When a high-profile violent act occurs, and a link is made between that act and, say, Mortal Kombat, GTA or Call of Duty, a big mess of squabbling erupts in the news media and in the game blogosphere about whether or not violent games cause violent behaviour.
The short answer is yes. So stop arguing already.
The long answer is also yes, but other factors also contribute. The same arguments were used before games looked so graphically real, when crusaders (correctly) identified violent movies, music lyrics and literature as contributors to violent behaviour. Games are just an easier target these days, but still just as guilty.
I’ll explain why in a moment, but first a personal anecdote.
A few years back, my boss and I played a lot of GTA Vice City. He and I had an interesting conversation one day about how GTA Vice City was affecting us. We were both game completionists, and probably still are. Our studio was situated in a building that housed a bank on the ground floor below us.
My manager stated that walking home from work one evening, he saw an armored car parked outside the bank, doing whatever armored cars do. He thought to himself, “I could just take that.” A few seconds later he shook his head and walked home, shocked at his thought process.
I told him about cycling home from the office at 1 a.m. This was many hours after everyone had left for the day, and I had enjoyed five or six hours of playing GTA Vice City. On my bike, I was invincible. I could hit any car, then it would crumple at my onslaught and catch fire, and I’d simply get up, hop on my bike and continue home. Good thing it was 1 a.m., or I probably wouldn’t be here to write this.
What surprised us most was that we could even think in the way that we were. We were both reasonably balanced, educated and socially adjusted men that had been professional managers for many years. How could one game make us think this way?
The study of psychology tells us a lot about this process. The news media often points to direct cause and affect, as it makes a great headline and sound bite, but tells a really skewed picture of reality.
Peer-reviewed psych textbooks will tell you there is no cause/effect solution to explain human behaviour, but that human behaviour is a result of interaction between three elements: Biological, Psychological and Social influences, so that behaviour and conditions are a bio-psycho-social phenomenon. All three areas can interact to produce the perfect storm of antisocial, violent behaviour. But it’s also situation-dependent.
Developmentally challenged with poor impulse control? May have a biological root, from a physical issue that damaged the brain, for example. Mildly autistic with a tendency to self-harm? May be a psychological disorder. Grew up in a house where violence was the solution for settling disputes? The social influence in your life indicates that this is an acceptable solution.
The above is an extreme example. But what if only one element of the three above was true? Throw in a lifetime of social ostracism, binge drinking, six hours of carnage playtime in a game that allows you to steal cars, hire prostitutes then beat them to death to get your money back, and you may have a recipe for a real-life shooting rampage.
So here’s the kicker: exposure to behaviours can often result in repeating those behaviours, especially in children and adults. Canadian psychologist Albert Bandura showed us this with the Bobo experiments. Children shown an adult beating the crap out of an inflatable doll almost always did exactly the same thing when left in the room with the doll later.
The kids were even more violent when shown the adult receiving some kind of reward after hitting the doll.
This is how human behaviour works. It is a bio-psycho-social phenomenon. We reward violent gameplay in our designs with mission progression, more abilities and bigger weapons. Arguing against that is simply obtuse. Why else would US, British and Canadian militaries use FPS custom maps to train soldiers? The USMC map for Doom was brilliant.
Then there’s the evolutionary psychology perspective, that says men evolved to throw a spear at a target, while women raised the young. Males, it’s argued, are hard-wired to hunt. Much of this behaviour has been transferred to watching sports and vanquishing a game-based enemy. Certainly, more males play shooters than females, and more females play The Sims – a game with no end-point.
What do you think? Should we keep believing the marketing speak that violent games don’t influence violent behaviour? Or should we just fess up and point to the ESRB label?
And what about the opposite, where pro-social behaviours and cooperation reward the player? I see a lot more of that in the MMO guilds I play in, than online buddies going on rampages. Just sayin’.
I’d love to hear from you.
IMG Consulting 