Video Games And Violence

Video Games and Violence

In the recent years as video games become more realistic and graphic a lot of court cases have been popping up reporting video games being the cause of violent actions that the defendants had committed. Just because a game is realistic and may depict violent images does not mean it will make the player act upon what they do in the game versus real life. The majority of the cases involve minors and their parents. The child has acted out in a violent manner and the parents are puzzled as why, not believing their child could act this way. Most parents find the scapegoat out of the children's actions, their games.

The first and possibly the most recognizable one is the school shooting at Columbine. The children began a shooting and ended it in suicide. After the initial investigation, they happen to find one thing they had in common that for some reason that went for it. They all had played the game "Doom". They said that the possibly used it to practice shooting and plan their attacks. They even compared it to a life like simulation the army used called FATS.

"A Fire Arms Training Simulator is a machine that uses a life-sized projection screen to place images of people on a vivid first person view of a created world. It uses actual videotape of actual people, and the weapon you use to shoot the bad guys is an actual M-16 A2, the current weapon of choice for the United States military. The weapon is hooked to an air pump that simulates both the recoil and charging feeling of an M-16 during real world fire. You are instructed (as gently as you are ever instructed while you are a trainee in the armed forces) to take cover, reload your weapon, watch the screen and shoot the bad guys, and don't hurt the good guys. If you fail in your quest to successfully navigate this very real looking and feeling video environment, by either shooting even one good guy, or failing to shoot even one baddy, you fail and must spend the next three months retraining for your appraisal, if they even let you stay in that career field." (Alastor. Feb. 1 2000.)

Now I don't if you have played the original Doom but it wasn't lifelike or realistic. You weren't even shooting humans you shot alien and demon like creatures. There is nothing realistic in the game it doesn't even take place on earth. The mostly are unrealistic and the aiming is done with either a mouse or controller which leads