by Oxford quoted from Professor Andrew Przybylski said “The idea that violent video games drive real-world aggression is a popular one, but it hasn’t tested very well over time. Yet despite interest in the topic by parents and policy-makers, the research has not demonstrated that there is cause for concern.”However the internet being the internet not everyone believes this reasoning, if you directly google ‘should i let my kid play violent video games’ which i did because my mom has the need to search the full description of every game i play, some may say it is ‘unwise’ to let your kid play violent games.

From personal experience and as a 14 year old I can tell you that my mom isn't one to let me play aggressive games. However I don't think it's because she doesn't see me as mature, it's because she doesn't feel as though the game has any positive influence. When purchasing or playing a game the first thing that attracts you is the content you'll be playing, this will vary depending on what type of gameplay you're looking for however no matter who you are or what game you've decided to experience as the player it's up to you to decide how you process the content and distinguish the virtual world from reality. Your guardian can only judge how their child will react to violent themes from past experiences, this means that it's up to you to determine whether the epic battle scenes and combat you see in the game will affect your reactions in reality. What happens in the game stays in the game right?

(Zak: )

My main concern is that the boundary between a game and real life should be clear and I feel like game makers aren’t doing enough to make sure it is clear because we all want to play a lifelike game but we also want everyone in our community to know the difference because the consequences of their actions has an effect on the whole gaming community.

As a gamer I would say it is the responsibility of the people who create games to make sure people understand that they are playing a game and this isn’t something that can be replicated in real life.I am not sitting here and saying all gamers are a bunch of idiots; I am just saying it could be clearer.Especially for some people who are vulnerable and playing games.

There are some very violent games out there;some of which are so violent that after playing them for a while it becomes sort of normal which screams red flags.Violence should never become normalized and if it is becoming normalized what does say that about the society we live in.Studies suggest “that playing violent video games can increase aggressive thoughts, behaviors, and feelings in both the short-term and long-term”.Which proves these games do have an effect.

People don’t suddenly wake up and decide that they are feeling violent just because of a game they played and I think that many factors play a role in whether a person suddenly becomes aggressive in real life such as the environment they grew up in or whether they come from a tough background

What do you count as aggressive?

Now I may sound like a Boomer with the constant talk about Boundaries but I believe the gaming community/industry has struggle to become mainstream because of its bad reputation and the constant reminder it has a negative effect on people.As well as this, it makes me upset that a community i have been apart of for so long is becoming a scapegoat for violence and I think if game makers made it clear about their stance towards aggressiveness and implemented better learning to stop this along with toxicity the gaming industry would flourish.

I would also like to address the effect of competitiveness on people and I can even admit that when I play a competitive game if I lose it can provoke more emotion then some violent games and I believe it is human nature to be competitive and to not want to lose.Although I I had experienced this first-hand I wanted to provide some evidence to back this up and there were very few studies done on the effect of competitiveness on aggression and violence so I conducted a small survey among some of my friends and a staggering 20 out of 20 said that competitiveness in games had cause them to be aggressive in some way now when I say aggressive I don’t mean went out and punched random people on the street I mean it made them rage and get angry.

Now you may still be wondering what I consider aggressive my own personal definition of aggressive is when someone is angry and is raging or wants to rage. There is a thrill competitive games give you which cloud, judgement , emotion and reason and I feel like when it gets to a point where you are no longer in control of your actions ;it has gone too far and to be very honest with you this has become widespread in the community.

Our final point is about the adaptability of the gaming community and the facts is the gaming community isn’t changing enough to solve a modern issue and our belief is that modern issues need modern responses and we aren’t seeing that. We want to see vulnerable people protected in our community so everyone is safe. Game creators need to make sure that everyone feels safe because it benefits all of us. If these vulnerable people don’t have the right support structure after all when playing these games they might go on to do something which will have consequences and it will shock them because they’re playing the game 24/7 where they can do pretty much whatever they want and there is no consequence. So this all comes back to violence in gaming and what will continue to happen is that world leaders will continue to blame games for violence.

However the games industry is struggling to adapt and I believe that more game makers need more diversity of ideas because the solution that exist currently are clearly not working. I think that game makers need to recruit more people from all walks of life to ensure they are getting as much perspective as possible.This is a relatively new issue (getting worse recently) and requires a new solution).

I think game makers should seek the advice of those who play their games and those who experience some of the issue I have described firsthand.

Violence in video games has been the topic of many heated debates for many years yet we are still here discussing it.

What does that say about the gaming industry and its failure to adapt?

Citations:

https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/08/video-games (APA 2011)

http://www.buffalo.edu/ubnow/stories/2019/03/lamb-video-games-violence.htm (University At Buffalo 2019)

http://www.center4research.org/violent-video-games-can-increase-aggression/

(National Centre 4 Research N.D)