by -Rakuyou Mitsukai-

Created on: June 14, 2008

I have no reason to believe violence in video games contributes to real life violence. The idea that video games contribute to violence in the real world is simply a media based fabrication used to scare people into watching their broadcasts to get ratings. It has become evident that the media no longer gets ratings from feel-good stories about people doing the right thing so they resort to scare tactics in order to grab the attention of the masses. Here are the reasons I feel this story is one of those scare tactics.

1. There is a fundamental difference between the two realms of causation and co-relation. When causation is used, there is definitive evidence that proves one event causes the other. With co-relation no such evidence that either event has an impact on the other. Any two situations can be co-related but that doesn't mean they affect each other.

Example: Let's pretend that a study found that when church attendance was low in a particular city, that the rate of murder became much higher than normal and that this phenomenon held true for neighboring cities as well. While the two events are now co-related there has been no evidence to support a theory of one event causing the other. Most likely, people would look at this finding and think not going to church can get you killed. But who is to say whether it is the low attendance that causes the murders, or is it that the murders that cause low attendance? Perhaps it could be an outside factor that is impacting this relationship, such as people going to church are caught in traffic going to church and road rage sets in and takes over, or perhaps it is truly just a coincidence with no direct link whatsoever. When people rush to make conclusions (especially in the media) we often look at things in the worst possible perspective and lose out on rationality.

The same goes for video games. Who is to say that the video games cause the violence? Isn't it just as rational to say that perhaps after somebody commits a violent crime they decide to go cool off by playing a video game where they can feel in control of their own destiny? After a long day of work or classes at college I know I like to relax by firing up Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Why isn't the media producing stories on the relaxing effects of video games? How about the study that shows how the military uses video game technology to make simulated exercises for the troops to practice, why don't we hear stories about that? This leads me to my next

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