Mon 26 Jan 2004
I went to a local EB over the weekend to pick up a copy of Need for Speed Underground. It was my brother-in-law’s birthday, and he likes racing games… Anyway, while I was there, I noticed a father with his young son (I’m guessing to be about 10 years old). He was buying copies of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and NFL Street.
The sales clerk didn’t mention a word, he just rang up the sales. Not one to usually interfere with other people’s business, I couldn’t help but mention to the father, “hey that game is rated M, meant for gamers over 17.” He quickly stated that he knew it was an M game, but didn’t think there was anything to worry about, that the game was just a game and that his kid knew what was reality versus fiction, etc. The kid, quick to ensure that he didn’t leave empty handed, said that the explosions weren’t that big, and the people you ran over didn’t look very real.
Hmm, either the kid had done some preemptive “brainwashing” on his dad, or the dad really felt that it was a non-issue. Afterwards, the clerk mentioned that if the kid had be alone, they would not have sold him the game.
It is at times like this that I like to recall that, according to the ESA, something like 85% of ALL game purchases are made by adults. For all of the recent attempts to boycott and regulate violent games, nothing can directly address the will of a parent - nor should!
It is nice to see some mention of efforts being made to educate parents on game ratings. On the whole, it would be great to see less paranoia, and more understanding of what games are…
January 27th, 2004 at 5:56 am
Hey Della!
Well, in my opinion this certainly is one of the toughest issues to deal with. Probably because the potential ramifications is going to have serious consequences for the gaming industry.
I have always been a strong opponent that people should become violent, because they interact with violent fiction, including games. But my latest years of research have forced me to gradually nuance this view. In the perspective of cognitive psychology, the actions we perform cannot help but become part of our “repertoire of ways of dealing with the world”. This has no harmful consequence for our way of acting in the world, as the underlying dynamics of interacting with the game-environment, such as aggressive outward goal-seeking or fearful retreating goal-protection, are essential elements in our understanding of dealing with the real world. In fact, in this way games can serve as therapeutic devices, allowing gamers to gradually learn other modes of valuable interaction-patterns.
But as games become more and more realistic allowing for more and more sophisticated action-sequences, such as getting people into your car under pretence, driving them to a secluded place and beating them up for change; what might be “fun and games” is essentially a testing by the individual gamer, of these different action-patterns. This in itself has no harmful consequences, but the more they are repeated, the more they become part of the way the gamer view the world, and this can have longer-term negative results. Especially as games become an increasingly pervasive part of our society, it might lead to an overall empathic desensitisation towards our duties and responsibilities as human beings.
January 27th, 2004 at 9:18 am
Thanks for the thoughtful post. Certainly, the impact of media is much more nuanced, as you state. In fact, why would we create games if they did not have some kind of “effect” on players (here, I mean more like joy, excitement, reward, etc). However, concerns of desensitisation are largely false (see the book Ill Effects by Martin Barker for some writing on the topic). In fact, the inverse is usually true, we become more “sensitive”…