Nonviolent Video Game - Video Game Violence and Attendant Controversies

Video Game Violence and Attendant Controversies

Controversies surrounding the negative influences of video games are nearly as old as the medium itself. In 1964, Marshall McLuhan, a noted media theorist, suggested in his book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, that "he games people play reveal a great deal about them. " This was built upon in the early 1980s in an anti-video-game crusade spearheaded by the former Long Island PTA president, Ronnie Lamm, who spoke about her cause on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour in December 1982. The same year, Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, had suggested that games had no merit and offered little in the way of anything constructive to young people. Despite early general claims of the negative effects of video games, however, effects of these concerns were relatively minor prior to the early 1990s.

Although discussion of the impact of violence in video games came as early as 1976's Death Race arcade game or Palace's Barbarian (1987) featuring the ability to decapitate opponents, it was not until graphic capabilities increased and a wave of new ultra-violent titles were released in the early 1990s that the mainstream news began to pay significant attention to the phenomenon. In 1992, with Midway's release of the first Mortal Kombat video game, and then in 1993 with id's Doom, genuine controversy was first ignited as the wide and growing popularity of violent video games came into direct conflict with the moral and religious ethics of concerned citizens. Protests and game-bannings followed the publicizing of these conflicts, and controversies would erupt periodically throughout the 1990s with the releases of such games as Dreamweb (1992), Wolfenstein 3D (1992), Mortal Kombat II (1993), Phantasmagoria (1995), Duke Nukem 3D (1996), Blood (1997), Grand Theft Auto (1997), Carmageddon (1997), Postal (1997), Mortal Kombat 3 (1997), Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now (1998), Blood II: The Chosen (1998), Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999), and Requiem: Avenging Angel (1999) among others.

In April 1999, the fears of the media and violence-watch groups were legitimated in their eyes as investigations into the lives of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the shooters in the Columbine High School massacre, revealed that they had been fans of the video game, Doom, and had even created levels for it today dubbed "the Harris levels". A great deal of discussion of violence in video games followed this event with strong arguments made on both sides, and research into the phenomenon which had begun during the 1980s received renewed support and interest.

In December 2001, Surgeon General David Satcher, led a study on violence in youth and determined that while the impact of video games on violent behavior has yet to be determined, "findings suggest that media violence has a relatively small impact on violence," and that "meta-analysis the overall effect size for both randomized and correlational studies was small for physical aggression and moderate for aggressive thinking."

Despite this, the controversies and debate have persisted, and this has been the catalyst for the emergence of the non-violent video game genre. Non-violent video games are defined in the negative by a Modus tollendo ponens disjunctive argument. In other words, in order to recognize a non-violent game, an identifier must recognize the violent game as a distinct class. This has led to a degree of ambiguity in the term as it relies upon a definition of violence which for different identifiers may mean different things. In general, violence may be placed into at least three distinct categories:

• Totally non-violent games - Games in which absolutely no violence occurs. This category contains games characterized by lack of the death of characters, lack of sudden noise or movement, and often lack of traditional conflict. (e.g., Below the Root or Sudoku Gridmaster)
• Games in which the player acts non-violently - Games where violence occurs to the character-player as a result of environmental hazards or enemies but the character-player's reaction is to run away or otherwise distance himself from the violence.
  • Games with environmental hazards only - Games lacking enemies, but containing a potentially violent environment (E.g. Alleyway, or Roller Coaster)
  • Games with enemies - Games with violent enemies which the player-character must avoid (E.g. the Eggerland series)
• Games in which the player acts non-violently to other sentient beings - Games where a player acts violently against robots or other non-living non-sentient enemies (E.g. Descent)