Are video games violent?

No. Video games are not any more violent than, say, books.

“But wait,” someone cries. “What about all that footage we’ve seen of horrible graphic video game violence? We know there are violent games. We’ve seen them.” And yes, it’s true; there are violent games. Completely aside from the question of whether violent games can be harmful– which is a different question entirely from what I’m addressing here– it is true that they exist.

But there is a difference between “violent games exist” and “all video games are violent”, one which many people don’t keep in mind. It is like saying “Books are violent” instead of saying “There exist some books that are violent, that glorify violence, that make children want to be aggressive like the characters in combat”– which is as true of books as it is of video games, but we don’t think of books, on the whole, as being violent things. To say that “video games” themselves are inherently violent, that they are dangerous and harmful, that those who play them are likely to become a menace to society, is to assume that all video games glorify violence– and that’s not true.

There are plenty of nonviolent games, and I’m not just talking about Tetris. To begin, with there are games like Mario Bros. where any violent act is extremely cartoonified and less graphic than your average Looney Toons episode, which we seem to think is perfectly suitable for the young. If jumping on the head of an animated turtle is too violent for our children, we probably shouldn’t have any classic cartoons either. And there are games like Katamari Damacy, where you basically roll a ball around the floor and collect objects, creating the stars and moon and planets; yes, you can roll up people, but this is treated as an opportunity for a grand vacation to the moon. There is Dance Dance Revolution, in which you jump on arrows on a floor mat in time to the music– a good aerobics workout, as well as being fun. And that’s before mentioning that some games have stories complex and thought-provoking enough to deserve a place in literature. RPGs in particular– the acronym stands for “role-playing game”, because the earliest video game RPGs were based on Dungeons and Dragons, although little resemblance remains– often have complex and thought-provoking stories these days. Imagine: you’re sent on a quest to arrest some bandits, and then you discover that things aren’t as they seem and that what you did was morally wrong. This is an experience you can’t quite have in a book, where you aren’t the guiding hand behind the characters’ actions. Far from being desensitizing, this kind of story is often sensitizing– highlighting the connection between what you helped the character do and the consequence of that choice. Instead of rewarding you for committing violence, some games show you why you would never want to.

Many people, especially those who didn’t grow up playing games, are unaware of the benefits that said games can bring. Typical examples are people who will tell you that games taught them new words– I definitely learned some words from games, words my mother didn’t even know, like “whelk“. I learned what a CPU is from a game; not from asking about the machine the game was played on, but because it was brought up in the game’s story. Some behaviourists suggest that games particularly help kids develop hand-eye coordination and reflexes, and even if kids could be getting that practice elsewhere, they might as well be learning it from games if that’s what they prefer to focus on. And special controllers, such as the aforementioned dance pad floor mats and Wii remotes and others, can net them a good workout. There’s also the social learning aspect: online PC game players tend to form clans or guilds that befriend each other and work together, cooperating and sometimes nurturing younger players, letting others try out different social roles in a virtual setting. And even violent games, as players often point out, are sometimes an outlet for stress relief to blow off steam; these people at least are getting the opposite effect. Implying that games make people violent is unfair to all the gentle pacifists who would never hurt a fly and also enjoy video games. (If you don’t believe that such people exist, I suggest googling for forums where debates on the subject take place; invariably the comments are full of model citizens who are avid gamers, speaking up for their oft-maligned hobby.)

For those who are still concerned about the existence of even one violent video game that children might potentially get their hands on, consider also that most other activities can involve violence as well. Some movies glorify violence as much as games ever did, by making it look cool rather than showing how horrible it is. There are plenty of books that glorify violence– full of horror, serial killers, spies, and worse, all looking glamourous and enticing– but that’s hardly a reason to stop children from reading. Art, classic art in museums, depicts gruesome scenes as well. In fact, any medium that imparts cultural understanding can equally impart a glorified view of violence. They are just as likely to see it in high culture as they are to see it in games. We want people to watch the news and stay informed, but the news is full of violence more shocking than a thousand zombie deaths. And what of sports– hunting, fishing, football? The former two involve literally harming living creatures, and the latter involves rough play in which people often really get hurt. We see these as suitable activities, not as something that might desensitize people or make children aggressive, but they are full of violence as well. Some people seem to think that these real, physical acts of violence are less desensitizing than ones committed in a game against animations that one knows full well is just a game and doesn’t really hurt anybody. I find that to be a very strange worldview indeed. People seem to think about activities that are traditional (and therefore “okay” and “good clean fun”) differently from how they think about activities that are new and are just beginning to be examined carefully by the generations who actually grew up experiencing them. But that is an illusion of thought; to a child born today, books and video games and sports are equally new, and deserve equal examination and equally careful judgment. And the child doesn’t know only about violent games in the news; the child more likely knows what all the other kids at school are playing, which is perfectly likely to be nonviolent, given the vast array of different games out there.

Even if you are a die-hard proponent of the idea that being exposed to violence causes people to be violent, it’s a huge error to assume that all games are violent. Many of them are not. To react adversely to the idea of video games themselves is to completely write off an extremely varied type of pursuit; some games might be the violent combat you imagine, but some of them are practically the opposite.

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