Juan Guerrero 1

Juan Guerrero

Dr. Sharity Nelson

ENGL 1302-101

31 October 2022

The truth about violence in videogames

Videogames have had an incredible impact on how entertainment has evolved, and as a

rapidly growing industry, it was to be expected there would have been certain issues along the

way. The issue of the effects that violence in videogames may have on the people is a discussion

nearly as old as videogames themselves. There have been many studies onto whether these

worries may be misplaced, yet none have ever come to a conclusive answer on the subject. There

have been many different arguments for and against the idea that violence may influence

younger audiences, and there have always been those who seek to use the contention for their

own purposes. This paper argues that such discourse has been missing the heart of the issue, the

real question not being if violence influences the younger generations, but how does violence

influence videogames.

The wrong point of view

For as long as there has been discussion over whether or not videogames are indeed a bad

influence, the focus of the discussion had been how violence affects the player, but hardly if

ever, is the contrary called into question, how does the user and the society affect the video

game. Humanity and violence have had a very difficult relationship, throughout most of recorded

history, there has been war and death, violence that has shaped the world into what it is now.
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Violence has played a substantial role in the development of culture, the Spartans were a culture

of war for example.

User input forgotten

As much as a developer can be blamed for putting in violent actions into their games, the

player should be talked about for committing the acts. Video game players have a reputation for

finding ways to do things that the developers never intended, a relevant example would be the

infamous baby penguin from Nintendo’s Super Mario 64. The player is tasked with returning the

baby penguin back to its mother, yet many players found it amusing to let the baby fall into the

empty abyss that lies below the playable area, an action which the developer clearly had no

intention of implying the player should do. Another example could be the rather notorious, yet

somehow missed, killable children from Interplay’s Fallout 2. As can be surmised, the game

allowed you to kill the children NPCs, albeit at great costs and to no benefit whatsoever to the

player. Even though the player receives absolutely no benefits, and rather ruins their entire

playthrough by result, some players still chose to kill children, either out of morbid curiosity or

some kind of challenge run, it still stands that it was an action chiefly taken by the player, and in

no way encouraged by the developers. And there has even been some who wish it would return

into the more recent entries, even creating mods that allow you to do just that in Fallout 3, New

Vegas, and Fallout 4.

Those who benefit

There are those who push towards one side of the debate and have done so since the

problem became relevant. Video games and legislation have quite a lot of history, yet the most

relevant would be the creation of the ESRB in 1994. The ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings
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Board) was created in response to three videogames, Mortal Kombat, Night Trap, and Doom.

Doom itself is no strange to controversy, many claiming it was the source, and inspiration behind

the Columbine Massacre. Add more here.

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