How far does the 1st
person shooter genre affect the attitudes and behaviour of people?
The first person shooter genre is a genre that has had a lot
of controversy surrounding it over the past years, mainly due to the concerns
that it may affect the way others are acting. But how does this genre affect
people who play it and is it in a positive or negative way?
The 1st person shooter genre has not only been
used for entertainment but research into whether they can teach players to
shoot more accurately when using a real gun. In America the military and police
already use video games to improve shooting accuracy so researchers at Ohio
State University decided to test it on college students. In their study they
wanted to test the theory “Can violent
video games train a person to shoot a gun?” they tested this on 151 college
students. Students played one of the three video games being used in the test
for 20 minutes: a violent
shooting game with humanoid targets that rewarded headshots (e.g. Resident Evil 4),
a nonviolent shooting game with bull’s eye targets (e.g. the target practice
game in Wii Play), or
a nonviolent, non shooting game (e.g. Super Mario Galaxy). Those who played a shooting game used either a
standard controller or a gun-shaped controller. Afterwards, they had to fire 16
shots at a life-size mannequin 20 feet (6.1 meters) away using an air soft
training pistol. The results
showed that players who used a pistol-shaped controller in a violent, shooting
video game had 99% more head shots
and 33% more other shots compared to
other players. The players were not told to aim for the head, but they did it
naturally because they were rewarded points for headshots in the game they
played.
However this does not show that people who play more video
games are more likely to fire a gun at others and instead indicates they can
improve your hand-eye coordination meaning the results have a good impact
rather than bad. Nonetheless the results do indicate that if they were to fire
a gun at someone else they would fire more accurately which is more likely to
result in a death, this certainly implies that 1st person shooter video games
are a powerful “weapon” to teach or increase skills potentially increasing the
use of dangerous weapons.
“But are video games
really the villains in our violent age?”
On
April 20th 1999, two seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered
12 fellow students and 1 teacher and injured a further 20 in their high school
in Littleton, Colorado in a video they claimed they used the violent shooter
game “Doom” to practice their shooting rampage. However they were also
described at school to be socially isolated and they hated school and its jock
culture which would soon prove to be a deadly common bond.
There has been a rise in dramatically violent shootings and
attacks by teenagers, many of whom are said to play violent video games, this
is helping the argument that video game violence translates into real world
situations. But other people aren't convinced and insist that video games are a
scapegoat for a shocking social trend that has people scared and looking to
place blame. Entertainment media has always made a great scapegoat.
In July of 2011, Anders Breivik killed 77 people at a
political youth camp on the island of Utoya. In court, Breivik stated that he
used holographic aiming technology and the game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare to
practice his aiming skills. He said that “(The gaming device) is built up in such a way that you could have
given it to your grandmother and she would have been a super marksman.”
That being said, video games did not appear to be his motive
to go on his shooting spree, but merely his training device. He had written a
manifesto claiming to have ties to the Knights Templar, giving him religious
motive. He said his attacks were to stop the “Islamisation” of Norway. He killed these people merely because he
did not agree with their opinions. Breivik is currently serving a 21-year
sentence for his crimes.
However surely for these serious acts of violence to take
place the assailant would have to have had a form of mental health disorder or
a specific personality trait that when triggered may cause someone to be so
violent. The violent video games have been referred to as a “Murder Simulator” but complete blame
cannot be put on a videogame.
For
instance, a 2010 study published in the "Review of General
Psychology," reviewed past studies that reported ties between violent
games and violent responses. The researchers found the subjects most deeply
affected by violent game play were those who showed personality traits that
demonstrated psychoticism, which include lack of empathy, nonconformity and
impulsiveness. People who fit this model tend to see violence as an appropriate
response to social conflict.
There is so much controversy surrounding games such as Call
of duty or Halo but not games that have hidden potential violence such as the Sims?
The Sims follows real life situations as you take care of a created family. But
you can decide to not take care of your family and do things such as starving
them to death. This may give people an exaggerated sense of power and control. Due
to the realism of The Sims by not feeding them your Sims will show how they are
suffering, by waving to get your attention or groaning in pain. You can even
watch your Sims burn alive, shouting for help but in Call of Duty signs of pain
during death are pretty much invisible. According to Gamespot as of 2010, The
Sims franchise has sold more than 125 million copies worldwide and Call Of Duty
having sold 175 million copies.
So why do we focus
primarily on the violence in the shooter genre?
Perhaps it’s because any attacks on people where a videogame
has been accused tend to be blamed on games in the shooter or action genre. It
could be because the main objective is to kill as many enemies as possible. But
if those enemies are also holding guns, trying to kill you would that not teach
people to only use guns in a self-defence situation? In the American
constitution the 2nd Amendment is “the right to keep and bear arms”,
but this is dependent on how an individual perceives this law. Some may
identify it as having the right to defend yourself others may look at the
amendment and recognize it as a way to eradicate responsibility from their
actions.
Younger people are more likely to be affected by the
violence in these games. Young people can be influenced easier because they
aren’t completely set on what they believe is right or wrong. Media violence can
lead to aggressive behavior in children, this is supported by research that states
that when a child hits the age of 18, he/she must have seen about 200,000 acts
of violence on television alone. Young children become desensitized to the real
world violence. They cannot easily tell the difference between real life and
fantasy so the violent images they see on television and in the movies may seem
real to them.
I understand that this genre of videogame may affect someone
if they are a child and they play these games constantly as they progress into
their teenage years as they might start to believe what they’re seeing is right
but this doesn’t in any way mean they will go on a shooting rampage. Video
games have age ratings and if parents still allow their young children to play
18 rated games is it really the game developers fault if the child decides to
follow the same path as the game’s protagonist?
The future of gaming stands with the Oculus Rift (2016) and
Sony’s Project Morpheus. They’ve been created to put the player in the games
and let them be in the virtual reality that would usually be on the TV or
computer screen. Both these devices are headsets that cover your eyes and as
you turn your head every part of the room you are standing in becomes the game.
When the Oculus rift is connected to the Oculus touch it enables the game to
follow your hand movements placing you further inside of the game. Will the
real life experience of shooting your opponents transfer into the everyday
lives of the players? Or will it simply give you a more fascinating experience?
After watching a Documentary; BBC’s Horizon: Are video games
really that bad? I got an idea for my primary research. There was one
experiment in particular that interested me and was easy to carry out at
home. Dr Andrew Przybylski a ‘research fellow’ who specialises in
Psychology of motivation (What makes us act the way we do) at Oxford University
and his colleagues investigated what other emotions were triggered in a
videogame to cause aggression, the method was simple and could be done at home
so I chose some subjects and tested it on them. 20 people took part and were a
variety of different ages, genders and class. I used two different games to
test this Super Mario Land; the typical well known Mario game and Unfair Mario;
a hidden trap is in the game nearly every other move. Half of the participants
played unfair Mario. Before they played each participant had to immerse their
hand in ice cold water for 20 seconds. After playing the participants were
asked how long the other players should hold their hands in the water for and
on average the players who played Unfair Mario suggested an extra 5 seconds
than those who played Super Mario. The response of increased aggression
couldn’t have anything to do with violence. My responses were similar to
Przybylski’s which helped me understand his theory that frustration was the
emotion to trigger the aggression.
To conclude I don’t think violent crimes can be blamed on a
game because the video game didn’t tell them to go out and kill and I don’t
think video games can alter the way people think drastically. If someone
commits a heinous crime of murder they must have thought about doing it in the
past, the video game may have been the trigger but it certainly wasn’t the
enforcer. As mentioned earlier personality traits will alter the way people
think after seeing something violent. Video games are an easy scapegoat as a
motive for a crime but really the only crime video games have committed is to
help improve accuracy, whether the player uses this for the benefit of their
coordination or to practice real life shooting is no fault of the game.
