The influence of violent videogames

Here’s an interesting view on the whole video game controversy and on the way violent videogames influence human behaviour.

First, check the following link, containing the US National Crime Victimization Survey of Violent Crime Trends, 1973-2005. After that, take a look at the graph generated from that data, along with the release dates of some games that are considered to be violent…

Violent Games

Quite the opposite to what we’re told, isn’t it? :D

    • EpsDel
    • May 29th, 2007 1:44pm

    Mortal Kombat 4 is the biggest reduction factor!!

    • RedGuard
    • May 30th, 2007 11:18pm

    So, should we understand that with the emergence of video gaming the actual killings went from reality to the virtual one? And furthermore, how many virtual frags make up a normal killing, just because one day I’ve done about 2 000 kills in Unreal Tournament :D

    Anyway, interesting fact, the government has nothing on me!

    Happy killing everyone!

  1. It’s just a different view. We’ve usually been told that violent videogames create violent behaviour. Which is not reflected in the stats… Of course, that doesn’t mean that the native violent tendencies are not influenced, and that people don’t actually become more agressive, but choose to deal with that in a “virtual” environment.

    • EpsDel
    • May 30th, 2007 11:21pm

    Or even physically, using the keyboard or the display (not me!)

  2. Game over! Smash keyboard in 3… 2… 1… :D

    • EpsDel
    • May 31st, 2007 12:28pm

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=jgYwRj1qCUk

    Sper ca se manifesta numai la calculator asa.

    • EpsDel
    • May 31st, 2007 12:29pm
  3. The reason crime rate has gone down is because everyone is too busy playing video games to commit crimes, haha. There are, however, some harmful aspects of violent games and one of them is desensitization to such violence. That does not mean it makes players want to kill people, but it can make it a little easier to pull that trigger, especially when the video game becomes a reality in a person’s mind. Take Guild Wars, for example. I can play inside the game with my little character and be very “into it.” But I also know and remember it is just a game and I can always pull out back to this reality. It’s when people, and especially younger children, who play a game for many hours, long enough that it becomes a reality to them. Sometimes, that reality is just as real as this reality, and in a way, it can be just as real because this reality, too, is nothing but another video game. So yeah, the lines of reality can be blurred if you are unable to distinguish all of these spheres.

  4. The point of this chart, which has been floating around for a while, is not to suggest that violent video games have driven down crime, but to show how easy it is to manipulate such statistics and to show that during the same period crime has lowered, so clearly video games aren’t increasing it. People either read this wrong and believe the two are related, or read it wrong and believe it’s trying to suggest they are.

    • si
    • October 16th, 2007 11:11pm

    except that the decline starts in 1993. when they changed how they compile the stats. not when violent video games were invented.
    http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/viort.htm

  5. Several law enforcement agencies and inventors of law enforcement techniques and even more tangential entities have claimed to play a part in the reduction of crime.

    The book “Freakonomics” suggests that legalized abortion gets most of the credit since those most likely to have criminal children can now abort them instead.

  1. October 21st, 2007

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