Brett Evans

English 102
Toulmin Argumentative Essay (#4)

Should Violent Videogames Be Banned?

For this argumentative essay, the debate will be circling around should violent video
games be banned? Video games have been in the lives of many individuals, especially between
the ages of 10-30. Some enjoy it more than others, and some make a living playing video
games. According to www.aps.org, In October 1958, Physicist William Higginbotham created
what is thought to be the first video game. It was a very simple tennis game, similar to the
classic 1970s video game Pong, and it was quite a hit at a Brookhaven National Laboratory
open house. Though video games made their appearance in the 1970s, it wasn't until systems
like the Sony PlayStation were released in the 1980s that violence became an issue. Along with
these more sophisticated systems came the ability to make graphics more lifelike. The more
lifelike they've become, the more interest there has been in the correlation between violent
games and violent behavior. (http://www.video-game-addiction.org/). As the level of brutality in
video games has expanded, so has concern about the effects for the individuals who play particularly the individuals who play a considerable amount. Numerous people rush to the claim
that most school shootings lately have been completed by ardent gamers, and their games of
choice were always dark and violent. So the question is, should violent video games be
banned? Violent video games should not be banned because they are not the cause of
violence, violence has decreased as video game sales increased, violent video games make a

large contribution to the economy, they have a positive effect on kindness, and it is up to the
parents to know what games are safe for their kids to play.
Many people believe that violent video games are the cause of violence. They link
school shootings, or cinema shootings to video games like Grand Theft Auto, Modern Warfare,
Black Ops, or Assassins Creed. An example would be Harper-Mercer. According to
http://www.charismanews.com, he was known as a recluse who was obsessed with violent
gaming and the digital world, even finding supporters on those sites. On an anonymous chat
room website called 4chan, there are messages that talk about what he was planning to do.
Additionally, they also linked to a few other people who were similar to Harper-Mercer, people
like Adam Lanza, who was the Sandy Hook Elementary shooter, James Holmes, the movie
theater shooter (Dark Night Rising was the movie being played), and Jared Lee Loughner who
shot Representative Gabriel Giffords and killed six others in Tucson. The closing comments of
Charisma News were With video games becoming more and more realistic, we need to be
extremely cautious as to what our youth and young people are being exposed to on a daily
basis. Fantasy violence can leave a troubled mind craving more and more until they act out in
reality. There is a violent cultural script that too many children are influenced to live out.
Violent video games are not the cause of violence. A peer-reviewed investigated study
distributed in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that children, particularly young men, play
video games as a method for dealing with their feelings: 61.9% of young men played to help
them unwind, 47.8% in light of the fact that it helps them overlook their issues, and 45.4% in
light of the fact that it helped them get their anger out. Researchers point to the cathartic impact
of video games as a conceivable explanation behind why higher game sales have been
connected with lower wrongdoing rates. A peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Adolescent
Research inferred that young men use games to experience dreams of force and acclaim, to
investigate and ace what they see as energizing and sensible situations, to work through furious

sentiments or calm anxiety, and as social devices. The games serve as a substitute for roughand-tumble play. In addition, more than 150 million Americans (and 71% of teens) play video
games. There have been 71 mass shootings somewhere between 1982 and August 2015,
seven of which (9.8%) included shooters age 18 or more youthful. Katherine Newman, PhD,
Dean of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, noted that: A huge number of
youngsters play computer games loaded with fistfights, blasting weapons, and body slams...
However just a little portion of the buyers get to be violent. A report by the US Secret Service
and US Department of Education analyzed 37 occurrences of focused school viciousness
between 1974 and 2000. Of the 41 assailants concentrated on, 27% had an enthusiasm for
fierce films, 24% in vicious books, and 37% displayed enthusiasm for their own particular brutal
works, while just 12% demonstrated enthusiasm for rough video games. The report did not
discover a relationship between playing brutal computer games and school shootings. On April
2015, Psychiatric Quarterly, a peer-reviewed study, observed that playing fierce video games
had no effect on threatening levels in adolescents. Furthermore, even the US Supreme Court
ruled that violent video games do not cause youth to act aggressively. According to
videogames.procon.org, In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (2011) the US
Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that California could not ban the sale of violent video games to minors.
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the majority opinion that studies purporting to show a connection
between violent video games and harmful effects on children "have been rejected by every
court to consider them, and with good reason: They do not prove that violent video games
cause minors to act aggressively." This is to show that video games are not the cause of
violence.
The next argument for video games is that violence has decreased as video game sales
increased. Many individuals might state that crime rate is at its highest due to violent games.
They might link a robbery done by an eighteen year old to the games he has been playing like

Grand Theft Auto. However this is not true. In fact, sales of violent video games have
significantly increased while violent juvenile crime rates have significantly decreased. According
to http://videogames.procon.org/, total U.S. offers of video game equipment and programming
expanded 204% from 1994 to 2014, achieving $13.1 billion in 2014, while fierce violations
diminished 37% and killings by adolescents acting alone fell 76% in that same period. The
juvenile Violent Crime Index capture rate in 2012 was 38% underneath 1980 levels and 63%
beneath 1994, the top year. The quantity of secondary school understudies of who had been in
no less than one physical battle diminished from 43% in 1991 to 25% in 2013, and understudy
reports of criminal exploitation at school dropped by more than half from 1995 to 2011. In
August 2014, a peer-reviewed study found that: annual patterns in computer game deals for as
far back as 33 years were unrelated to vicious wrongdoing... Month to month offers of video
games were identified with simultaneous decreases in aggravated strikes.
(http://videogames.procon.org/)
Thirdly, if they were to ban violent games, it would have a negative effect on the
economy. Violent video games make a vast commitment to the economy. It and non-violent
games combined have made around 11.7 percent of the USA economy in 2008 and always
rising. Banning these violent games would put no less than 32,000 individuals out of jobs. In
addition, in 2009 the video game industry added $4.9 billion into the economy. www.cnbc.com
stated that a new study from Economists Incorporated reported that the video game industry
added $4.95 billion to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product last yearand the entertainment side of
the software world is growing considerably faster than other segments of the economy. Real
annual growth among game makers topped 10 percent between 2005 and 2009, according to
the study. Thats seven times the growth rate of the U.S. economy. The report does underscore
how devastating last year was for the game industry, however. Real annual growth between
2005 and 2008 was 16.7 percent. In 2009, the game industry saw its first negative growth since

2002, as sales fell 8 percent from the 2008 figures. On the employment front, while other
industries have been cutting back their payrolls, theres a hiring boom going on in the video
game world. Since 2005, the total number of people working in games has increased by nearly
9 percent annually. Today, there are more than 32,000 people directly employed by publishers
and developers in 34 states. Theyre pretty well paid, too. On average, industry employees
receive an annual compensation of $89,781, with the industry total hitting $2.9 billion. (A note to
jobseekers, salaries were much higher at publishing companiesaveraging over $112,000
versus roughly $76,000 at smaller game development studios.) Theres a lot more to the gaming
world than those who simply produce the product, of course. Fold in indirect employees who are
dependent on the industry for their livelihood (such as workers at retailer GameStop or rent-bymail company GameFly), and the number it employs exceeds 120,000.
In a research done, some researchers linked violent video games to lower empathy and
kindness. In a study of 150 fourth and fifth graders by Jeanne Funk, PhD, Distinguished
University Professor of Psychology at the University of Toledo, violent video games were the
main sort of media connected with lower empathy. A study distributed in the American
Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin found that presentation to violent video
games prompted an absence of compassion and prosocial conduct (positive actions that benefit
others). Eight autonomous tests measuring the effect of violent video games on prosocial
conduct found a huge negative impact, prompting the conclusion that introduction to fierce video
games is adversely associated with aiding in this present reality. A few studies have found that
youngsters with high introduction to vicious media show lower moral thinking aptitudes than
their companions without that presentation. A meta-examination of 130 worldwide studies with
more than 130,000 members presumed that brutal video games increment forceful
contemplations, irate sentiments, and forceful practices, and abatement empathic emotions and
prosocial practices. (http://videogames.procon.org/)

However, in another study in videogames.procon.org, it showed that violent video games

can have a positive effect on kindness and prosocial behaviors. "Research shows that playing
violent video games can induce a feeling of guilt that leads to increased prosocial behavior
(positive actions that benefit others) in the real world. Another study published in Computers in
Human Behavior discovered that youths exposed to violence in action games displayed more
prosocial behavior and civic engagement, "possibly due to the team-oriented multiplayer options
in many of these games." In 2013 a peer-reviewed study published in PLOS ONE, "Three
experiments failed to find a detrimental effect of violent video games on prosocial behavior
[positive actions taken to benefit others], despite using contemporary and classic games,
delayed and immediate test-phases, and short and long exposures." Researchers have shown
that playing video games also results in increased moral sensitivity."
Some individuals might not even look at violent games, but games on a whole. They
might say that it is an addiction, as in all the children live for is playing game and it waste their
time. Additionally, they might even state that playing video games causes their children to do
badly in school and causes them to have loss of sleep. In addition to loss of sleep, they will
claim that video games are the reason for anti-social behavior.
The points might be true if the individual playing the game is above 18. However, if the
person is below the age of 18 parents cant blame games/game producers for their anti-socialbehavior, their loss of sleep, their bad grades in school, and their addiction. A lot of individuals
blame the game producers for kids behaviors and forget all about the parents/guardians. The
parents have a major role to play in this debate in banning violent games. Firstly, they are the
ones buying these games for their kids. Before buying a game the parent should always check
the age range of that game as it clearly states on the box (Rated R, rated M for mature, etc.). In
addition, it is their responsibility to look at what their children are doing. One cannot simply
watch their 9 year old child playing Grand Theft Auto then when he does something dangerous,

blame it on the game producers. The game producers clearly put the maturity age an individual
should be to play the game. Additionally, if the kid is doing badly in school or has loss of sleep
or is anti-social, blame the parents/guardians for that. They are the parents, they are the ones
whos supposed to set an example for the kid. Tell them what to do and what not to do. Dont
watch them play whole day and say nothing about it. Even if it has to come down to it, put the
children on punishment and take the consoles away. One could even make them play it on the
weekends alone or make them play every time they get a good grade in school. That is what
parenting is about. Deciding what is and what is not safe for the child and building on that. If
the child somehow gets their hand on a violent video game, take it away from them! Do not
blame the game producers. In addition to bad parenting, video games qualify for the first
amendment. In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that video games, like plays, movies and books,
qualify for First Amendment protection. Video games, the court declared, communicate
ideas and even social messages.(http://health.usnews.com/)
In conclusion, there have been numerous research efforts to determine if video games
are violent and cause violence. However, nearly all of these studies support the idea that violent
video games do not cause violent addictions. In fact, they prove that violent video games
promote kindness and prosocial behavior. In addition, research has shown that if video games
get banned, it will have a negative effect on the economy. Example would be loss of jobs and
reduction of money. It is quite obvious that the correlation between homicides and violent
behavior are a false link and a myth perpetuated by the unaware/scared/threatened individuals.
So to make my point, violent video games should not be banned.

References
"14 Mass Murders Linked to Violent Video Games." Charisma News. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Aug.
2016.

Parco, Nicholas. "Video Games Are Not to Blame for Mass Shootings." The Huffington Post.
TheHuffingtonPost.com, n.d. Web. 01 Aug. 2016.

"This Month in Physics History." - October 1958: Physicist Invents First Video Game. N.p., n.d.
Web. 01 Aug. 2016.

US News. U.S.News & World Report, n.d. Web. 01 Aug. 2016.

"Video Game Addiction." Violence and Video Games. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Aug. 2016.

"Video Games Impact the Economy More Than You Think." CNBC. N.p., 2010. Web. 01 Aug.
2016.
"Violent Video Games - ProCon.org." ProConorg Headlines. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Aug. 2016.