Video Games: Scapegoated Once Again

Henry Zhang

October 5, 2019

Video games are once again blamed for violence. After 2 mass shootings and the deaths of 31 innocent lives with perpetrators who have both played video games; President Donald Trump called video games a “glorification of violence”.

So are video games really violent or is it just a scapegoat being used over and over again to edge people away from the incompetence of our politicians? Back in 2010 the Supreme Court was faced with this issue of violence in video games in the case Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association where governor Jerry Brown of California tried to restrict the sale of video games in their state. 7 judges to 2 agreed that video games should not be banned with Anthony Scalia stating that the state of California did not have enough evidence to back this claim and that recent studies show “at best some correlation between exposure to violent entertainment and minuscule real-world effects, such as children’s feeling more aggressive or making louder noises in the few minutes after playing a violent game than after playing a nonviolent game.” Banning video games was also considered breaking First Amendment rights.

Countless studies after the case also tried to prove that there is no relation between violence and video games. More recently Andrew K. Przybylski and Netta Weinstein’s February 13, 2019 study for the Royal Society of London found no correlation between playing video games and violent behavior except for only a few minutes of aggression similar to the study Scalia looked at.

The few minutes of aggression also might not necessarily be attributed to the violence inside the video game but to frustration. Having trouble opening a jar of pickles can have just as much aggression and frustration as you would get dying over and over again in a video game.

Video games also seem to be blamed exclusively in the US. Several countries also have huge game industries and a large player base. The top 5 countries when it comes to the video game industry are the US, China, Japan, South Korea, and Germany. All of them but the United States has an intentional homicide rate under 1 (out of 100,000) according to the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime). The United States in fact has more intentional homicides than all these other 4 countries combined at 5.3. Some may make the argument that the games played in the US are more mature and violent but that is not the case. The US may have popular M-Rated games like Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty but countries like Japan also have M-Rated games like Resident Evil or Devil May Cry.

This unfair scapegoating of a form of entertainment is not the first time either. Comics and movies have all been excuses for the real problems.