Violence and Video Games

Violence and Video Games

current console game, "Manhunt") has been linked in the minds of many in the UK to the murder of Stefan Pakeerah, 14, from Leicester.

The game, awards points to the player based on the number and brutality of murders and assaults of the game's virtual characters. One of the methods used is a hammer, which was the weapon used in real life on poor Stefan. The killer supposedly played the game to the point of obsession.

The tabloid media, as is usual in the UK, immediately exploded in uproar, demanding that the game be banned, the makers prosecuted, etc. And one of the largest UK game retailers immediately withdrew the game from sale in its stores, under several different retail brands (from memory, the Dixon's, Curry's, and PC World brands).

There's a general misconception that seems to be on the rise with the general public in regards to violence and video games. Let me clarify this: I believe it's a misconception, but I have no actual proof besides some thought experiments and some violence statistics. Well, actually no links to speak of, but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that violence is in a decline over the past decade, something around 13%. That's pretty significant if you think of them as numbers and not just a percentage. Say there were something like 10 million violent crimes in 1993, and in 2003 there were 8.7 million - 1.3 million less instances of needless pain, anger and sorrow. Yet if a kid picks up a rifle and starts picking off people in a manner that's characteristic of a video game, suddenly video games are causing violence in children.

Something's not right here.

I suppose if we are to examine this issue, we should have a better understanding of what violence really is, and why it occurs in our society. There are all kinds of violence - domestic violence, pyschopathic violence, religious violence, patriotic violence, bar fights, road rage to name a few. There is a common thread throughout all these forms: they are predominately initiated by men. Sure there are instances of violence from women but statistically the vast majority comes from the male half of the population. Why is this?

I believe that violence is a genetic leftover from our animalistic evolution, pure and simple. There is a case for nurtured violence - abuse by parents, teachers, clergy, etc. However the common theme of male tendencies

towards violence is what I consider unifying evidence of a genetic predisposition. Women are abused probably as much as men yet that does not seem to carry over (as much) to new generations violent women.

The evolutionary path that humanity has taken was wrought with the need for hunters, protectors and warriors. In order for us to have gotten to this point in time now our tribal nature and hostility towards strangers was a powerful evolutionary tool - it allowed dominate genes to reproduce, it contributed to the tribal society which allowed specialization of tasks by different people, it created a sense of safety and security in a wild and dangerous world. So there's no arguing that we as people would be where we are today if we hadn't used the violence inherint in the male half of humanity to allow us to grow, evolve, learn and provide us enough spare time to contemplate ourselves, our surroundings and our place in the world.

That violence that helped us so in the past has become a hindrance

in the present. We are living in an increasingly smaller society where our scope of tolerance and understanding of the rest of the world is ever decreasing with it. As more and more people are crowded into smaller and smaller areas friction from close quarter living can be a frustrating experience for many men. Violence is the natural result of these conditions, but violence is not tolerated in our society. Violent people become ostracized further feeding their anger and hostility towards the world and the people around them. They see people who are different and automatically create antipathy towards them. They see their girlfriend being chatted up and they automatically bring up the defences and muscle the would be suitor away in the only way they know how: violence.

So if violence is genetic and inherint in the male half of humanity, how do we get rid of it in order to meet the standards of the society that we live in? Well I believe it's already taking place, the violent aggression

that has dominated many male's for the entirety of human civilization is slowly being siphoned away into a harmless, digital domain: video games.

Surely violent men aren't a seething, unending cauldron of potential violence? If a man is violent does that mean he is violent from