Video games have been around since 1970's, and it is only recently that the violence in video games has been brought to notice. Though the ill effects of video games were seen earlier, it was not so much about the violence than other issues.
Video games have been designed and developed with violence, with the aim of games to cause pain or death. First person shooter violence has always played an important role in games, before and even today. Take for example games like Wonder Boy, Space Invaders; these games were a few of the better-known earlier video games that contained violence. They involved the hero killing monsters or aliens and the hero facing a barrage of arrows, rocks, swords etc. Do these games have violence? Yes!! But the degree of violence was less compared to games we play today, and had less effect on the player psychologically. Games like Mortal Kombat, Doom, Wolfstein were the first to have graphic details of death, blood spill and gore causing an increase in the player's destructive thoughts, aggressive emotions and behavior. According to a Craig A. Anderson, a noted psychologist, "Young men who are habitually aggressive may be especially vulnerable to the aggression-enhancing effects of repeated exposure to violent games."
Studies have shown that video game violence has more effect on females than males. Girls exposed less to violence in general and have limited experience with violent video games, react tremendously on exposure to the aggressive game with more arousal than boys. Though this is only from one study, the gender bias is needed much further research, however boys and girls are known to react differently on exposure to video games. Age plays not much of a role when seen in video game violence, since the effect is the same on both older and younger players. The difference is that the older ones rarely would express the effect through physically aggressive behavior.
However the studies on video game violence have always been controversial, with one contradicting the other since violent video game research has yielded very diverse results. Though exposure to violent video games causes it a risk factor to a safe society it cannot be held completely responsible. There are other factors that cause the players to become mentally and emotionally unstable. Some of them are parental neglect, unsafe neighborhood, bullying, etc. and together they evolve the nature of a player and escalate the levels of aggression felt.
Basically, video game violence is seen as an influencing factor on a player's behavior and in order to curb it there are two rating systems for video and computer games incorporated. These rating systems classify games according to the extent of violence, unsophisticated language, nudity and drug use in their contents. This helps parents decide on the kind of video games they would like their children to play. Though there have been other policy recommendations, it would take a while for them to be enforced.
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