Whenever one hears about videogames in the media, it’s rarely a good thing. The media seems to enjoy painting videogames as a violence-inducing activity that people with no social skills seem to partake. As a videogame player and a technology fanatic this highly negative press of videogames is particularly annoying for me. So I’m going to try and argue that videogames not only not cause violence and not promote social withdrawal, they may even improve society.
The first thing I’m going to have to work on is disproving the fact that videogames are linked to violence. Then disprove that they promote social withdrawal which can most easily be disproved by citing the rise of online gaming with other people. The last thing and possibly the hardest thing to do is to prove how videogames may be beneficial. I’ve read several articles here and there discussing their use in therapy; both physical and psychological and other articles similar. I once recently found an article where a videogame based on protein folding called Foldit, where gamers tinker around with amino acid chains to attempt to find the most efficient way to fold it. Players have managed to help scientists fold a retroviral enzyme within 3 weeks. This can assist with the prevention of AIDS and other retroviral diseases. To sum up the last few sentences I have yet to home in on what I really mean by “improve society” but I’m zoning in around either education, therapeutic, or problem-solving such as the Foldit example.
One of the counter-arguments against me may incorporate things such as violence within videogames and perhaps the effect that violence has on children. Those studies also rarely account for the long term and only test for immediate aggression. Also those studies only show correlation, not causation. I can probably find some study or statistic to show that this isn’t necessarily true with “fake violence”. If all else fails I can use the claim that the ESRB rating system is designed to alert parents to the levels of violence within videogames. If the parent allowed the child to play a rated M game then that’s just bad parenting.
In order to find sources I will use the University of Florida’s Library, Google Scholar, and to find valid resources for this assignment.
Videogames and Real –Life Aggression: A review of the Literature, by Lillian Bensley and Juliet VanEenwyk (from Washington State Department of Health), Could Violent Video Games Reduce Rather than Increase Violence (ScienceDaily) both imply that the studies of videogames causing long term aggression were inconclusive and implies that it may in fact reduce violence. Problem Videogame Playing, Self Esteem, And Social Skills: an online study by Daniel J Loton concludes with the fact that even people who play more than 50 hours of videogames a week doesn’t seem to have major social problems or low self esteem.
I hope by doing this research I can help dispel this negative stereotype and hope to find some positive things about videogames.
Travis,
ReplyDeleteThis is a good and controversial topic. A couple of things you should take into account.
Try not to use the language of "prove" and "disprove." Remember, you are making an argument.
Also, I think you should focus on video games and social interaction. I do not think that anyone would say that video games are categorically "bad" and induce violent behavior. You may even be able to focus on one particular type of video game, such as Mass Multiplayer Online games (such as World of Warcraft). This game could be construed as both "violence" and social destructive (by critics).
I think that games such as FoldIt are fascinating, but I'm not sure that anyone would argue they induce violence. Video games, like any form of media, have varying purposes, so you should consider making some more distinctions.