Violence in Video Games

Violence in video games goes back over 20 years to the days of Doom and Mortal Kombat. There have been several studies trying to link video game violence to real life violence. Do video games make kids act violent? There is never going to be a straight answer because it is impossible to link violence to just one source. There are many sources that lead to violence and perhaps video games may have something to do with it and then again it could not. It all leads down to how the child was raised. Are video games responsible for bullying in school? There has always… always been bullying even before the days of video games. When researchers do a study on violence in kids and teenagers the first thing they look at is what type of video games they play in order to somehow place the blame on the game. Video games will always have a bad reputation for the people trying to link violence to the games. In order to try to stop children from purchasing violent games the ESRB was created in order to give ratings to video games just like how the MPAA gives ratings to movies. Games like Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, and Mortal Kombat may receive a rating of M for Mature for having content such as: violence, sex, nudity, drug use, etc… The rating of M makes it impossible for children under 17 to purchase those types of games, but what is stopping them from asking their parent to go to Gamestop and purchase it for them? When it comes down to it, video games will always take the blame when an act of violence is performed by a kid/teenager, “This event happened because said teenager played Grand Theft Auto”.  And after all the blame, all the research, all the petitions, every year video game companies come out with even more violent games with games like Grand Theft Auto V and God of War: Ascension scheduled to be released within the next year (although GTA V doesn’t have a set release date yet) I’m sure that researchers can’t wait to place the blame on those games when some kid attacks another kid. In the end, violence in games will always exist and no matter how difficult the ESRB tries to make it for a kid to acquire a copy of one of those games, they will always find ways of getting it.