Lets play Video Games. Video games have always caused a controversy. Are they too violent? Are they

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1 Landeros 1 Victoria Landeros 9 November 2013 Lets play Video Games Video games have always caused a controversy. Are they too violent? Are they exposing children to too much violence? What is the right age to start playing them? Some scientists have referred to games as brain changing but no one has ever really discussed the benefits and if they outweigh the bad. Video games are very violent. From my personal knowledge I can say that every game I own involves some type of violence, whether it s from casting spells to shooting zombies. People seem to forget that this type of violence is also in books, movies, and music. It just seems easier to pinpoint all the shootings now at days on video games, because most of the shooters are indeed male. Doctors J. Cowell and M. Kato did a study on the Relationship between Social Isolation, Self-Esteem, aggression and Computer Gaming in Japanese adolescents, their studies showed that video games had the opposite affect of what was expected. It caused adolescents to be less aggressive. If they were upset they would take it out on the characters. It was scene as a type of emotional release. Game research is still in it s early stages, there have been more than 100 investigations which isn t much. The research never gave solid proof that video games are the cause of violence. Studies found that being exposed to family violence is more likely to lead to criminal acts (Ferguson). We are all known to be influenced by our surroundings, that is where you are who you hang out with comes into play. If you are surrounded by violent people during

2 Landeros 2 your childhood when you are still in the process of being morally molded then there is a greater chance of you being a violent adult and that has nothing to do with video games. In C.J Ferguson s paper The School Shooting/Violent video game Line: Causal Relationship or Moral Panic? He talks about a 1980s game called Dungeons and Dragons, it was a simple board game that put children in a fictional setting where they would slay dragons and play the roles of wizards and knights. In the 1980 s this was quite a shock to parents and other adults who said that it would lead to Satanism, cause suicide and psychosis because children can t tell fiction from reality this was also said about women reading in the 19 th century (Ferguson.) It was never just video games that caused controversy, it was board games or anything that involved focusing on anything fictional. Anyone can say that something is to blame for another s actions, but that doesn t mean it s true. My grandfather would tell me about when he was younger he would play cops and robbers. Neither he nor his brothers ever grew up to be cops or robbers. Six teenage boys went on a crime spree in Nassau Country, New York, smashing car windows with bats and crowbars. Who did they blame for their behavior? Grand Theft Auto, a video game where the characters steal cars and participate in dangerous gang activity. It is teenage crimes like this that lead adults to believe video games are too blame, so they might not face such serious consequences. But there is no solid evidence that crime and violence in games have any connection. Teens who go on wild crime sprees have tried to blame Grand Theft Auto as an excuse for how they acted but it hardly ever works.

3 Landeros 3 There are so many benefits in video gaming that people seem to overlook. These benefits could actually save lives since video games appeal to such a large number of people. Ninty percent of children play video games, and the average age of a video gamer is 33 years old (Denworth). Video gaming improves, vision, attention to detail, reasoning and decision. This was brought to President Barack Obama s attention, he said he would invest in educational technology but with a catch, I want you guys to be stuck on a video game that s teaching you something other than just blowing something up. In a study there were two groups of people, one playing Tetris and one playing a first person shooting game called Medal of Honor, it was to see who could improve their useful field of view. Useful field of view is what keeps track of items and their actions in multiple locations. In first person shooting games you have to always be aware of your surroundings and have to be very quick to react. When the study was over the group that was playing Tetris didn t show any improvement, and the group playing the first person shooting games have (Denworth). The other benefit of video gaming is the change it can make in someone s life. It can heal lazy eyes according to a study at University of California, Berkeley. A lazy eye is the loss of detail in one eye. When you are a child and have a lazy eye, there would be a patch on your good eye so the weak eye could get stronger. This method didn t work for adults. For the adults they discovered a different method, scientists covered the weak eye and had them play a first person shooting game with the strong eye patched. They saw a thirty percent improvement in the vision in the weak eye.

4 Landeros 4 Video games also have another benefit that has a large impact on surgeons. Video games are great for building great hand-eye coordination. Surgeons who play video games routinely are likely to make fewer errors. Tiarnan Magos, a medical student in London, was enthused that she owned a Nintendo Wii, for the reason that the Wii was a perfect machine to practice her surgical skills on, since the machinery used for endoscopic surgery was based around a Nintendo Console. An endoscope is a small instrument used to see inside the stomach, bladder, and colon. So a surgeon s precision has to be at its highest peak. Although there are many benefits of video gaming, there are also drawbacks. Video game addiction is one of major concern. It usually happens more frequently in online role-playing games. It is not recognized as a mental disorder yet but there is a really big problem with it that holds many dangers (Anderson). Schizophrenics have a higher risk of suffering from video game addiction since schizophrenia blurs the line between fiction and reality. A quote from the article Researchers claim to identify risk-factors for video game addicts by Thomas Anderson says Individuals who play games to get away from their lives or to pretend to be other people seem to be those most at-risk for becoming part of a vicious cycle. These gamers avoid their problems by playing games, which in turn interferes with their lives because they re so busy playing games. He also says that the behavior isn t much different from drug or alcohol addiction. Strange deaths have been caused by role-playing games. In 2005 a man named Lee died from playing an online game called Starcraft after suffering from heart failure that stemmed from exhaustion after he played the game non stop (Danger).

5 Landeros 5 Video games really can be helpful but also dangerous as can anything else. It is great educational tool for medical students and good for building hand eye coordination but everything must be done in moderation. Of course video games can be dangerous if played non-stop, exhaustion does blur your thought process but it is not to blame for every violent thing a teenager does. Maybe everyone is just looking for something else to blame things on but video games is not one of them.

6 Landeros 6 Work Cited Anderson, Thomas. Researchers Claim to Identify Risk-Factors for Video Game Addicts. TGD General Science. TG Daily. 25 September Web. 10 October Colwell, J. and Kato, M. Investigation of the relationship between social isolation, self-esteem, aggression and computer game play in Japanese adolescents. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 6 Issue September Web. 5 October Danger, Reverend. Top 10 deaths caused by Video Games. #Games & Gadgets. Spike. 24 February Web. 5 October Denworth, Lydia. Brain-Changing Games. Scientific American Mind. Vol. 23 Issue December October Fahey, Mike. Teen Crime Spree Inspired by Grand Theft Auto. Kataku. 26 June Web. 15 October Feguson, C.J. The school shooting/violent video game link: casual relationship or moral panic? Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling. Vol. 5 Issue 1-2, 9 December Web. 15 October Magos, Tiarnan. Surgeons at Play. New Scientists. Vol. 197 Issue March 2008 Web. 15 October 2013.