Effects DebatesBen White

This refers to areas within games that contain blood, gore and weapons. In GTA 5 (for an example), there are quite a lot of different weapons for the player to choose from. With these weapons, they can then decide to go on a killing rampage and murder whoever they want in various ways. Many people believe that this violence in video games makes people more violent in real life, as many teenagers play these types of games for hours at a time. The link above shows a newspaper article in which states that a boy who murdered his teacher was influenced by video games. It says he played games such as dark souls 2 which contains violence, however, he was found to have a personality disorder with psychopathic tendencies.

Personally, I strongly believe that video games do not cause violent behaviour. There have been many studies into the case which too have found that there is no link between game violence and real world violence, and in cases such as when people who have played video games in the past and have gone to a cinema or another area and shot people for no reason, these people have pretty much all been found to have mental disorders and/or be psychopathic. I have played video games since I was 3 and over the years the majority of games I have played have had some form of violence in them, but I have no desire or intention to hurt or kill anyone, I even feel bad when I stand on a spider. Another final point to make is that the human race just naturally has a violent side to it, as does any animal as we need to be violent to catch prey and survive due to our race being omnivores, and if we look at our history, it becomes increasingly evident that we can be pretty violent. Hundreds, of wars have been fought in the past and countless people have died. Take Adolf Hitler for example. Was he inspired by GTA 5 to cause the deaths of 60 million people? No. Violence is cause by power, nature or mental illnesses in my opinion.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/research-shows-no-link-between-video-game-violence/1100-6423385/

Violencehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2819568/Boy-middle-class-home-turned-loner-obsessed-zombie-video-games-Parents-court-teenage-classroom-killer-life.html

This refers to any content in video games such as nudity and sexual interactions. This is shown in games such as Ride to Hell retribution and the Grand Theft Auto series. In these games, characters are seen to be naked at times and even having sexual intercourse with others. In the GTA series, you can even buy a prostitute or go to a strip club to see naked women. Due to the games industry having a significant amount of males working in it, there is said to be quite a lot of sexualisation of women in the sense that women in games tend to be created with more appealing features and sometimes have naked models. This can effect players by making them think less of women.

I believe that there is a lot of this type of content in video games, but it can also be seen a lot in movies or TV shows as well. Game wise however, there does appear to be more sexualisation on female characters, but I believe this is because there are more men in the games industry and I believe they are just trying to make the game more appealing to other men as they are most likely to buy games such as GTA 5.

Explicit Sexual Content

Abusive or inappropriate language can be found a lot in video games and refers to the use of swear, vulgar or repulsive words. A game called Conkers Bad Fur day is well known for its over-use of bad language as there’s pretty much a bad word every 10 seconds. The over-the-top use of this word could cause players them selves to begin using such language at inappropriate times or more often. This could then cause the player to use abusive language online which would further spread and cause aggressive arguments

Abusive/ Inappropriate languagehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=hKXgczWPCxg

This refers to spending too much time playing video games and making your life revolve around them. A game called candy crush saga is known to be addictive. The link above further states this and it has been discovered that the game itself was actually designed to be addictive. This causes people to spend too much time on a game and not enough time working or socializing, so will end up with a poor social life and working life.

I believe that games aren’t addictive and are only seen so because proper gamers like to put a lot of time into them. I play games for more than I should, but I do this because it is my hobby and I enjoy having fun playing them and being entertained by them. I don’t see this as being different to any other hobby – a person who would read books a lot at home has not gone to the extent of being described as an addict, so why are games being criticized?

Addictionhttp://business.time.com/2013/11/15/candy-

crush-saga-the-science-behind-our-addiction/

This involves putting people in our society into groups and taking actions against or with them. For example, in Grand Theft Auto 5, Franklin is portrayed as a violent gangster who deals drugs. This is stereotyping as gangsters are seen by most people as criminals who deal drugs and murder people and some people believe that the majority of gangsters are the same race as Franklin. In GTA 5, It is also incredibly evident that the creators have made quite a lot of African-American gangsters and I have noticed this myself. This is where stereotyping is bad as the game could therefor inform people to believe that all foreign and coloured people are criminals ( which they’re NOT) and could cause people to talk ill of them or even avoid them, when in reality most of these people are not bad at all.

Stereotyping and representation

Censorship means blocking content that is too gory, bloody or contains nudity. A game called Left for Dead 2 was censored in Australia due to its over-the-top gore system and blood effects. It is used to protect people from disgusting visuals that could make them feel bad, but goes against rights as the censorship is limiting and stopping people from seeing the full game. Censorship would be effective for younger audiences as this means this audience can play more adult games due to all horrible sights being removed, but the games were designed to have the blood and gore for a reason so should not be changed.

Censorship

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH7QCtuaXgI