Do Video Games Kill?

We all hear about this so called Halo Killer and how the seventeen year old just received his sentence a little while ago for shooting his parents and killing his mother. But his case of murder has quite a few critics blaming the video game industry for an increase in violence from adolescents. These are cases of people becoming influenced by the violence and applying it in the real world or people getting denied their video game time and throwing temper tantrums.

The media and society blame these kids for getting "addicted" to video games. Can this be physically possible? Can someone get addicted to Call of Duty just as easily they can be to Crystal Meth? Well, I have heard a few experts say that certain video games will release chemicals in the brain of being pleased or happy, similar to what drugs or gambling does. That is why I like to play on Xbox live, their achievements let me know that I have accomplished something and I get immediate gratification for it - with Xbox points. The points themselves are nothing really, just kind of like bragging rights to other gamers. But aside from addiction - lets try to look at some of the reasons why this is coming about in the first place before we tackle the whole "blame video games" issue.

Some say the kids do it for that instant gratification, and others use it to escape their crappy abused lives into a world of fantasy and they are in control. Some kids really have no friends and will lock themselves up in their own room to play against other people on the live networks instead. I can think back to the Columbine kids, who were also huge fans of Doom. Look what happened to their bullying that was fueled by video games and violence - who was to blame there? With the advancements of Wi-Fi, cell phones, social networking sites - we are taking a much larger world and have made it smaller, faster and more accessible for our generation. But what happens to those kids that are playing non-stop? What are they exposing themselves to?

Well one thing some kids might be getting too much of is some intense scenes of graphic nature and violence. Now, not ALL games showcase footage like this, but it is common amongst a lot of the recently popular games. SO do you think that we are having problems in society because of newer more realistic technology in video games which have graphics that have caused even more violence in our real world? It might seem that the more realistic the graphics are and the more impressionable on the younger mind, what are their chances that something terribly violent would happen to the child?

But isn't that what the whole rating systems debate was trying to avoid back in the early nineties? Why we had to put in a cheat code for the gore on the Genesis to see proper fatalities on Mortal Kombat? But it seems that whole idea of the rating system has gone out the window. If parents did more of their jobs instead of letting video games raise their children, there probably wouldn't be as many problems. Are these parents just getting the kids the game to shut them up, or are retail stores really abiding by their guidelines and sell only age appropriate games? We are facing a deconstruction of society.

On a final note, I would like to state that I feel that video games don't kill people - people kill people. You can't go blame an entire industry on a couple of kids that are having a hard time deciphering the real world from the pixilated gamer land (like TRON!). You can also view gaming as a twenty-first century addiction that is being met with some strategies and parenting tips all around the internet (yes, even through Xbox's own website) before it does get out of hand. I also feel that we can't go and just entirely blame the parents, as I'm sure there have been some good, well meaning parents that have been swept up in all of this. We need to make this a combined effort to fix this problem in society.

I for one have grown up on video games, a true child of the Nintendo generation. But when I was growing up, they didn't claim that too many of us were playing too many hours and there was something going wrong in society. They didn't blame us if Italians were pouncing on turtles, torturing hedgehogs to move fast or dressing up in dinosaur suits to abduct girls into castles. No true believers, we were an innocent age, but I feel that same generation is now making the games of today. Games that are too intense for some of our younger kids. Which, is why parents need to do their job and not get the kid the game that they want, nor should you let the kid get raised by that game instead of interacting with true members of society. And society, if you see/hear kids that are gaming non-stop - be careful what harassing comments that you say to them, or it just might be game over for you.