Teenagers have often been fascinated by video games. The computer games which involve violence has ever been a much controversial point of discussion among medical professionals, researchers, social thinkers and parents. As a teenager and also a lover of video games the article “Violence in society: Blame it on brutal video games / Brutal games” immediately caught my attention which upholds and analyses different points of view regarding the effects of violent video games on human behaviour and consequent social impact. There are views held by social psychologist Dr. Angeline Khoo and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Henry Jenkins that reveal some possible negative impact of brutal games on human psychology.
Although American Psychological Association concludes the negative and desensitising effects of such types of games. However there are opinions contrary to this cited with results by Nanyang Technological Universiy lecturer Dr. Marko Skoric. In fact there is no evidence that video game brutality affected player’s aggression levels in real life. I am really impressed at Dr. Cheryl K. Olson’s comment “Destructive video games can even be helpful”. “People get to ‘work out (their) fears or anxieties without actually engaging in them.” Following this line of argument I also feel ‘slashing’ enemies and resolving conflict in cyberspace takes us to a make-believe world, ‘far from the madding crowd’ transcend the drudgery in real life, at least for the time being. In fact, it is not the game. The sense of win gives the players a vicarious satisfaction which helps to type, but the instinct of violent act, whose seed must have been lying in the sub-conscious state of the person, indulges him in a state of crimes. It is true in 1999 massacre at Columbine High, a mass shootout massacre, the two students craze for deadly shooting games was held as a possible cause, but their friend, Mr. Brook Brown’s inference of their basic violent nature should also be taken into consideration.
So let’s play games for game’s sake. Let’s take the full enjoyment out of it leaving behind the horror and not be addicted to such games that may lead us to mix up the real world with the cyber world and confuse our senses. Let our vengeance (if any) be meted out in the computer screen itself, rather than burst out in practical life.
Although American Psychological Association concludes the negative and desensitising effects of such types of games. However there are opinions contrary to this cited with results by Nanyang Technological Universiy lecturer Dr. Marko Skoric. In fact there is no evidence that video game brutality affected player’s aggression levels in real life. I am really impressed at Dr. Cheryl K. Olson’s comment “Destructive video games can even be helpful”. “People get to ‘work out (their) fears or anxieties without actually engaging in them.” Following this line of argument I also feel ‘slashing’ enemies and resolving conflict in cyberspace takes us to a make-believe world, ‘far from the madding crowd’ transcend the drudgery in real life, at least for the time being. In fact, it is not the game. The sense of win gives the players a vicarious satisfaction which helps to type, but the instinct of violent act, whose seed must have been lying in the sub-conscious state of the person, indulges him in a state of crimes. It is true in 1999 massacre at Columbine High, a mass shootout massacre, the two students craze for deadly shooting games was held as a possible cause, but their friend, Mr. Brook Brown’s inference of their basic violent nature should also be taken into consideration.
So let’s play games for game’s sake. Let’s take the full enjoyment out of it leaving behind the horror and not be addicted to such games that may lead us to mix up the real world with the cyber world and confuse our senses. Let our vengeance (if any) be meted out in the computer screen itself, rather than burst out in practical life.
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