The Cart(ridge) Before The Horse
In the wake of the whole Fox News Vs Mass Effect fiasco, the media has come under fire for it’s coverage of video games. As mentioned in a recent article written by Next-Gen editor, Colin Campbell, media outlets have more and more often pushed the envelope beyond sensationalism to flat out lying.
Vilifying the video game industry is hardly news itself, however often it’s reported on within gaming industry’s own media (whose credibility is under fire as well). Nor is it likely to vanish any time soon, so long as it grabs the attention of fearful, ignorant parents just long enough to flash some advertisements in front of them at the same time. I imagine that since video games have become so mainstream in the past 15-20 years and continue to gain momentum, it won’t take more than another generation or two before so few adults wouldn’t have grown up playing video games that (what I call) The Fear Machine’s teeth won’t have nearly as much bite on the issue.
What I’ve yet to see–and perhaps I might be wrong–is anyone on either side make the argument that we’ve got the whole thing backward. The issue often debated is whether or not video games inspire certain behavior in young people, causing them to engage in anything from violence to sexual deviance. Even those on the side of the gaming industry might make the compromise that while violent games affect a child’s mind, it’s in combination of other factors (music, television, family dysfunction, etc) that leads to that behavior. I think that we might have things the other way around.
What if we’re mistaking the effect for the cause? If you ask me, it’s not that violent video games lead kids to be violent… It’s violent children that are drawn to violent video games. It’s just like how I don’t necessarily believe that reading makes one smarter, but I do believe that smarter people tend to read more. The relationship between a child and video games (or any form of entertainment) doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
The child exists first… How that child develops (read: is raised) determines their tastes. People who are driven by angry impulses–whether they’re expressed outwardly or not–are more passionate about violent games. A more rounded person may still play violent games, but may also be more open to other genres. Or not be interested in games at all! No media “expert” can produce a shred of evidence that exposing any average child would magically convert them into a killer. All they do is point to a tragedy exclaim, “See! There’s your proof!” when there isn’t any. The people who explode into acts that always make the news? They were killers well before they could pick up a controller.
