Death Equals Points
What are the causes for senseless acts of violence? When a horrific event occurs, such as murder, as human beings we want to know why. Evidently, robbery, drugs, and gangs often give reason to its occurrences. However, in the cases of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two teen boys who walked into their Columbine High School and deliberately shot and killed thirteen people, it is difficult to understand their motives of such an appalling scene. Another case with fourteen year old, Michael Carneal, from West Paducah, Kentucky, who deliberately killed three of his classmates in school sets no indication as to how a teenager learned to act in a violent manner. On the other hand, both pictures flash to a common scene: they were said to be addicted to a violent video game, Doom. Children who play violent video games are affected psychologically therefore, increasing their risk of becoming isolated from society and resorting to increased aggressive behavior and violent acts. The video game industry has changed enormously over the years. Pac-Man, a popular game in the eighties, showed early signs of violence where he or she’s character is in search of ghosts to eat them up to gain points. Even then parents were raising their eyebrows at seeing their kids playing in a first-person outlook and eating ghosts and goblins. Today, the most popular games are fantasy violence ranking in seventy-eight percent of the games on the market.* Interestingly, video game violence was not an issue of public concern until the technology improved and characters started to appear more photographic in quality. The ghosts and goblins were now turning into prostitutes and innocent pedestrians seen in the popular game, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. “It does matter that children and adolescents can put themselves into the virtual body of a killer in first-person shooter games”, says Lt. Col. Grossman. It matters because a video game is a teaching machine, especially to children. Highly skilled players, such as the Columbine shooters, learn the lesson of game through practice. When considering first-person shooter games such as Doom and a blood thirst game, Blood, these are games that provide the player with a real-view perspective of the game. This is very different from the earlier games like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, in which the player viewed small cartoon figures and then controlled their actions by manipulating them through a controller. In contrast, a first-person shooter actually puts he or she inside the action of the game. Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman, a former Professor of Psychology, argues that first-person shooter games are “murder simulators” which over time, teach a person how to look another person in the eye and “snuff their life out” * Michael Carneal, the boy who fired eight shots at a student prayer group just before the group was to be dismissed, had never shot an actual handgun before.