Video Game Violence: My Two Cents

After the Parkland shooting, the conservative narrative immediately blamed school shootings on their favorite whipping horse: violent video games. Over the last couple of days, the argument has gone back and forth in a predictable way: research proves video games don't make kids violent, kids are obsessed with video games (and that's bad), etcetera ad infinitum. 

I agree with the basic argument that violent video games don't make kids violent. As a former teacher at an alternative high school, I know that you don't have to look any further than poverty, neglect, abuse, and drugs to find the real causes of adolescent violence.

However, I can't think of anyone who'd argue that these games do children any favors. And before I go any further, 'children' in my mind are the pre-puberty crowd. There are plenty of perfectly enjoyable video games that don't include torturing someone or blowing a guy's head off (unless that guy is a Nazi. Then go for it, sport.).

So yeah, I think kids under 13 shouldn't play most M-rated video games (or watch the vast majority of R-rated movies, either).

But my bigger gripe has nothing to do with exposing kids to video game violence. It's the games themselves. Just like B-horrors movies from the 1970s, some video game violence has no other purpose than to shock the viewer. Yawn. Case and point: Mortal Combat X. Yes, the finishing moves are fun to watch on Youtube, but it doesn't make for a better playing experience.

Even in games with excellent narratives, violent events happening over and over lessens players' emotional response. I've praised The Last of Us before, but the latest trailer for Part II rubbed me the wrong way. From a narrative perspective, why do we need to see a close-up of a character's arm getting smashed to bits with a hammer? Yes, there was plenty of overt violence in the first game, but there were also moments where that violence was just off screen, allowing the player's imagination to do the work. Perhaps Part II will also follow the same formula. Doing that should preserve the explicitly violent moments' emotional impact.

If the violence has no impact on the player's experience, why bother?

All of this brings me to the most unnecessarily violent moment in a video game from the last decade: the 'No Russian' level in CoD: Modern Warfare 2. Even without the warning screen at the beginning of the game, it's not hard to imagine that the level was created simply for shock value, to gain publicity for a game that didn't need it to sell millions of units. Modern Warfare 3 attempted to top "No Russian", but since players knew something like it was coming, it didn't have anywhere near the emotional impact. Also, Modern Warfare 3 made the mistake of basing its 'shock moment' on a real-life event, the 1998 Omagh bombing; in both cases, we watch events unfold through the camera lens of a tourist family killed by terrorism. If people are going to claim that video game violence is fine because it's fiction, then keep it fiction.

In conclusion, if I am going to play a video game where I see mankind's darkest instincts explode onto the screen, it better mean something.