Video Games and Stress
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| Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess |
People often blame video games on the violence
and the problems in the world. The Massacre in the Netherlands in 2010, video
games were clearly to blame. I mean, in his manifesto he did mention that he
trained in Modern Warfare 2. Yep. That’s the problem. Ignore the other things
he wrote, ignore the political reasons. The political reasons that filled up
the majority of the manifesto. Clearly video games are to be blamed. Video
games have another side too you know. They can actually reduce stress,
especially violent ones.
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| Modern Warfare 2 |
A study in 2010 at Texas A&M University demonstrated that
video games, especially violent ones, can reduce stress. It works through mood
management. This is when the subject ‘goes’ into another world, and lives, even
for just a moment, in an environment lacking in stress. Dying in a video game
rarely ever has true consequences, and so one can go into it, and experience an
enthralling world that will relieve one’s stress. Your stress will go away when
you don’t have to think about it, and so it lowers depression rates, which in
turn lowers rates of violence.
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| (Custer's Last Revenge) |
So, in fact contrary to the opinion held by the majority,
video games are not the bane of society. They reduce violence, they don’t
increase it. They are no more evil than rock and roll, jazz, and even the
novel. All of those were once considered to be the reason for the societal
ills. Society will grow up eventually, and then we will start blaming whatever
new media comes up.
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| Does Anyone think this is real? (Just Cause 2) |
While certain games will not ever be generally
accepted by society, they are not indicative of the media form as a whole. The
mass media likes to hop on whatever controversial thing they can because they
do not understand, and so they fear. Yes, Custer’s Last Revenge is awful, but I
don’t think it’ll make anyone want to do the actions portrayed in the game. There
is a disconnect, and so it is never real, and it will never seem real.
This is true, video games are like a portal to another world. On my bus we play mario kart morning and afternoons. When we play in the morning it is to get us ready for the upcoming school day, when we play in the afternoon, it is a way for us to relax, scream at each other (i.e "Oh.My.God. freaking blue shell"), laugh (i.e "haha, did you see that? Oh man, that was so wrong"), and to forget about school.
ReplyDeleteIt makes a lot of sense... when my brother was little, he used to get into a lot of fights. As he got older, he started playing video games like Samurai Warriors, CoD, Assassin's Creed, basically anything that had killing people. Now he's pacifist-like and I haven't seen him violent for 10 years. I never really did understand why the media decided to blame video games for violence.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely makes sense. The same, I think, can be applied to movies. Whenever someone watches something like RoboCop or The Thing or any other movie where violence isn't treated seriously, there's a certain kind of satisfaction that the person gets when they see that fact.
ReplyDeleteYou know what's funny, though? I actually feel, on the contrary, that some stressful video game environments (Battletoads, anyone?) can help reduce stress, too.
I really think that thinking like this is really important. No one ever accepts new things, but if we do, society would advance much faster and technology would be more advanced. I had never really thought about this before, but now I see how fascinating it is.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to play Legend of Zelda TP through for the ninth time now...
ReplyDeleteI feel that this article points out a logical flaw that is used in far too many arguments. In fact, it seems like a good metaphor to the debate between libertarian Christians and Christian libertarians. Obviously, grounding in hermeneutics is very necessary, but all too often Christian libertarian forget the necessity of a single logical grounding and just combine two different philosophical sources. Just as critics of the video gaming industry disavow the practice unjustifiably on the grounds of deontology, but claim to do so with a consequentialist, objective point of view.
ReplyDeleteIn my mind, there are really two types of arguments coming from people blaming videogame violence for social ills; ones based on ignorance and ones based on fear (these can sometimes intersect). The ignorance based ones react impulsively to the sight of guns, blood, and sex in games. They instinctively see kids carrying REAL guns, committing REAL crimes, and the connection is already made. Bam. But they fail to realize that the violence was always there in other media; books, film, theater. It was just socially accepted there, as in any established media. Which brings me to the other argument: fear. Usually older members of society see video games as a scary new technology to be feared; news flash, this has happened dozens of times. The first fictional novels were decried by the clergy as insults to God, as they reflected a reality that wasn't real. Rock and roll music in the 1950s was seen as an instigator for teen violence. Ditto for comic books, heavy metal, tv... the list goes on. The only thing we as youth can do is prevent the people in power from doing real damage to the industry before they move onto the next fear mongering talking point (alien cats with rabies, anyone?)
ReplyDeleteLove it but it needs more explosions
ReplyDeleteWow! I would have never expected that. Personally, I always just thought of them as a huge time warp
ReplyDelete