issues

As all of you know (unless you live in a hole and do not attend class) the link between violence and video games has always been a topic of interest in the media, the home and in research. There is a lot of speculation (see: Jack Thompson who blames every act of violence on video games) that playing video games falls under the hypodermic model, but, when looked at closely, there is not any watertight evidence of this, in fact, there are a lot of problems with this viewpoint. The first HUGE problem with this is those who research the claim that game players are passive and ‘injected’ with violent ideas, yet, this apparently only applies to the ‘others’, those who they are researching, and not the researches themselves. The hypodermic model typically has consistent results - aren’t the researchers also playing, or at least watching these games? If so, then they should also be rampaging around influenced by the violent games. Here, the researchers have conveniently forgotten that they apply to the hypodermic model. The second problem I have with research attempting to prove the link between video games and violence is that you cannot test actual violence; one can only test representational violence. Just because a child punches a teddy bear after playing a game does not mean they are violent. That child knows it is a teddy bear, knows that is not going to die and punching it will have no consequence. This is representational violence, real violence cannot be tested.