Misconceptions About Video Games.

I've been a gamer for over 18 years. I am currently 23 years old (24 in may). That means I started gaming at a very young age. My first brush with gaming was on the NES/SNES systems where I played games like Zelda, Mario and Super Metroid. I quickly grabbed interest in PC gaming by playing old games on my father's 286 computer. The rest as they say is history...

Today I decided to post about the most common fallacies that some people spew out when it comes to video games. There's an awful lot of negative media surrounding video games, and it seems as though there aren't enough people out there pointing out the positive facts about video games. In the following blog entry I will state some points used against video games and I will proceed to debunk them. And so let us begin.

Violent video games can cause violence:

This is probably one of the most used arguments against video gaming. It's also one of the most ridiculous arguments against gaming. Violence has existed for a long time. Crime has existed long before any books, TV shows, movies or video games ever existed. Our ancestors were clubbing people because they got funny looks since the dawn of humanity.

More prominent in recent media seems to be cases of school shootings which are often linked to video games. There were even a few cases where the media or police assumed that the perpetrator was an "anti-social video gamer", only to be proven wrong by not finding any video games in the dorm room. The fact is that school shootings have been going on since long before video games even existed. Heck, calling them school shootings would be quite wrong, since there are cases of mass murders in schools that don't even involve guns.

- There is a case in 1940 where a 10-year-old Clarence Stevens, a third grade pupil at Holy Name School, was stabbed to death inside a storeroom at the school by 27-year-old Guy Willie Ponder.

- Another case in 1898 where Samuel Jacobson, student at Grammar School 85, stabbed his 8-year-old classmate Hans Pietze with a pocketknife after he fell over the latters foot. Both students were said to have quarrelled often before.

Both cases are before video games existed, and both cases don't even involve guns. The only common ground found in all incidents of school murders involves a troubled student, or troubled person. Someone who is under a great deal of emotional distress, or involving someone who is incredibly angry. Whether or not these people were video gamers wouldn't have an impact on the incident.

I'm not above saying that a troubled person could actually use video games as a way to get ideas on how to go about committing crimes, but then again there are a great many other sources of information that can do the exact same thing. this includes the News, TV Shows, Movies, Books and even word of mouth.

Another big point that anti-gamers seem to use is that violent video games cause an increase in brain activity in parts of the brain that would be active when committing an act of violence, or a crime. Many video games also cause an increase in adrenaline.

Oddly enough the same symptoms are often found in people who play sports. It is more prominent in those playing competitive team sports. Sports also (most definitely) cause an increase in adrenaline.

It is normal that someone's body reacts to video games in this way. Games are meant to cause emotional response from the players. Emotional reactions cause physical changes to the body. Other forms of media cause emotional responses, even books. It is true, though, that a video game will often cause a stronger response then a book.

We must also acknowledge that as a species, we tend to be quite aggressive. Violent and aggressive thoughts go through our brain on a daily basis. Whether or not violent video games have an effect on a person's aggressiveness has yet to be proven, or even disproved. What is a fact, though is that violent video games alone will not and cannot cause someone to act violently unto others.

Video games are anti-social:

Ah yes, argument that says video games are anti-social. This argument often refers to the fact that most of the more devoted gamers tend to be less social. These are people who spend more time on a computer than others. Again, though, games in themselves are not anti-social. In fact often times video games are quite a social activity.

World of WarCraft is a Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game. Millions of people play World of WarCraft around the world. On any given world (a real, or server that players can play on) there are thousands of other players playing the game at the same time. These players will often talk to each other, and even co-operate to achieve goals within World of WarCraft. Dungeons need 5 or more players to be completed.

At the higher end of World of WarCraft you will find 25 players co-operating with each other to achieve some difficult tasks. These players must be coordinated and focused to achieve these tasks. Players will often communicate through a third party voice chat application known as Ventrilo, or Teamspeak. During the less difficult parts of any given Raid Dungeon, the players will often socialize to pass the time, until they reach another challenging point in the Raid Dungeon that is.

No matter what you are doing in World of WarCraft you always see people chatting it up. You join guilds with friends, you make new friends in guilds. You meet new people every time you play World of WarCraft, and that is an undeniable fact.

Other multi-player games promote communication and co-ordination between players. Although we have some games that are exclusively single-player. These games cannot be played cooperatively or competitively. That doesn't mean there is no social aspect to these games at times. I have even found myself playing single player games with friends, while one of us plays, the other watches. We would each take turns playing the game. I am also not considering the final social aspect of video games which is talking about video games when you're not playing video games.

The more anti-social people tend to flock to hobbies to pass the time, these hobbies happen to include video games. Video games have a bad rap of being considered anti-social because over a decade ago, video games were not nearly as popular. When it comes to anti-social people, they tend to be the first to adopt new hobbies, or adopt multiple hobbies. Now that gaming is becoming more mainstream, we often find even the most social creatures playing these games. Although I generalized a bit here, there's no denying that video gaming will only get more popular as time goes on.


Video games can cause addiction:

Humans have the capacity to become addicted to nearly anything. Some people are addicted to sports, some people are addicted to movies. Many people are addicted to television shows or any series of books. When someone enjoys something, they tend to build a desire to continue doing whatever it is they like doing. Some call it addiction, others call in passion, take your pick. The fact is that some games can be addictive, but that doesn't necessarily make it a bad thing. Of course some people have a difficult time controlling their addiction, and when one's addiction gets in the way of their personal life or work life, that's where trouble can begin. Yet again though, anyone who gets so addicted to video games also has the capacity to get addicted to other activities such as sports. We won't prevent people from playing sports because a select few have trouble doing anything else.

In fact when it comes to sports, those who are truly passionate can make a living off sports. Video games are also going a similar route. Already there are professional video gamers making money by playing games competitively. Another way to make money by playing games is to become a game tester, or beta tester. These testers explore the games to find issues in the game known as bugs. Nobody enjoys buggy games.

There you have it, the three most common arguments. These are very general arguments against video games, though. Each of these three also contain sub-arguments. I attempted to cover them in reasonable detail without creating a text bomb. Thanks for reading this long blog. I know to most readers, what I state is already known, but hopefully you'll get at least one new counter-argument that you haven't heard or seen before.

Censorship never worked. Banning video games will not solve problems. Most of the time it causes more problems then it solves.