Last week I discussed the financial impact of gaming, all those bits of hardware and software that keep you spending your hard earned cash. This week I want to talk about the other side, the costs to you as a person. Are there any? If so, are they important?
the result of too much gaming?
It is commonly stated that video games cause harm to those that play them, exposing people to violence, desensitizing people etc. Usually these claims are made by people with no idea what they are talking about, journalists seeking a new topic of moral outrage. But it is important to examine these claims objectively, and not leap to rampant flaming.
Part of the purpose of gaming, and indeed media in general, is to evoke a response. Books films, games, they can make you laugh, make you cry, make you angry. The goal is to create a specific mood. It is worth bearing this in mind, much like a drug, a game can have an effect on your emotions, the way you think or act. Is this then something to be aware of? Yes, I believe it is. It is easy to dismiss out of hand claims that games affect people, to dismiss the cause as ‘just a game’. But violent games can cause you to feel aggressive. I for one felt a real sense of superiority and vengeful wrath during the final mission of Hitman 2, where you stalk a church assassinating supposedly elite bodyguards as they quail in fear upon discovering the corpse of another former ‘badass’. It invoked a rather predatory response.
does he make you violent?
The first response to this of course is that this is not simply a product of gaming, books, films, music or art can all evoke these reactions too, so it is important not to generalise. Action films or books can get the blood and aggression flowing just as easily. Metal bands will get the pulse pounding and heads banging. So we must not disregard these scare stories out of hand, we are better off tackling them, and exploring the issue, which is of course what these sensationalist news types don’t want us doing.
like a drug
Yes, games can make people aggressive, but the point is, do we care? I for one utilise games as a means of exorcising my more aggressive tendencies. Feeling pissed off? Go shoot a few people, break a few faces, and I feel a whole lot better. The fundamental flaw in claiming games make people aggressive is in assuming that these things are a) negative, and b) that they carry on outside of gaming. Most people are fully aware of when a game stops and real life resumes, in all my real life conversations, I am yet to have a single paragon or renegade icon flash in the corner of my eye. Nor have I ever chainsawed somebody. A round of Gears of War does not leave me wanting to curb stomp albinos.
not enough sun
As I have said in a previous blog, society is too inclined to see too much of human emotion as a negative thing. We all get angry, believe it or not, even people who don’t play games get angry, and it is a perfectly healthy normal thing to do. Why then do people assume that playing something like Modern Warfare causes people to go postal? Nobody looks at boxers and claims that getting paid to punch people is a bad thing and will lead to more people getting punched. Probably because they are too afraid of being punched themselves. So does spending your spare time shooting digital people make you more likely to go and shoot real people?
Of course it doesn’t. What people tend to ignore, or try to, is that even criminals tend to have hobbies. The press likes evil people to be pure evil, and spend their days oiling their villainous moustaches and plotting world domination, or just generally breaking stuff. They don’t want to know that a criminal likes gardening, or stroking kittens, because this makes them scarily relatable and human. So it is then when a criminal happens to do something illegal, and plays games too, games must be to blame. Because gamers are still in a minority, hardcore gamers are estimated to be around 20-30 million people worldwide. So that is a hobby that most people in the world don’t partake in, so it is something people feel safe in blaming. People don’t want to know that a criminal watches the news, because, omg, they watch the news too. Gaming however, well that is a hobby for shut ins and weirdos. Association then means that something must be sinister and nefarious. If a violent person plays games, then games must be violent. What this ignores of course is the fact that most gamers are not criminals.
So I suggest that games can be a good way of making people less aggressive in social circumstances, by allowing aggression, something perfectly normal, to be loosed in an acceptable fashion. Competitive sport serves much the same purpose.
a valid means of channeling aggression
The other part of many criticisms of gaming is the desensitizing aspect. This is a little trickier in a way, for me certainly, because I have never been overly sensitive to fictional stimuli. I just don’t get scared by films or games. I have seen many horror films, played many horror games, and thoroughly enjoyed a great many of them, but they just don’t scare me. Mostly this is fine, so long as scaring you is not the only thing the developer was banking on. Doom 3 failed for me simply because pretty much its’ whole emphasis was on running round in the dark whilst things leapt out at you. I however have a knack for structure. I can see things coming. Level design for me tends to give away what will happen next. As a result, Doom 3 didn’t even make me jump, because whenever something appeared I would be looking at it ready. The layout of pillars, stairs, corners etc. told me exactly where particular events were going to happen. From what I gather from fellow gamers this is not a common skill, and there are jumps a plenty for most people.
However, aside from this, I think again we come back to the point that most gamers can separate fact from fiction. I have seen, and caused, all kinds of digital carnage, decapitated all manner of creatures and separated many limbs from their bodies. This however does not affect the impact real world events have on me. To suggest that playing a violent or scary game causes people to be callous is I think a great disservice to gamers. If you witnessed horror in real life, would you be uncaring because you had seen a nuclear explosion in Modern Warfare? Do post apocalyptic games make you immune to the horrors of cities wrecked by natural disasters? Of course not. That would be like suggesting watching Waterworld made you uncaring about the Pakistan floods.
Kevin Costner's fault?
What we have is another case of people passing on their own fears or concerns. What really makes people desensitized is the news. Real life horror is thrown at us every day, and you cannot help but become accustomed to it. The simple fact is, there is a limit to how much you can care about something. If you have never experienced a natural disaster, you really have no idea what it is like. Without the ability to project yourself into an event, you cannot easily empathise with those involved. There is only so much room in your own reality, everyone has their own concerns, and no matter how big or small, they take up your attention. Aristotle once stated that the development of society does not make life easier, it simply changes the nature of the problems faced. I have just lost my job, now in comparison to the Chilean miners stuck underground, it is a pretty small concern, but the fact is, it is my concern, directly affecting my life, and as such it fills a much bigger part of my psyche than something happening on the other side of the world. It is inevitable, it is not callousness on my part. People express great sadness at terrible events, and rightly so, but how deeply are they really touched by it? People like to think they are troubled by dire events, but in the end they are not, a person who was troubled by every item of news would never survive.
Practicality dictates much of what people perceive and feel. Modern society likes to pretend it is in no way animalistic, that it is a bottomless well of sympathy but it is not true. Gaming does not desensitize people or make them violent, nor does music, films, or anything else, people have simply deceived themselves into believing that society has developed into something it isn’t. We are not as different to ancient man as we like to think.
So yes, I believe it is always important to keep an eye on how you feel, and to remember that media will affect you, a bad game might make you frustrated and angry for all the wrong reasons, so remember that and do not let it spill over into your every day life. At the same time it is important that people realise gaming will not make people commit crime, wont rot the mind, or corrupt the soul. Anything taken to an extreme can be unhealthy, gaming is no exception, but gaming does not make people extreme, and extreme people might play games, it is that difference that should be understood.
To quote Aristotle once more, “Moderation in all things.”
until next time.
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