Gaming; the fuel to the fire in todays society of violence?

The response to gaming is media panic, nothing but an emotional critique of a

new means of gaming, the source of enjoyment for millions. Media panic is often
counted as an example of moral panic, which by its very definition means "the
process of arousing social concern over an issue usually the work of moral
entrepreneurs and the mass media". Many 18 age rated games have been
blamed for causing violence in society, Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto being
among them. A report from the APA task force on violent media claims that "The
research demonstrates a consistent relation between violent video game use and
increases in aggressive behaviour, aggressive cognitions and aggressive affect,
and decreases in pro-social behaviour, empathy and sensitivity to aggression.
Call of Duty, a first person shooter game using weaponry such guns, famous for
its multiplayer gaming where people play to kill the enemies. It has been held
semi-accountable for a number of violent episodes in history. An avid gamer,
Anders Behring Breivik shot 68 people dead at a youth camp, and bombed
another 9. In court, it was discovered that he had in fact used CoD to train
himself to commit the violent murders. Clearly, CoD has had an influence on this
man however it does lead one to wonder what pre-vulnerabilities he would have
had wired into his brain, to then notoriously kill so many people triggered by the
influence of Call of Duty.
Yet again, Grand Theft Auto, first categorised by critical government officials and
journalists as a murder stimulator, has been targeted as promoting violence
against women and sexual assault. Huffington Post released an article on GTA V,
describing it as a continuation of supporting violence and sexual denigration of
women. This article followed the shocking revelation of the figures that on
average one in three American women will experience some type of abuse, may
it be sexual or physical, in their lifetimes. Although GTA clearly cannot be purely
blamed, the explicit depiction of violence, in particular against women and girls,
is extremely controversial, due to the heightened influence of such types of
media in our modern society.
In the context of gaming, the Effects theory can come into play. This states that a
certain type of media has a direct and strong effect on passive audiences. This
theory encaptures a clear cause and effect argument, with the games content
itself being the cause, then a change in audience mindset and their reactions to
the content is the effect. Within this theory, there is the idea of hypodermic
needle. This is the theory that the use of mass media directly injects a large
group of people with a message, that is designed to have a particular response.
The extent to which this has an effect in the gaming world may be controversial.
It is evident that, as with an injection, the response seems to be uniformly violent
and irreversible, as depicted by series of mass murders carried out by people,
who do not seem to show remorse. However, the theory of the hypodermic
needle also doesnt seem to completely fit here, as if everyone is programmed to
have an exact response, why do the millions of people who play the game have
no response at all? There must be some predisposition in the people who
respond so violently.
The Uses and Gratification theory, suggesting that an audience chooses what to
do with the violent games they are presented with, can be applied here to refer
to what I previously mentioned, about those who have the predisposition of how
they will react to the game. This theory is much more related to the gaming
world in my opinion, because games are purely unrealistic games, and the
interpretation will depend on the rational or irrational thoughts that then go
through the mind of the gamer. Many people use gaming as an escape to recover
from a stressful day, therefore they will react to the game in such a way that it is
only a method to release anger, and they are evidently only releasing the anger
in a game, and not in the community. However, due to the high incidence of
violence which is blamed on gaming, it seems like this theory may not be very
solid, because it seems shocking that so many gamers could respond to games
such as GTA and CoD in such a uniformly violent way.
The responses to these games have been threefold; preferred, negotiated and
oppositional, due to the excessive gaming fan culture, drawing more people in by
the minute. A preferred response to gaming is when the audience interpret the
game as the producer intended, in this case as a virtual reality game where
violence is only to be on the screen, not in the community. Most responses are
preferred, however there are many negotiated responses. This is when the
gamer will somewhat agree with the ideas behind the game, however may twist
and change its meanings to become relevant to their own life. This can be a
cause of violence in the community, as some may believe it is okay to react to
unfortunate thigs in such a way that they would in a game. An oppositional
response, however, may have catastrophic effects. An audience will understand
that this is a virtual reality, however will not accept this idea and possibly bring
the violent actions in to daily life as a response to minor things.