Gaming for the good media essay

Connor SintzMrs. McCrayLanguage Arts 8February 12, 2013The gaming industry is full of multiple genres from Sesame Street playhouses to complex military shooters. Games. Video games are just games, right? They don’t tell touching, thrilling, edge of your seat stories, right? I think not. The video game industry has expanded massively to become almost more prominent than the movie industry and other entertainment industries. Because most people are in the dark on games, our society has come to believe that violent video games cause lots of problems and that it is superfluous to have such games. Although some people believe that violent video games cause violent thoughts and behavior, there is no significant proof yet that violent media causes violence. Unfortunately people need something to blame for the conflicts in our world and tend to forget that there are many positive effects of gaming. There has been tons and I mean TONS of studies done over the link between video games and violence and none have found a significant link between the two. During the researching of this particular topic about the insignificance of violence and video games, it was very hard, but not impossible to find research and articles that showed why there is no significant link between violence and video games. In response to the Joe Biden’s meeting with video representatives over the link between violence and video games after the newtown shooting, Ben Kuchera, the senior editor of Penny Arcade Report wrote, ” No one can seem to draw a line between games and violent acts, other than the fact that since most Americans play video games, so most American criminals will have at least a passing history with games in some form. The same can be said for drinking orange juice in the morning; an act that has almost a 1: 1 ratio with violent acts. Somehow the board of orange growers in Florida have escaped legislation.” There is so much jumbled information out there about the link between games and violence that it is obvious that no one is on the same page. The supreme court justice Antonin Scalia even said, ” Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively.” Too many people are stressing over video games, which are made so that one can relax and not stress. With fear being stricken into our world’s eyes everyday over violent acts, our society needs something to blame, so they blame violent media, and especially video games. There have been many research studies published trying to prove that video games cause violence, but wouldn’t basing a study around the idea of trying to prove something be biased? Teena Willoughby, a researcher that has published many research studies on violent video games recently suggested that we may have a ” cultural bias.” Many newscasts and other influential media have only pointed to the problems with violent video games and rarely ever anything positive. This media could definitely create a cultural bias and it is obvious that our world leaders do not like the notion that video games could be causing our world violence, but whose idea was it to bring up the whole violent video games thing anyways? It seems like people just need something to blame for the labyrinthine worldly problems that they can’t fix. We’re almost always going to have a cultural bias and I don’t see why our leaders can’t create a positive bias instead of a negative one. At this point the government should leave the violence to the games. Some people think that video games only have negative impacts however, there are many positive effects of gaming. During the fight for game freedom there are some pretty obvious positive effects of gaming. Today we live in a world that runs primarily on technology. People who know how to use technology and video games will thrive in our twenty first century cosmos. Children who play video games often, will be more computer literate and when technology is constantly changing, it helps to understand how to adapt to the drastic changes by playing video games. Also, video games can improve hand eye coordination and other real life skills. For example, in a study with college students, ” playing a golf video game improved student’s actual control of force when putting, even though the video game gave no bodily feedback on actual putting movement or force.” In an article on the positive effects of gaming, Jordan Shapiro talked about some other positive effects that he found which includes some of the results of J. C. Paul Adachi and Teena Willoughby`s study. Some of the things he talked about throughout the article were, intrinsic motivation, concentration and cognitive effort. Intrinsic motivation in the fact that ” adolescents are clearly intrinsically motivated to play video games. I assume they are talking about the pleasure of sitting around a console with friends, the fun connecting over an internet connection, and having a common topic of conversation that might take place in the school lunchroom.” When Jordan talks about concentration and cognitive effort he is talking about the complexities of games in which the brain must be doing lots and lots of work to keep up with the story and/or the gameplay of the game. Even though there is no adult supervision that goes on during video game play, video games can have many beneficial effects. After extensive research I do not believe that video games can link themselves with shootings like Columbine and Newtown. There are too many topics against the idea of video games being the reason for aggressive behavior for any more research to be worthwhile or necessary. Some of these topics include, lack of proof that shows a link between real bombs and pixelated bombs, cultural bias and the very common blame game, and the lack of negative effects that show through the positive effects. With many corrupt point of views floating through space about violent video games that defy even the simplest of ideas and concepts for games, there are no good reasons or proof that Master Chief should be seized from the frontlines.