Violent Video Games: Reactions World Wide

Europe has long been considered the liberal land of freedom in comparison to America, but recently German politicians have initiated knee-jerk reactions that will certainly make their American counterparts proud. As a result of a recent school shooting in Germany law makers are pushing to outlaw violent video games. No matter where you are in the world, or what the politics are, people always look for a scapegoat.

After it became known that the German school student played "Counterstrike" everyone wanted to ban the game, and all violent videogames for that matter. How is it that a mere game could bring someone to the point of mass murder? Why don't people ever blame the media, news, or movies? The answer is a very simple one, statistics show that most law makes and legislators do not play violent video games. This creates an environment that makes it very easy for them to demonize something that they are often unfamiliar with.

Meanwhile in America, police are puzzled that they found no computer games on the Virginia tech shooters computer. Luckily, they didn't give up the search for violent computer games, and after their extended searching they found that 6 years before Cho had also played Counterstrike. It seems to be a very convenient trend that mass murderer's played violent computer games. After all we all know how the famed Columbine shooter's had such a passion for "Doom".

Banning violent computer games would allow politicians for a "feel good" solution. They would feel like they are doing something, when in reality, they are not. The fact of the matter is that art mimics reality; if our world is full of violence then our media and movies will also be full of violence. And because our media is full of violence then computer games will also tend to be violent in nature, because that is what the people are used to and finding entertaining.

If lawmakers really want to stop school shootings or mass murder in general perhaps they should take a few steps to remove violence from the real world? In Russia, for example, the government has just decreed that all news must be at least 50% happy or positive. This is probably a step in the right direction, but with the wrong implementation. Censorship has never been proven to be an effective at accomplishing anything.

In order to make to make people less interested in violence, we need to make violence less interesting to people. Perhaps if the world would start to find violence less interesting, then violent video games would stop being so popular.